Skeptics in sales

But Mueller echoes a common concern of managers who preside over the rollout of automated pricing systems. "The first hurdle is skepticism on the part of the salespeople. They want to know, 'How is this going to help me achieve my goals?' They are the most tactically oriented people in every company, as they should be," he says. "The second concern is, 'Are you going to take pricing autonomy away from me?'"

J&L did not take pricing autonomy away from its salespeople. And management was able to get them on board by pointing out the benefits of the system in identifying pricing mistakes. "For example, they meant to give a 9 percent discount but accidentally gave 90 percent," Mueller says. "We found things that hadn't been caught in over a year. The salespeople are grateful because that's money in their pocket."

Mueller advises tackling pricing automation one step at a time. The Vision product, a backward-looking analysis tool, paid for itself easily just by finding pricing mistakes. Next, J&L plans to move to a more sophisticated and complex product, Metreo Target, that seeks to optimize future prices.

Finally, Mueller has some advice about selecting a pricing system. "Learn all about it. It's not as plainly evident as you may think. We thought this would be very easy, but we learned that as complex as pricing is, you can't be wooed by the sexy graphics," he says. "You have to really understand how it's going to fit into your business and make sure the tool is designed to solve the correct problem."