"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it."

    - Winston Churchill

So, you're making plenty of money -- revenue is up, everyone is happy, productive, and functioning together as a team.  The occasional unexpected problem comes up, but it's no big deal.  It's even fun, as your day would otherwise be boring.  The environment is safe and hazard free for personnel and customers alike.  Accidents never occur.  Your systems are always backed-up, and you never have system outages.  You have highly experienced personnel constantly looking for ways to improve operations of all sort, who ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently.  There really isn't anything you can do to improve your business.

Is there?

Revenue and Costs

Earnings are the lifeblood of a business.  Almost anything that can be done to increase earnings, comps, margins, the top line, sales, market share, customer satisfaction, etc. is crucial to continued success.  Almost anything, that is, except increased capital costs, overhead, SG&A, inventory, taxes, competition, etc.  It's not so easy to get ahead.  It's even harder to stay ahead.  Few companies have the luxury of operating the same way year after year, and to keep innovating often requires the ability to think differently from your peers.  This isn't as easy as it sounds.

Most employees and staff understand the need to drive out costs, but how do you keep everyone on board with this? Most suppliers understand the need to lower their costs -- it doesn't just help you, but it helps them too.  How can you keep this never-ending, innovative process going without making it too onerous for your best suppliers to comply?

And for top-line revenue, maintaining market share is difficult enough, much less increasing it.  Can you increase sales %10 without increasing cost of sales and SG&A by the same 10%?  Sometimes expanding offerings makes sense, but sometimes finding a better niche or improving existing offerings is a better idea.  And the next section addresses what is both obvious yet often elusive -- an effective marketing plan.

Marketing

Some lucky (or perhaps talented) organizations execute on everything well. They are always striving to make their products or services as close to perfect as possible for their customers and users, because they have determined what it is their customers really want.  They charge a premium, but their superior offerings justify the price.  But even those fortunate companies occasionally need new and different ideas or their competitors will eventually match their offerings and possibly improve upon them.

One problem with offering something superior is that even if you can prove that you do or make something better than your competitors, unless that message gets out to your target segments, you may not make enough revenue to make a superior offering worthwhile, an unfortunate outcome for everyone.  In many cases, your competition may make memorable yet unjustified claims, suggesting that your superior product or service is somehow inferior. Good marketing must address both what you want to communicate and defuse what others may say about you.

Another hallmark of a good marketing program is the results of the program should generate more revenue that the costs it took to create it.  This apparently simple condition is somtimes disregarded if it has not been met, due to possible embarrassment if it were addressed openly. Sometimes it is ignored altogether, in the hope of making a memorable campaign to generate future mindshare, whose benefits will "eventually" be worthwhile.  Another overlooked quality to good marketing is to use all of the information you already know about existing customers, often requiring a relatively simple way to present it for readability.  It's amazing how many simple marketing strategies many companies do not use because it never occurred to anybody to look beyond what they were doing already.  And the ultimate question, are you providing your customers with all of the things they really want?  That's real marketing.

Planning 

Is your business reliant on one dominant supplier or customer?  Do you have a program to reduce costs, and then regularly look at the results of the system?  What exactly are your competitors doing?  There are so many important pieces of information you want or need to know, but may never find a satisfactory answer to.  Even if you find the answers today, your competitors are constantly changing.  Some of the ways to overcome this is to distinguish yourself from competitors, and predict how that will change over the next 5 and 10 years.  Most long-lived companies have plans that answer questions like these.

AG Advice and Support can help you plan and resolve answers to these and many other questions.  We know what it's like to market, design, manufacture and sell products because we've done that before.  Let us help you maximize revenue and minimize costs, for the good of your business and the good of your customers.