The allure of landing a large account (such as a big box retailer) can be the height of nirvana for some (most) companies.  The prospect of getting your products in front of many more eyeballs seems like the solution that will let profits rain from the sky.   Reality suggests that while these types of…

Have a sale to a new customer?  Great!  Are you making as much on it as you hope?   Why do I ask?   Sometimes, there are strings attached to selling something, and those strings usually result in a lower overall profit.  These sorts of strings can be described with words such as rebates, returns, allowances,…

Last week we looked at how to assess reporting in your organization, this post will address the why’s of reporting in order to define what should be reported and when.  Although we didn’t cover the other 2 W’s (who, and where), these should be somewhat obvious.   Purpose of reporting (the WHY)   Reporting is…

How good is the reporting inside your organization?  Before answering that, consider the following:   Do you have the right information when you need it?  Do events occur inside the organization that require custom reports / queries and analysis? Seriously, it’s a rhetorical question, this probably happens almost all the time in many organizations.  The…

  As we alluded to last week in our intro to zero-base budgeting, there are many other lessons and potential pitfalls to keep in mind as you go through this process.   What can you learn from this type of exercise?  The odds are, a tremendous amount regarding the organization in question.  Below are some…

Last week in discussing overhead allocation in conjunction with quoting new business, I promised an article on zero-base budgeting.  Not to keep people waiting, here goes.   What is zero-base budgeting?  In layman’s terms, it involves budgeting by rebuilding an organization on a piece-by-piece basis.  It starts by proverbially dragging everything out into the parking…

Quoting new business is pretty straightforward, all you need to do is make sure the quoted price is greater than the costs and the new job should translate to a profit (in theory).  The trick is making sure the costs being contemplated are indeed the right costs.  If you are a distributor, most of your…

One thing I have run into with many clients is that the incentives for their sales teams are not always completely aligned with the company’s interests.  You would think that having a commissioned sales force should be enough, but it gets more nuanced than that.  We’ll discuss these intricacies below.  By the way, this has…

Anyone who has ever spent any time around young children will know that they all have the same favorite question, in fact, it’s the shortest question in the English language. Why?   Kids ask why all the time, they are curious and have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Another wonderful thing about kids is they…

In my career, I have observed some methods on how people are able to respond to questions without actually answering them (some of these methods were outright told to me as well). Essentially, the individual answering the question may just be trying to make you go away, period. Since we are entering the meat of…