Category: Profitability

Increasing Pricing on Products

Recently, Netflix – streaming service giant – increased their pricing on two of their products by more than 10%. At first, media and customers displayed anger and backlash. But after the pricing increase, many customers remained at the increase was approximately a $1 difference. Plus, you have to factor in that many people are “cutting

Read More

It’s All About Profitable Sales, The Rest Are Just Details

Many times, when we come into a company, we find that there are three buckets: sales, operations, and finance/accounting. Those buckets create silos – no one goes in and no one goes out. But over the years, we have found that the most successful companies do not have these silos at all. While their title

Read More

Why You Need a New Pricing Strategy

Larry is operating a lemonade stand, and he thinks that his lemonade is the most valuable drink available. Because he interprets his lemonade as highly valuable, he decides to charge $85 for a glass of lemonade. Larry wonders why no one buys his lemonade. Although he may seem highly profitable when you work out his

Read More

Make Money Grow on Trees

Let’s go back to when you were a child. You looked up at a tree and thought… If money is made from paper and paper comes from tress, surely, I can make money grow from trees! Or maybe, you asked your parents for something extraordinarily expensive and they responded with “money doesn’t grow on trees”.

Read More

Productivity of an Accounting Department

Most people (especially those outside the finance side of the business) see the financial function as a cost center. Although an accounting department does not generate any revenue, it has the potential to dramatically improve profitability. Think about this: you should be able to convert 1-2% of sales into profits if the department was more

Read More

Identifying Profitable Customers

Identifying profitable customers is essential to a business’s success. Often I hear from financial leaders… “I don’t need to worry about the customers; that’s the marketing and sales team’s job.” WRONG. Everyone in your company should be concerned with your customers because without them, there is no business. If it turns out that most of your customers

Read More

Creatives in the Workplace: Are you the Machine or the Inventor?

Here in Texas, graduation is approaching. It makes you wonder… How do those potential candidates stand out in a crowd if thousands of them are competing for the same job position? Believe it or not, you were in that same situation once. If you identify with the older generation, how did you land the job you

Read More

A Tinder Moment: Unlocking Value from Vendor Partnerships

At The Strategic CFO, we believe in the saying “You scratch our back, we scratch yours.” Everyone always sees other businesses as a competition; to some extent, they are. But sometimes, you just need to let people make money. As we’ve become more focused on optimizing technology, we have started to outsource tasks/projects to outside vendors nationally and,

Read More

Why do most startups fail?

Right now is the time of innovation – kickstarters and new types of marketing campaigns are popping up everywhere. You might have an idea yourself, regardless of whether you’re a Millennial, Generation X, or even a Baby Boomer! So how do you know if your idea is a good one? As I have mentioned in

Read More

Improving Profitability – Fuel for Growth

How do you focus on improving profitability instead of just boosting sales? 2016 wasn’t the best year for some of us, but the new year provides a perfect opportunity to reassess goals. An entrepreneur’s natural tendency is to increase sales in order to balance out last year’s financials. But what many entrepreneurs fail to consider is

Read More

What do you do with unprofitable customers?

Have you ever come across that one customer who you would do anything to get rid of? Have you ever questioned what to do with the customer that causes more strife than good?  Whether they’re a drain or merely a pain, these customers cost you money.  So what do you do with unprofitable customers? Business is

Read More

Should You Use Margin or Markup Percentage for Pricing?

The biggest struggle in maintaining or improving profitability often comes down to pricing.  Two of the most common methods companies use to price their products are margin and markup.  Unfortunately, many people think they’re pricing their products based upon a desired margin, but they’re really using markup.  There is a major difference between the two methods

Read More
WIKI CFO® - Browse hundreds of articles