by tradesmeninsights | Jan 19, 2016 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Uncategorized
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
According to a recent post in eMarketer.com, mobile is continuing to grow in the workplace. In 2014, the average non voice time U.S. adults spent on mobile devices surpassed that of desktops and laptops for the first time.
And by 2017, eMarketer.com estimates that mobile usage will increase to more than an hour a day more than desktops or laptops. This should come as no surprise to us. The next time you’re in a meeting, look around the room and see how many mobile devices are there and how many times those individuals check their devices during the course of the meeting.
So what does this mean for manufacturers who are trying to reach the professional tradesman? It means if you don’t currently have a mobile strategy, you better develop one soon! Here some areas you need to focus on:
LinkedIn, a leading BtoB social media tool, reports that 55% of all its traffic is coming from mobile in the last part of 2015. Google reported that in the U.S., more than 50% of all searches were made on mobile devices .
Similar estimates for mobile use: Facebook (58%) and Twitter (90%) are forecasted by the end of 2016.
Mobile is here to stay and we need to recognize that these are new challenges for our workforces.
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 13, 2016 | Uncategorized
This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com
It’s a common knee-jerk reaction for salespeople to focus on increasing volume by offering discounts on every sale – even if it means sacrificing margins. One way to mitigate the risk of excessive discounting is to establish a pricing system that balances volume incentives with well-defined boundaries that sales staff must operate within.
Ideally, in an effective pricing system, the framework should provide guidance for as many as 80 percent of sales. This guidance should consider a comprehensive range of factors, including the type and size of the customer, the market and the nature of the opportunity. The direction should be clear and unequivocal, providing sales staff with “guardrails” that establish minimum and maximum prices or margins. Sales staff can bounce between these guardrails as appropriate, but they should not be allowed to go above or below the established boundaries.
For the other 20 percent of sales, be prepared to manage the pricing exceptions. For these outliers, the framework allows pricing managers to enter the conversation and work with the sales staff and perhaps even the financial team to develop a strategic price appropriate for a specific situation.
By limiting exceptions to no more than 20 percent of the time, you’ll be able to equalize the competing interests of volume versus margin far better than a one-size-fits-all pricing system. Sales staff will still have the flexibility to manage the majority of sales on their own, allowing them to meet the needs of specific customers as well as their own particular quota goals. But the boundaries you set will prevent those individual goals from overriding your company’s high-level goals.
Every business is different, so the 80/20 framework that’s right for your organization will depend on the type of selling you do. If your business is list-price driven, your pricing system may be able to accommodate higher volume incentives. If you’re in a business where price is highly customized, then your framework may need a more aggressive margin component. Implementing this system may take some time, as well. Achieving the right balance of guidance and exceptions is a process that often requires fine tuning. It also requires an extensive amount of data and knowledge in order to put together a sustainable system that produces actionable, accurate and real-time insights.
Whatever the framework you decide upon, the 80/20 structure will provide sales staff with the latitude they desire, while protecting the profit margins your organization needs.
For more details on how to develop guard rails for your team and establish an 80/20 structure, check out this article.
by tradesmeninsights | Dec 23, 2015 | Events/Trade Shows, Uncategorized
We’ll be taking some time off and will be back after the first of the year. Enjoy the Holidays with your Family.
by tradesmeninsights | Dec 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
This post originally appeared on INSIGHT2PROFIT.com
Pricing data can be dense. If no one is reviewing it, managing it, comparing it or scrutinizing it, it’s likely your organization is missing price leaks you could otherwise put a stop to. From volume discounts to price overrides, profits are lost and margins are cut, but do you know by how much? Can you identify your true pocket price for your top selling products?
If not, you may have a data visualization problem. But like any problem, a solution exists, you just have to seek it out. Here are four ways to gain better visualization into your organization’s pricing data.
1. Establish Pricing Ownership:
In most manufacturing businesses, pricing is a responsibility divided amongst marketing, sales, finance, product teams and other executives. But whose job is it to see the big picture? If you can’t validate hiring a pricing manager, you can develop a Pricing Ownership Matrix.
In a decentralized customer environment where no pricing leader is appointed, you can define pricing area ownership. Consider catalog and list pricing, discounting, key accounts, geography and business divisions.
Then ensure these “area owners” meet often to talk about the big picture of pricing.
2. Search Out Discounting Visibility:
Do you know how many discounts your sales team is offering? How about your customer service team? From freight and volume discounts to rebates and “long-time customer” pricing, the hits to your margins add up.
Obtaining clear visibility to your discounting structure through a Pricing Waterfall is a powerful way to determine pricing leaks and non-value added discounts. Discover how to determine your true pocket price in the this 1-minute video.
3. Determine Product Value:
Your organization deserves to be paid for the value it creates. But do you know which products create the most value for your company?
Most businesses focus on getting the price they set for each product, but are often disappointed when customers won’t agree to it. More important than “getting the price” is balancing what the right price is.
Some products won’t create a lot of value for the brand—perhaps they are not differentiated enough when compared to the competition. Those products will fetch a lower margin. Other products may create a lot of value; they may be highly differentiated or solve a problem your competitors can’t. Higher margins can be sustained, bringing in higher revenues.
Once you determine and utilize this information, your pricing strategy can become far more sophisticated.
4. Utilize Technology:
If you are using an outdated ERP system or BI tool, you may not be seeing the entire pricing picture. While you can track list price and invoice price, what about analyzing pricing and mix analysis? Without actionable information from your tools, how will you identify outliers, see pricing variations among peer groups or be immediately alerted to pricing variances?
While there is power in your data, you must utilize the proper pricing application to discover that power. To truly visualize your pricing data in the most efficient manner, you need a pricing application that can stop price leaks before they become dangerous to your bottom line, predict customer churn and identify the root causes of profitability issues.
The Bottom Line
By establishing pricing ownership, seeking discount visibility, determining product value and utilizing technology, you can gain the pricing data visualization you truly need. In fact, one manufacturer worked with INSIGHT2PROFIT to gain better visualization and was able to realize an additional $2.3 million in revenue over 16 months. Learn more in our case study.
by tradesmeninsights | Dec 15, 2015 | Uncategorized
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
We’re all being pulled in too many directions at our jobs, and just when you think you’ve got your life under control, something else pops up to distract you.
A recent study conducted by eMarketer identified the major impediments of distracting us at work.
Some of these are pretty obvious, but wasteful meetings and excessive emails top the list. The study shows that the average daily time folks take to check their emails at work is 3.2 hours a day! It’s no wonder people can’t get any work done.
What’s your biggest challenge? I’m assuming it’s on this list.
by tradesmeninsights | Nov 23, 2015 | Events/Trade Shows, Uncategorized
As the Thanksgiving weekend approaches, we’d like to say thanks to the many friends and clients we’ve had the good fortune to come in contact with over the years. We’re all running in several different directions all the time, and this time of year we need to slow down a bit to appreciate the things around us.
So this weekend, don’t take your briefcase home, and your emails will still be there Monday morning when you get back in the office. Recharge your batteries this weekend. Play with your kids or grandkids, visit an old friend or watch some football. We take a lot of things for granted sometimes – our Families and Friends.
Enjoy the weekend. We can get back to the rat race next week.
