Category Archives: Profit Improvement
Why Wait?
For the third time in the last three years, a client to whom I consulted a few years back e-mailed me this morning to tell me she had sold her business, for a price she had never dreamed possible. All …
Are You Serious About Growth?
I continue to be struck by the lack of resolve and urgency at so many companies to eliminate all wasteful activities and expenditures. The world economy has been stalled for years, and there are few indications that it will become …
When Your Customers Lose Perspective
The Times-Picayune will soon limit its print edition to three days a week, as it responds to shrinking population, readership and advertising in New Orleans. By doing so the Times-Picayune hopes to stay alive, unlike so many other newspapers around …
How To Spend Your Money
Milton Friedman once quipped, “There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” I’m sure you all want to run your companies more efficiently than the government. How many positions, programs, and processes at your company were cost-justified when …
Pricing for Profits
Unilever is beating Procter and Gamble all over the world by determining what consumers can afford and then designing products that can be produced profitably at that price point – while P&G scrambles to adapt products driven primarily by design …
When Size Matters
A while back I was in a planning meeting of a relatively small company which provides a highly technical and differentiated product for market segments too small to interest the much larger players in the industry. The company enjoys good …
When Will They Ever Learn?
How many tulip crazes, housing crashes, and flimsy internet stocks will it take before the inevitability of bubbles bursting occupies a more prominent place in human consciousness? A prime current example of a soon-to-be-burst bubble is college tuition. Year after …
Enriching the Insurance Companies
Guess what: Insurance companies make money. They know the odds of your electronics device breaking or your house burning down, and they know those odds a lot better than you do. They make you pay upfront (in premiums) for the …
Say It With Me: “Profit Maximization”
Profit is the most accurate, most all-encompassing measure of how much our customers value the products and services we deliver and how efficiently we can organize and operate to deliver that value to our customers. In other words, profits reflect …
Cut Costs to Grow
Pepsi recently announced an ambitious program to reduce operating costs simultaneous with a marked increase in advertising and marketing. In doing so, they echoed other smart, successful companies that understand the need to treat strategic expenditures that contribute to growth …
