Price manager: what do they do? (9)

First, it is appropriate to remember that while the owner acts as the pricing manager in many companies, in others, especially larger ones, the task of setting prices is delegated to a director, manager, or pricing committee.

Taking as reference the human resources agencies’ demands, one can deduce that the main attributions of a price manager are:

• Contribute to defining the company pricing guidelines: strategies, policies, and tactics.
• Set or approve the sales prices and trade conditions.
• Prepare, distribute, and control the price lists used by the sales agents.
• Monitor the prices charged and the profit margins obtained.
• Coordinate the maintenance of a price and other trade conditions database from the competition.
• Participate in periodic performance evaluations focused on sales volume, product cost, sales prices, and profitability margins with the Marketing, Production, and Financial Departments.
• Collaborate with the Marketing, Production, and Financial Departments to define the prices for new products, exports, bidding, and promotional offerings.
• Research the market prices of identical, similar, and substitute products, preparing and distributing relevant reports.
• Evaluate the use of unexpected or abnormal prices and conditions to prevent practices that contravene company rules or current legislation, forwarding his observations to his superior.

As we can see, managing prices is a critical function, given that the company’s commercial, economic, and financial results depend on its holders’ performance.

For that reason, the price manager should have the support of a high-ranking officer—CEO, Marketing, or Financial Executive—with whom he can share his concerns and responsibilities.

C. L. Eckhard, author of Pricing in Agribusiness: setting and managing prices for better sales margins.