Your company probably puts a lot of effort into getting the lowest wholesale prices for what you need. But do you spend much time finding ways to satisfy those needs for almost free?
Increasingly, savvy companies are developing and including knowledge-based advantages for customers as part of their business models. Usually, this knowledge can be applied to reduce customers' costs or...
I remember the excitement that my MBA classmates shared with me while recruiters fawned over them making job offers that could lead to fast-track business careers. Naturally, everyone wanted either to eventually own a business or become the CEO of a business. The best that most new MBAs could hope for immediately, however, was to gain a place in a training program that would lead to an...
Most people work on reducing their organization's costs. Done properly, this kind of savings can reduce the need to raise prices and increase profits. Done improperly, you may only increase costs in another area.
If you can reduce costs for customers as the same time your costs go down, that's even better. Customers will be more loyal to you and will be more successful.
If such multiplier...
Have you ever lost a customer because your offering didn't work very well for that customer? Most people have.
Undoubtedly, you were given several chances to improve the effectiveness of your offering before the customer cut you off. Had you been focusing on that customer's total costs from the beginning, you might have avoided this costly loss of business.
The typical cost-reduction...
Many companies have experienced putting in cost reductions that seemed to cause higher costs. How does that occur, and how can it be avoided?
Vendors of all kinds of products and services describe enormous cost benefits . . . but rarely offer guarantees that should cost benefits will occur. Beware of such potential conflicts of interest where selling you more may not help you.
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Have you ever raised prices at the start of a weak economic period? It didn't work very well, did it? Or lowered prices, just as the economy took off? You ended up with a lot of less profitable volume than you needed to, didn't you?
So timing and circumstances are important. Today's best pricing structure may be a foolish one tomorrow. As you look at proposed pricing structures, you need...
Have you ever provided customers with an incentive to buy more and had them take that incentive and then buy less? Most companies have had that experience.
For example, many consumer products companies offer quarter-end sales incentives to sell extra products during the current accounting period. These incentives usually mean that customers don't buy very much in the subsequent two months....
Many people are frustrated by unfulfilled dreams. All too often, they haven't even given their dreams a try: that's a shame! Who knows what they could have accomplished?
One of the most startling examples I ever experienced of seeing the effect of someone not trying things was when I took my mother to play her first round of golf when she was in her late sixties. Within four holes, she was...
Have you ever tried something new, and found that competitors seized more of the benefit of your innovation than you did? This happens all the time in concentrated industries.
One of the smaller competitors comes up with a better way to price the product, and the largest competitor uses size advantages to adapt the structure to its own advantage. For example, during the 1960s an airline...
Have you ever tried something new, and later kicked yourself for not realizing that there were obvious flaws in what you were trying that should have been anticipated? Time is important to your success, and avoiding obvious mistakes also saves money.
You can save both time and money by first thinking through your proposals in a very critical way. Before you do any testing, you can probably...
