Educational Services

Improving the Bottom Line

Improving the Bottom Line is the session that most groups select as a first-time program. It will demonstrate how to improve your financial results—not just a little, but a lot.  The program will walk you through every financial aspect of your business, including sales, gross margin, expenses, inventory and accounts receivable.  In each area you will be given specific targets and a road map for reaching those targets.

Getting Serious About Profit

This is an advanced program ideally suited for groups wanting to start the process of increasing profit. The session emphasizes two essential concepts:  “Planning Profits First” and “Setting Profit Priorities.” 

Setting profit first means the firm should start the year with a goal for profit, not just a goal for sales. Setting profit priorities means the firm must work on the things that actually improvs profit.

Pricing for Profit

Virtually every distributor underprices a significant portion of its product line. The issues behind this are twofold. First, every firm is worried about competition, and rightly so. Second, pricing almost always starts with cost rather than value.

The session will help firms identify where there are opportunities to enhance gross margin via pricing while still being price competitive. It will also help the firm develop an overall pricing model for success.

Channel Profitability: Growing the Pie or Just Splitting It?

Both suppliers and distributors have a need to improve profitability. However, distributors and suppliers improve profitability in very different ways. As a result, there is often indifference or even hostility towards the performance of channel partners. The emphasis is on splitting a stagnant pie.

This session will help suppliers and distributors develop joint profitability-improvement programs. The focus will be on how firms can enhance their own profitability without negatively impacting their channel partners. It is an effort to make the channel profit pie larger.

Paying For Performance or Just Paying?

Payroll is by far the largest expense factor for every distribution business. This session will identify how firms can make sure they have payroll under control. It will look at the issues from two perspectives. First, how do compensation levels stack up for individual firms? Second, how does the firm’s operational control of payroll compare to industry standards?