I analyzed 216 job postings from LinkedIn, CVbankas, and CVonline to see how companies in Lithuania and abroad actually understand pricing — as an operational task, or as a profitability-management system.
A company can grow sales and lose profitability at the same time. Not because of a bad product. Not because of weak salespeople. But because pricing has no clear owner.
Discounts get negotiated deal by deal. Promotions get judged on revenue, not margin. Good customers are sometimes only good on the top line, not on profit. To see how employers actually think about pricing, I reviewed 200+ job postings from LinkedIn, CVbankas, and CVonline.
Job postings are a good mirror of an organization. They show not just who a company is looking for, but where responsibility actually "lives" inside it: who decides on prices, margins, discounts, and profitability.
This is a global theme, not a Lithuanian anomaly
In a Bain & Company survey, 85% of executives admitted there is significant room for improvement in their pricing. That's an interesting comparison to this analysis: of 196 unique postings, only 21 were looking for someone whose primary responsibility is pricing. In other words, the need is clear. The organizational response — not always.
Put differently, the problem is rarely a lack of understanding of pricing's importance. The problem is how to turn that importance into ownership, process, and everyday decisions.
Awareness vs. action
of executives see significant room to improve pricing
Bain & Company — survey of 1,700+ companies
of postings were looking for someone whose primary responsibility is pricing
this study — 196 unique postings
Pricing is often a task, not a responsibility
After removing duplicates, 196 unique postings remained. Pricing is genuinely mentioned in 141 of them. But the most interesting part isn't how many — it's in what role: most often it's "tacked on" to another position, as one bullet point among twenty:
From 200+ postings to 21 dedicated pricing roles
How the 196 unique postings break down
The picture from this study is simple: many functions touch pricing, but it's not always clear who manages it as a system.
Two different pricing realities
Reviewing the postings revealed two completely different conceptions of pricing. Both are needed — the interesting question is which one dominates in a given company.
Operational / negotiation-driven
the most common reality · reacts
- prepare a commercial offer
- negotiate a price with a customer or supplier
- calculate the price of transport, a service, or a project
- manage promotions, update prices in the system
- calculate a cost estimate or cost price
Strategic
less common · governs
- pricing models and value-based pricing (price based on value created)
- margin and profitability optimization
- customer segmentation, price elasticity
- willingness-to-pay (how much a customer is actually prepared to pay), A/B testing
- pricing governance and actual price realization
Operational pricing is common in transport, logistics, sales, key account (management of top customers), and procurement roles. Strategic logic appears more often in technology, SaaS (software as a service), e-commerce, insurance, and pharma contexts. A good benchmark is the "Pigu" (PHH Group) pricing analyst position: shaping competitive pricing across several markets, profitability analysis, and requirements in SQL, Python, BigQuery, and automated price-monitoring systems. That's no longer price administration — it's profitability management.
Where margin most often leaks away
The postings revealed not just who is looking for pricing skills, but where profitability losses most often arise inside companies. A pricing problem rarely looks like a "pricing problem" — it looks like everyday situations:
- Discounts become a negotiation tool, not part of a strategy. Sales teams are under pressure to close the deal but don't always see the full margin picture.
- Revenue gets confused with profitability. A large customer isn't necessarily profitable once discounts, bonuses, logistics, and service costs are factored in.
- Promotions are judged on sales, not on profit. A campaign looks successful in revenue terms but weak on final margin.
- Prices are reviewed too rarely. Costs, competitors, and demand change faster than an annual price-list update.
- Sales incentives don't always align with pricing goals. If bonuses only reward revenue, pressure on price naturally follows.
This lines up with Bain's finding: companies that manage pricing best more often align sales incentives with pricing strategy and invest in tools and training.
What pricing means across different sectors
Where and how pricing themes recurred in the analysis
- E-commerce · retail
- promotions, competitor monitoring, margin, conversion.
- Logistics · transport
- tariffs, negotiations with carriers, costs, margin protection.
- SaaS · technology
- packaging, subscriptions, LTV, A/B testing, monetization.
- Manufacturing · construction
- cost estimates, project costs, supplier-bid analysis, commercial proposals.
- Finance · insurance · pharma
- modeling, risk, reimbursement, financial control.
- Regulated sectors
- tariffs, regulation, forecasting, coordination with regulators.
What results companies expect
Regardless of the role, two goals kept recurring. First — profitability and margin protection: tracking profitability metrics, managing margin, reducing price leakage (margin lost through discounts). Second — revenue growth: revenue growth, LTV (customer lifetime value), cross-/up-sell, portfolio expansion.
An interesting nuance: postings rarely name specific pricing KPIs — target margin, price realization, discount leakage, promotion profitability, win-rate by price level. They show up far more often in international roles than local ones, and that's one of the clearest markers of pricing maturity.
What mature organizations do differently
Several common elements recur in more mature postings and in international practice:
- A clear owner. Even when several functions take part in pricing decisions, it has to be clear who owns the methodology, the cadence, and the final responsibility.
- A cross-functional pricing council. Decisions are coordinated across finance, sales, product, marketing, and operations.
- A methodology and a model. Prices are based on value, data, scenario modeling, monitoring, and control, and so on — not just "cost plus markup."
- Governance for sales. Clear discount limits and escalation rules — sales executes, but doesn't decide alone.
- Measurement and oversight. Finance tracks margin and price leakage; prices are reviewed continuously, not once a year.
Simon-Kucher sums this up simply: pricing should be an ongoing organizational capability, not a one-off project. In McKinsey's pricing-infrastructure framework, decision processes, pricing management, and tools are clearly distinguished — in practice this often means a healthy tension between those who shape pricing logic and those who negotiate with customers. The same companies are often placed along a maturity curve:
Pricing maturity logic, adapted from McKinsey
Knows the market and competitor prices, but without deep pricing expertise or dedicated analysts.
Manages the traditional model and experiments with new ones: packaging, segmented offers, partnerships.
More sophisticated models, governance, continuous improvement — pricing becomes a competitive advantage.
What this means — and where the opportunity lies
This study shows that many companies still treat pricing as an operational commercial task, while international practice treats it as a profitability-management system with an owner, data, and leadership attention. This isn't a criticism — it's an opportunity: the company that is first in its market to build real pricing discipline gains a profitability advantage its competitors don't even see yet.
What's worth checking first
Not every company needs a dedicated pricing department or team. But almost every company benefits from clearly answering a few questions: who approves discounts, how often prices are reviewed, where the true deal-level margin is visible, and whether sales incentives align with profitability goals.
Often the first step isn't a new system — it's a pricing diagnostic: where margin is leaking, which customers or channels are less profitable than they appear, and where decisions get made without a shared pricing logic.
Pricing isn't a price list. It's a profitability-management system.
Terms, plainly
- Margin
- the difference between price and cost;
- Value-based pricing
- setting price based on the value created for the customer, not on cost.
- Willingness-to-pay
- how much a customer is actually prepared to pay.
- Price elasticity
- how demand changes when price changes.
- Price realization
- the price actually collected after all discounts and surcharges, and so on.
- Price leakage
- margin lost through uncontrolled discounting.
- Pricing governance
- the rules for who approves pricing decisions and how.
- LTV
- customer lifetime value — revenue over the full life of the relationship.
Methodology
216 job postings from LinkedIn, CVbankas, and CVonline were analyzed (keywords "pricing," "price," "margin," "profitability," and variants). After removing duplicates, 196 unique postings remained. Some entries were classified as adjacent / other-context mentions (transfer pricing, cost estimates, carbon pricing) — these were not counted as direct commercial pricing roles, though some of them, such as cost estimation or project-cost calculation, are close to the pricing discipline. The classification into "dedicated / clear responsibility / mentioned" is based on content review, so the figures are directional.Sources
- Bain & Company — Is Pricing Killing Your Profits? (2018; 85% see significant room for improvement): bain.com
- McKinsey — Building a better pricing infrastructure: mckinsey.com
- McKinsey — Proven pricing strategies (maturity curve): mckinsey.com
- EY — Pricing Strategy (four pillars): ey.com
- Simon-Kucher — Why pricing is a capability, not a project: simon-kucher.com