Beyond Price outlines pragmatic steps a leadership team can take to create a strong and profitable brand. The author’s clear and concise framework captures principles all leadership teams should follow to avoid price-driven competition and to develop a differential position in the marketplace.
Nick Meriggioli
President, Oscar Mayer Business Unit of Kraft Foods
More than any other time in business history, we are in danger of giving in to sameness. If you choose to play the price game, know there can only be one winner and chances are it won’t be you. This is why a book about how to move Beyond Price is so important. Mary Kay Plantes has spent her entire career thinking and helping companies with one main topic how to move beyond price to create a sustainable advantage in the marketplace. In my opinion, there’s no one more capable of addressing what I feel will be the major business topic of the next 10 years.
Scott Cooper
President Marketing Engine Group; author The Successful Marketing Plan and Tips and Traps for Marketing Your Business (McGraw-Hill); Former SVP Famous Footwear
Don Hambrick
Smeal Chaired Professor of Management of Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University; Samuel Bronfman Professor Emeritus of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business; editor Navigating Change: How CEOs, Top Teams, and Boards Steer Transformation, Harvard Business School Press publication; past president Academy of Management
Beyond Price provides a holistic perspective on the vital strategic decisions facing leadership teams and best practices for their execution. The authors’ 8-step leadership team guide will help you create a highly effective senior leadership team, an advantage necessary in today’s highly competitive B2B and consumer markets.
Ron Zabel
CEO, Springs Window Fashions (retired)
Beyond Price is a must read strategy and execution book for leaders who want to reposition their business for higher profitability and faster growth.
Michael Ainsley
President and CEO Sotheby’s (retired)
At last, a ‘how to’ book on business strategy that is eminently readable and applicable to all. Few books get at fundamental strategy decisions, much less articulate them as clearly and meaningfully as the action-oriented ‘things to consider and then do’ provided by Plantes and Finfrock. It is a testimony to their method that the book manifests what they preach: A holistic view that differentiates it from other advice books; forward thinking yet steeped in business reality; providing exceptional value to the user.
Marsha Lindsay
CEO of Lindsay Stone & Briggs and LSB Brandworks University
Plantes and Finfrock brilliantly capture the essence of how to systematically ensure that a firm can effectively compete by creating differential advantage. They provide a step-by-step approach to show how to integrate strategy, product, people, and processes for success and how leadership and commitment at the top has to drive the initiative. This book is a must-read for all thoughtful executives and managers who want to break out of the mold of me-too competition.
Greg W. Marshall, Ph.D.
Charles Harwood Professor of Marketing and Strategy Rollins College, Crummer Graduate School of Business
My company has secured a terrific market position in a highly competitive industry by following the authors’ advice for differentiating your company. We are growing rapidly despite the presence of all the national competitors in our market. As important, business is fun again, helping us attract top-notch talent.
Jay Loewi
CEO, The QTI Group
When you read this book you may shake your head and wonder how it is that you are allowing your GMs and product managers to be so ineffective at the most important strategic role that they have been charged with – which is positioning the offering to thwart commodization. The how-to of doing that may not be obvious, but neither is it hard to understand as you read essential primer of how to build a culture of sustainable competitiveness.
Nick Ecos
General Manager and VP, Invitrogen (Applied Bio Systems)