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Num país com uma moeda forte como o marco, precisamos que cada vez mais empresas aprendam o método de trabalho das "mittelstand" para triunfar no mundo do valor e deixar de viver com o credo na boca, que é como se vive no mundo do preço:
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"At few moments since the end of World War II has downward pressure on prices been so great. Some of it stems from cyclical factors—such as sluggish economic growth in the Western economies and Japan—that have reined in consumer spending. There are newer sources as well: the vastly increased purchasing power of retailers, such as Wal-Mart, which can therefore pressure suppliers; the Internet, which adds to the transparency of markets by making it easier to compare prices; and the role of China and other burgeoning industrial powers whose low labor costs have driven down prices for manufactured goods. The one-two punch of cyclical and newer factors has eroded corporate pricing power and forced frustrated managers to look in every direction for ways to hold the line.
In such an environment, managers might think it mad to talk about raising prices. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. We are not talking about raising prices across the board; quite often, the most effective path is to get prices right for one customer, one transaction at a time, and to capture more of the price that you already, in theory, charge. (Moi ici: Mais uma vez a noção de cliente-alvo! Os clientes não são todos iguais, há clientes mais rentáveis que outros, há até clientes que não são rentáveis, mesmo que paguem as suas contas dentro do prazo combinado) In this sense, there is room for price increases or at least price stability even in today's difficult markets.
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Today, it is more critical than ever for managers to focus on transaction pricing; they can no longer rely on the double-digit annual sales growth and rich margins of the 1990s to overshadow pricing shortfalls. Moreover, at many companies, little cost-cutting juice can easily be extracted from operations. Pricing is therefore one of the few untapped levers to boost earnings, and companies that start now will be in a good position to profit fully from the next upturn.
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Advancing one percentage point at a time
Pricing right is the fastest and most effective way for managers to increase profits. Consider the average income statement of an S&P 1500 company: a price rise of 1 percent, if volumes remained stable, would generate an 8 percent increase in operating profits (Exhibit 1)
an impact nearly 50 percent greater than that of a 1 percent fall in variable costs such as materials and direct labor and more than three times greater than the impact of a 1 percent increase in volume.
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Unfortunately, the sword of pricing cuts both ways. (Moi ici: E agora um ponto ainda mais interessante. Como é que um empresário-tipo reage quando vê as vendas a baixarem? Baixa o preço para inverter a tendência) A decrease of 1 percent in average prices has the opposite effect, bringing down operating profits by that same 8 percent if other factors remain steady. Managers may hope that higher volumes will compensate for revenues lost from lower prices and thereby raise profits, but this rarely happens; to continue our examination of typical S&P 1500 economics, volumes would have to rise by 18.7 percent just to offset the profit impact of a 5 percent price cut. Such demand sensitivity to price cuts is extremely rare. A strategy based on cutting prices to increase volumes and, as a result, to raise profits is generally doomed to failure in almost every market and industry."
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Pegando nas contas de uma empresa em concreto é possível demonstrar muito melhor esta conclusão.
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Agora o problema fica realmente interessante com a pergunta que vem a seguir, "a price rise of 1 percent, if volumes remained stable," como se aumenta o preço sem pôr em causa o volume?
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Concentrando a atenção no valor!
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E esse, como escreveu Popper, é um desafio apaixonante que merece a paixão de uma vida, dedicar a vida empresarial à arte e não à cópia repetitiva ad nauseam.
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