Marshall Lehr

One of the most useful—and most misapplied—mental models in business comes from Alfred Korzybski: The map is not the territory. In pricing, we forget this constantly. Pricing structures, ERP records, customer segments, dashboards, and margin reports are maps . They are clean, static, mathematical representations of how the world should work. The market—the territory —is dynamic, emotional, political, and messy. Problems begin when we confuse the two. When Measurement Replaces Understanding...

On a recent call with the president of a wholesale distributor - a $200-million access-control company with 34 locations stretching from Seattle to Miami - he said something that immediately stuck with me: “Price moves business. Relationships keep the business.” It’s a simple statement, but it captures one of the biggest truths (and tensions) in distribution. The False Choice Too often, companies treat pricing strategy as a philosophical debate: “Do we want to be the cheapest, or do we want...

Using quote conversion data to diagnose pricing—without proper context—is like trying to navigate New York City with a map of Chicago. You’ll still be moving. You’ll still be making decisions. But you’ll be solving the wrong problems, chasing the wrong streets, and ending up lost and frustrated that your inputs aren’t producing the outcomes you expected. That’s what happens when we treat quote conversion and lost sales data as a clean window into pricing performance. The data might look like...