The Power of Positive Profit : How You Can Improve Any Bottom Line in Sales, Marketing, and Management with MoneyMath

When businesses struggle they often try to make up for it by cutting costs to increase sales, but volume selling isn’t real success because you can’t do it forever. In this book, Graham Foster shares powerful business lessons on how to sell at the right price and maintain solid margins. This is the ultimate guide to keep your company growing and healthy. THE POWER OF POSITIVE PROFIT 8 Contents 12 Foreword 14 Preface 16 Introduction 22 Chapter 1: Overcoming a Shaky Start: Millennium Novum 24 Corporations Gone Bust 26 Airlines in Agony 30 Automakers’ Anxieties 35 A Widespread Problem 39 Chapter 2: Every Business Needs It: Margin 42 Chapter 3: Issues Affecting Healthy Margins in Sales 54 Chapter 4: The Weapon of Math Instruction 68 Suggestions to Salespeople, Managers, and Marketing Staff 73 Chapter 5: Balancing Your Company’s Selling and Management Efforts 76 The Balanced Sales Effort and Balanced Company Approach 84 Chapter 6: Now for Some Real Bulletproofing 88 Maintaining Control of Your Pricing 96 Price and Management 96 Handling the Buyers from Hell 97 Valuable Relationship Buyers 98 Chapter 7: Why Your Perceived Value Beats Product Quality 102 Chapter 8: How Salespeople Can Sell Higher 114 Setting Tighter Pricing Controls 118 Applications of Charging for Everything 122 Chapter 9: Getting Higher Market Prices 128 Current Supply/Demand Situation 129 Prices and Your Marketing Strategy 129 Getting Higher Prices 134 Chapter 10: Price Wars and Profit 140 Price Wars and Market Types 144 Warfare Philosophies 154 Chapter 11: Price War Recuperation 158 Price Wars in the Low-End Market 160 Price Wars in the Middle Market 162 Recovery and Regrouping after a Price War 163 Chapter 12: Pricing for Profit in the Market 170 Marketplace Applications and a Moral Aspect 176 Market-Based Pricing Systems in Egg-Shaped Markets 177 Chapter 13: For Hard Times Have a Plan B 182 Plan B 184 The Long Term: Plan A 188 Chapter 14: Cash Flow: Indicator of Financial Health 192 The Significance of Cash Flow 193 Statement of Cash Flow 196 Chapter 15: The Social Damage of Profit Failure 204 Radical Executive Compensation Suggestion 212 Chapter 16: The Delight of Positive Profit 214 Microsoft (United States) 218 Johnson & Johnson (United States) 219 General Electric (United States) 222 Southwest Airlines (United States) 222 Nokia (Finland, EU) 223 The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (United Kingdom) 225 Foster’s Brewing (Australia) 226 Fisher & Paykel (New Zealand) 228 My Seven Habits of Highly Effective Companies 229 Chapter 17: Responsibilities Attached to Profit Making 232 Ethics and Morality 234 Perception and Reality of Wealth 235 How Much Profit Should We Be Making? 236 Some Guidelines for Success in Business 238 Appendix A: MoneyMath Figures and Tables 244 Appendix B: Financial Management Questionnaire 286 Appendix C: 101 Price Management Questions 289 Appendix D: Acknowledgments 294 Bibliography and Recommended Reading 300 Index 302 About the Author 307

It's all in the math!

In The Power of Positive Profit, a legendary corporate strategist and bottom-line expert reveals how many companies have gotten into serious trouble by trying to gain market share through price and cost cutting. Using his straightforward and easy-to-follow MoneyMath profit charts, Foster demonstrates why companies need to focus on margin when pricing their products or services. Then, he offers proven advice on balancing your selling and management efforts, bullet-proofing your bottom line, enabling sales reps to sell higher, and surviving and recovering from price wars.

By any measure, profit is a more important number than market share. Whether you're in a small to medium-sized company or a large multi-national corporation, read The Power of Positive Profit and find out how to put raising your bottom line on the top of your to-do list.

PRAISE FOR THE POWER OF POSITIVE PROFIT

"This book is a major contribution to business understanding and conduct; the MoneyMath charts alone are worth thecover price!"
—Walter J. Reinhart, PhD Professor of Finance, Loyola College

"Brilliant and dynamic—nobody knows business numbers like this!"
—Naomi Rhode, Co-Founder and Director Smarthealth Inc., and President, International Federation of Speaking Professionals

"In the Power of Positive Profit, business expert Graham Foster attacks the issue of false business success promoted through volume selling, cost cutting, or both, and offers powerful business lessons and breakthroughs for making an appropriate profit while maintaining or even sharpening your competitive edge."--Jacket