Many companies look for ways to improve their top line (increased revenue) thinking that
more sales will equal more profit. Makes sense, right? They spend huge amounts of money on advertising, personnel, and sales support systems. Many of these companies develop (either consciously or subconsciously) an all or nothing strategy to drive revenue up. Personally, I have never seen this strategy effective short term nor long term. What I do see are companies who are able to motivate the sales department to push hard and hit aggressive sales goals only to become frustrated when operations are unable to fulfill the promises the sales department made to hit their aggressive goals. Emotions begin to be injected into the conversation and before you know it, people are arguing, and their focus is lost. There is little chance that the goal of increased profits is going to be met in this environment and in fact, I have witnessed the exact opposite.
Now talk about frustration!
I have worked with many companies to develop strategies to increase profits with great success. Do we focus on increasing sales? Of course and we focus on fulfillment so when orders begin to increase, operations will be positioned to fill them. Makes sense, right? The biggest challenge we face when working with clients is overcoming WASTE. All or nothing approaches tend to create enormous amounts of waste and 100% of the time business owners are shocked to learn just how much money they are burning every day.
Here are 5 signs that your company burns its profit:
No time for planning. We’re too busy. We have to get started. Time is money – let’s get ‘er done!
The big picture rules the day. Details are annoying. Who cares about “realistic” goals. Just take the biggest bite you can and keep chewing.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. It won’t take that long. I’ve included a huge fudge factor. Nothing can go wrong, this is going to be a homerun!
Over promise and under deliver. We can’t tell the customer no. I don’t want to hurt their feelings. Let’s just say yes and someone else will figure out how to deliver.
Penny wise and pound foolish. It costs too much money to improve that process – operations will just have to make do with what they got. We can’t hire an outside expert to help us get better. This really cheap 20-year old machine is just as good as a new one – it just needs a little work.
“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will have the time & money to do it over? ”
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