WHAT SHOULD YOU SELL? CREATING PROFITABILITY WITH PRODUCT FOCUS - Celia Powell

Celia Powell - "By the Numbers"

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Introduction:
Hello, my business money making friends! So glad that you decided to join us today on my show By the Numbers.  I’m Celia Powell the host and YOUR CPA/CFO for this fine financial hour, You see it’s Money Monday here at IBGR Network, where we talk and talk and talk some more, about all things numbers related we begin programming in the afternoon and go well into -the evening! When you want to learn anything fiscal, financial, accounting, business, come at check US out at IBGR.network.  We are “The” what is happening for all resources needed to start, grow, and exit your business.

What a weekend for the U.S.A. and for me personally, very exciting times that we are witnessing taking place in my country here in America, there were celebrations across not only in our country but the world and even my house this past weekend, I celebrated my birthday Saturday, in the midst of all the other celebratory activities going, so I had lots of folks joining me to celebrate my special day! Congratulations to President Elect Biden and Vice President Elect Harris a very class act in my humble opinion. 

The topic today is not just about what you sell, your products and services, but how and who you sell them to. The goal for most for profit businesses is to create profit and to maximize it.  Knowing the right product mix and aligning it with the right customers/clients is the key to creating a profitable bottom line. Let’s talk today about how we go about determining the right products/services and how we connect to the customers/clients that want or need them and pay for them at the profit margin that we set as financial performance goals. 

Show Objectives:

• Help the business owner create product/service focus
• How to create margins to satisfy business goals
• Know how to align with customers ready to buy
• How to use business resources to grow the bottom line. 

Key Issues

1. Limitations and boundaries where to draw the line around our products/services
2. We are doing too much; we are over offering and under selling. (not enough in marketing)
3. It “feels” like things are going well with the products and services vs. facts.
4. Where to get the information necessary to really know how we are doing?

What You Need to Do

1. Working in tandem with your accountant. The accountant functions are a support system that provides the financial information about your business and having access to the reports and systems that generate the information, timely and accurately is a must to create product/service focus.
2. Get information about your products, depending on the systems you use, prepare reports that give details by product/service. Variables that need to be analyzed are costs to acquire or produce product/services.  Products, time or labor costs, pricing, quantities, and marketing are major considerations.  
3. Make solid business decisions based the facts that you know and not what you feel.  Feelings often will not lead us to making profitable decisions, but information will.  Getting the facts about our products/services and making good decisions will make our feelings good when we generate the products/services that produce profits and meet our margins.
4. Make determinations about which products and services are the most profitable and abandon the ones that are not. We are in the business to make money and not to get emotionally tied up with unnecessary non-profitable products and services (profit is our friend).
5. Gaining the insights from the external environment to determine who is your ideal client/customer is and determining the correct mix of marketing channels to promote to them? Where do we find them to present our products/services to them to purchase and at the profit margins we need to make. It is not simply good to have people buy our products/services because we need to have them at the market price that we set.

Shows
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Written by Celia Powell, CPA
“By the Numbers with Celia”

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