<p>Many pricing professionals don’t struggle because their analysis is wrong — they struggle because their insights don’t travel.</p><p>In the first new episode of 2026, Kevin Mitchell sits down with Claire Wang, pricing strategist and influence expert, to explore the shift from technical excellence to strategic influence.</p><p>Pricing teams are often analytically strong. They build rigorous models, validate assumptions, and produce sound recommendations. Yet too often, those recommendations stall — not because they lack logic, but because they fail to gain buy-in across functions and decision-makers.</p><p>Claire shares why influence is not persuasion or authority — but a skill rooted in relevance, translation, clarity, and consistency. Drawing from her upcoming book <em>The Price of Influence</em>, she explains:</p><ul><li><p>Why technically correct recommendations often fail to land</p></li><li><p>What separates an analyst from a strategic advisor</p></li><li><p>How pricing professionals can influence decisions without formal authority</p></li><li><p>Why influence, like pricing, depends on perceived value</p></li><li><p>What high-performing pricing leaders will need in increasingly complex organizations</p></li></ul><p>If you’ve ever felt that your pricing insights deserved more traction than they received, this episode will challenge how you think about influence — and show you that it’s a learnable capability, not a personality trait.</p>