B2B margins are under attack from every direction: marketplace entrants, manufacturers selling direct, new digital competitors, and customers who can now compare prices across suppliers with a few clicks. The airline industry solved a similar problem decades ago with dynamic pricing algorithms that adjust in real time based on demand, competition, and willingness to pay. Can B2B companies adopt the same approach?
The complexity of B2B pricing
The challenge becomes clear when you compare B2B to B2C. A retailer with 35,000 SKUs might have 35,000 price points: one price per product. The same 35,000 SKUs in B2B can generate 2.1 billion unique price points when you factor in customer-specific pricing, contract terms, quantity discounts, and multiple sales channels. Managing this manually is impossible, which creates the opportunity for pricing optimization software.
Research from Boston Consulting Group shows the evolution from manual, generic pricing toward automated, segment-of-one recommendations. Gartner found that companies using price optimization software see 1-5% revenue increases and 2-10% margin improvements. The evidence is mounting that dynamic pricing delivers results.
The debate format
Team Evolutionary, arguing for a measured approach to pricing, included Darren Taylor from Fleet Pride and Kristin DeLoach from Kimball International. Team Revolutionary, advocating for aggressive adoption of dynamic pricing, featured Enrico Sieni from MSC Industrial Supply and John Bruno from PROS.
Round 1: Price transparency
The first question cut to the heart of B2B pricing: should sellers require login before showing prices, or should pricing be transparent to all visitors?
Team Revolutionary argued for transparency. John Bruno framed it as a customer experience issue: the moment buyers feel friction, they go elsewhere.
The very first moment that your buyers start to feel a little bit of friction, they might have to push a button to register for an account with the expectation it is going to take a week to hear back. When they have that feeling, whether right or wrong, they are going to go elsewhere.
John Bruno, PROS
Team Evolutionary countered that price should not be the starting point. Darren Taylor argued that companies should lead with the value they bring to customers, not with price comparisons. Kristin DeLoach added that B2B purchases are complex solutions where price is just one component, and the data exchange from login enables better personalization throughout a longer sales cycle.
The audience narrowly favored requiring login, suggesting practitioners still see value in controlling when pricing is revealed.
Round 2: Competitive monitoring
The second round examined whether B2B sellers need to monitor competitive pricing in real time. Team Revolutionary expanded the argument beyond competitor prices to include supply chain conditions, inventory levels, and inflation data.
Team Evolutionary pushed back on the “real time” requirement. Kristin DeLoach pointed out that internal signals often matter more than competitive data, and that historical patterns become less predictive during disruptions like COVID. Darren Taylor warned about the trust implications of frequent price changes, citing airlines as a cautionary example.
If you get into that game you better be careful because you lose trust. How many people have been on Orbitz and they are playing games? You log in from a different computer and they jack up the price. They are managing margins but losing customers.
Darren Taylor, Fleet Pride
The audience voted 60-40 that real-time monitoring is not necessary, suggesting that most B2B companies are not ready for that level of pricing agility.
Round 3: Active repricing
The final round asked whether B2B sellers should actively reprice products based on competitive changes. Enrico Sieni argued for a middle ground: neither “set and forget” nor constant changes, but data-driven repricing that captures willingness to pay while preserving trust.
Kristin DeLoach raised the operational reality. In her experience, executing a single price change across an organization takes at least six months when you account for backend systems, processes, and multi-channel coordination. The benefits of dynamic pricing cannot be captured if the organization cannot act on the recommendations.
The audience voted 70-30 in favor of active repricing, even though they had just voted against real-time monitoring. This contradiction suggests aspiration outpacing operational readiness.
The verdict: Context determines strategy
The debate revealed that pricing strategy depends heavily on context. Three questions emerged for B2B leaders to consider.
First, how digitally mature is your organization? If you cannot execute price changes quickly across all channels, investing in real-time data will not deliver returns. Companies just starting e-commerce may actually have an advantage: they can build pricing optimization into their initial implementation rather than retrofitting it later.
Second, how commoditized is your product category? Dynamic pricing delivers the greatest returns for products with transparent competitive alternatives and high price sensitivity. For complex, configured, or high-service products, the value proposition extends beyond price.
Third, what role does price play in your customer value proposition? If price is your only differentiator, you have bigger problems than pricing software can solve. The hosts invoked the Sears example: a company that competed on price without building sustainable competitive advantage.
The future of B2B pricing
The trajectory is clear. Contract pricing will survive because B2B buyers need budget predictability. But dynamic pricing is already prevalent in markets where Amazon Business competes, and it will spread to more industries over time. Companies that build pricing capabilities now will have an advantage when their markets shift.
If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on the customer, ultimately we will turn out all right.
Brian Beck, quoting Jeff Bezos
The Bezos quote captures the right mindset. Pricing optimization matters, but it succeeds only when embedded in a broader customer value proposition. Companies that lead with price alone will struggle against competitors who deliver more complete solutions.