Fugir do vender, vender, vender

Uma lição que muita gente ainda não aprendeu: Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity.
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"Almost all entrepreneurs have the sales mentality when they first go into business. They want to see sales go up every month, every day, every hour. I myself didn't care about anything except our weekly sales figures. My investors were the same way, and many of them were accountants. They never asked me about profits. All they wanted to know about were sales. That's the sales mentality. It's the idea that you should focus all your attention on making sales, and it's very dangerous, especially when you're operating out of your basement on a shoestring. (Moi ici: Também se traduz em Qimondas que importavam e custavam mais do que exportavam, com valor acrescentado negativo)
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Why? Because sales do not equal cash, and cash is what you need to survive. You run out of cash, you go out of business. End of story. It all goes back to the fundamental reality that you are working with limited capital. (Moi ici: Isto é muito importante, nos últimos 40 anos o preço do dinheiro veio sempre a cair. E a partir de agora vai ser sempre a subir. Aquilo que se podia fazer e investir com dinheiro a taxa de juro zero não é o mesmo que se pode fazer com dinheiro caro, ponto) If your gross profit is not enough to cover your expenses, you have to dip into your capital to make up the difference. You dip too much, and pretty soon you run out. Out of that reality comes the two most important rules for every new business. Number one, protect your capital. Spend it only on things you are certain will generate positive cash flow in the short term. Number two, maintain the highest monthly gross-profit margin you are capable of achieving. Do not go after any low-margin sales.
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You probably think these rules sound simple enough, but it takes discipline to follow them. It's very easy to go off on tangents, mainly because of the sales mentality."
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"The sales mentality gets in the way by substituting a short-term goal, making a sales target, for the long-term one: determining viability. (Moi ici: Então nós, latinos, somos bons nisto da ditadura do curto-prazo. Ás vezes penso que as religiões criaram o conceito de Diabo para combater a ditadura do curto-prazo, para impelirem à poupança, à temperança, ao longo-prazo) So what if you have a series of bad months? Those results could be telling you something-that the business isn't viable, or that you're not keep rising and you can collect before you pay. Trouble is, you also have more payables than you can handle.
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The sales mentality gets in the way by substituting a short-term goal, making a sales target, for the long-term one: determining viability. So what if you have a series of bad months? Those results could be telling you something-that the business isn't viable, or that you're not capable of selling at a high enough gross margin to achieve your goal. If so, you should pay attention.
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The usual alternative is to delude yourself with a series of high volume, low-margin months. It's easy. You just drop your price below your competitors', and you can make all the sales you want. You'll think you're doing fine. (Moi ici: Faz-me lembrar a academia que só conhece a alavanca do preço) You won't run out of cash as long as your sales keep rising and you can collect before you pay. Trouble is, you also have more payables than you can handle. You're bankrupt, and you don't know it. All of a sudden, you hit a couple of bad months, your cash disappears, and you lose everything. It happens all the time. The way to avoid that fate is to follow the rules and watch the numbers. If you watch closely enough, a picture begins to emerge. You can actually see what's going on. You can feel it. The picture gets clearer, and the feeling gets stronger, until you realize that you're going to make it-or that it's time to try something else."
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Trechos retirados de "The Knack - How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up" de Norm Brodsky e Bo Burlingham.