Being Profitable, Even with Higher Costs Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales

Being profitable is important, even with higher costs.



Generally small and medium-sized businesses want to hang onto their staff. We want to keep our people. We recognize that we’ve got responsibilities to people other than ourselves. What I’ve been seeing though in the news lately, is that a lot of larger companies see this stuff coming and they’re like, okay, we’re cutting costs. We’re laying off 10% of our workforce, that sort of thing. 



So it’s different, depending on the size of your business and depending on your mindset, what you are willing to do and how much pain you’re willing to take when it comes to absorbing some of these extra costs.







David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co-host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing the idea of being profitable even with higher costs. Welcome back, Jay.







Jay: Thank you so much, David. What an important topic. So many businesses are experiencing this right now. Their costs have gone up. Inflation is affecting everybody right now. So I love that you're taking some time to talk about this topic.





David: Yeah. I saw an article recently where they were discussing the fact that in the promotional products industry, in particular, what a lot of businesses are noticing is that even when their sales are even or potentially higher than they were last year, they're not as profitable because their costs have increased. So keeping at the same sales volume is not going to cut it anymore.



Jay: Yeah. And, we all hope that this is a temporary problem, but in the meantime, people have got to learn how to pivot. And I think that is one of the hardest things for businesses to do, especially quickly. The quick pivot. Like, okay, what are we going to do in the short term while our costs have gone up?



David: Yeah, and I think that word, "pivot," has probably gotten more use in the past 18 months to two years than it probably got in all of human history before that. Because everybody realized we have to do things differently. And what are we going to do and how are we going to do it? And when it comes to increased costs, the options are relatively limited.



I mean, basically, you either have to be able to increase your overall sales and make up for it with the profit that you're already getting, or a reduced profit. Or you've got to be able to reduce your cost so that you can get that spread back. You've got a cost to do things. And you've got a cost associated with what you're going to sell it for.



And the gap is where all the money is made. Without the gap, we're out of business. And so keeping your sales at a certain level is not going to do it if your costs are approaching that same level.



So a lot of it is really about identifying the primary costs in my business. And unfortunately, it's really a matter of also being rather relentless about the idea of cutting back on the things that are not currently working.



And that can be really difficult because one of the biggest expenses in a business is very often personnel. And so what that means is looking at the people that you're working with and saying, okay, who's pulling their weight? Who is more than pulling their weight? And those who aren't, what can we do to help them to pull their weight or more than pull their weight so that we can continue to grow to be able to simply offset the costs that have increased so much?



Jay: Yeah. I think the knee-jerk response from most businesses is let's find a way to increase sales. But you know, they have to understand that depending upon their profit margin, if you increase your sales by $10, that may be $1 to the bottom line.



But if you save a dollar in costs, that's a dollar to your bottom line. If you save $10 in cost, that's $10 to your bottom line.