AI, Value, and Pricing with Mark Stiving, Impact Pricing (The Price and Value Journey, Episode 147)
There’s a lot of noise on AI, but what are the practical implications it holds for those of us offering expertise? In this episode of The Price and Value Journey, Dr. Mark Stiving, founder of Impact Pricing, joins host John Ray to explore how AI is reshaping the way professional service providers think about value, pricing, and the work we deliver.
Mark brings decades of pricing expertise, authoring books such as Impact Pricing, Win Keep Grow, and Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers, and hosting the long-running Impact Pricing Podcast. We dive into the real implications of AI for expert-service pros:
- Why AI isn’t as threatening—or as magical—as it first appears.
- How it can streamline workflows and spark faster thinking, but why judgment and frameworks still matter most.
- The danger of lowering prices just because AI helps you work faster.
- How to use AI as a tool for diagnosing client problems without abdicating your role in uncovering value.
If you’ve been wrestling with questions about how AI intersects with your practice, pricing, and client conversations, this conversation will give you insight and practical direction.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of the Business RadioX® podcast network.
Key Takeaways You Can Use from This Episode
- Don’t confuse AI’s polished output with true thinking. Use it to brainstorm and speed up ideas, not to make decisions for you.
- Look for repetitive or “rote” tasks in your workflow that AI can automate so you can focus on client-facing, high-value work.
- Never lower your prices just because AI makes you more efficient. Faster delivery does not diminish client-perceived value.
- AI can help you generate lists of client problems or examples, but you must apply your expertise and frameworks to evaluate what matters.
- Strong frameworks and mental models are what allow professionals to filter AI’s output into usable insights.
- The core pricing principle remains unchanged: buyers trade money for value, and it’s your job to uncover what “value” means to each client.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
0:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
01:14 Discussing AI and Its Impact on Professional Services
03:25 AI’s Role in Enhancing Productivity
06:56 The Importance of Frameworks in AI Utilization
13:18 Understanding Value in Business
15:13 Using AI to Diagnose Client-Perceived Value
21:19 Personal and Professional Implications of AI
25:18 The Power of AI Conversations
26:24 Investing Time in AI for Small Firms
27:17 AI’s Impact on Productivity and Ideation
29:04 AI and Pricing Models
32:09 AI’s Role in Professional Services
38:28 Adoption and Learning Curve of AI
47:38 Future of AI in Professional Services
50:08 Final Thoughts and Advice
Mark Stiving, PhD, Impact Pricing
Mark Stiving, PhD, is a recognized authority on pricing and buyer behavior. With a rare ability to translate complex concepts into clear, actionable insights, he has become a trusted advisor to companies seeking to capture more of the value they create.
Over the past 25 years, Mark has consulted, trained, and coached hundreds of organizations, from Cisco and Procter & Gamble to Splunk and CrowdStrike. He also works closely with private equity firms and their portfolio companies, helping them price, package, and sell value in ways that increase profits and drive growth.
An award-winning speaker and prolific author, Mark is the host of the Impact Pricing podcast and a frequent guest on industry shows. He has written several influential books, including Impact Pricing, Win Keep Grow, Selling Value, and his latest release, Instant Profits: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include business coaching and advisory work, as well as advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, coaches, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
John is a podcast show host and the owner of North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®. John and his team work with B2B professionals to create and conduct their podcast using The Generosity Mindset® Method: building and deepening relationships in a non-salesy way that translates into revenue for their business.
John is also the host of North Fulton Business Radio. With over 900 shows and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in its region like no one else.
John’s book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices
John Ray is the author of the five-star rated book The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices, praised by readers for its practical insights on raising confidence, value, and prices.
If you are a professional services provider, your goal is to do transformative work for clients you love working with and get paid commensurate with the value you deliver to them. While negative mindsets can inhibit your growth, adopting a different mindset, The Generosity Mindset®, can replace those self-limiting beliefs. The Generosity Mindset enables you to diagnose and communicate the value you deliver to clients and, in turn, more effectively price to receive a portion of that value.
Whether you’re a consultant, coach, marketing or branding professional, business advisor, attorney, CPA, or work in virtually any other professional services discipline, your content and technical expertise are not proprietary. What’s unique, though, is your experience and how you synthesize and deliver your knowledge. What’s special is your demeanor or the way you deal with your best-fit clients. What’s invaluable is how you deliver outstanding value by guiding people through massive changes in their personal lives and in their businesses that bring them to a place they never thought possible.
Your combination of these elements is unique in your industry. There lies your value, but it’s not the value you see. It’s the value your best-fit customers see in you.
If pricing your value feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar to you, this book will teach you why putting a price on the value your clients perceive and identify serves both them and you, and you’ll learn the factors involved in getting your price right.
The book is available at all major physical and online book retailers worldwide. Follow this link for further details.
