Pricing man (parte I)

Nos próximos dias vou registar aqui alguns trechos retirados de "Confessions of the Pricing Man: How Price Affects Everything" de Hermann Simon.

"The pursuit of profit is both a driver of excellent pricing and an outcome of it; there is no way to separate the two topics. Profit is ultimately the only valid metric for guiding your company. The rationale is simple: profit is the only metric which takes both the revenue side and the cost side of a business into account. A company which wants to maximize its sales neglects the cost side. A company which wants to maximize its market share can distort its business in many ways. After all, the easiest way to maximize market share is to set one’s price at zero.
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defending “profit” is not tantamount to defending greed and excess. It is a defense of corporate survival and growth. Let’s remember the comment by Peter Drucker, one of the most respected and widely followed management experts of our time: “Profit is a condition of survival. It is the cost of the future, the cost of staying in business.” [Moi ici: Lucro como o custo do futuro foi das primeiras frases de Peter Drucker que sublinhei. Julgo que ele citava textos de Schumpeter de 1909] Or as the esteemed German economist Erich Gutenberg once remarked, “no business has ever died from turning a profit.”
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Profit transcends other corporate goals because it ensures a company’s survival. Businesses cannot afford to treat profit as a “nice to have” or a “pleasant surprise” at the end of the year. Put another way: if the company you work for makes no profit - or takes actions which puts profits in grave danger - your own job is at risk. It is only a matter of time before the cuts come.
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Because profit is an indispensable condition of survival, it follows that excellent pricing is a means of survival. Companies need to take prices into their calculations with the same intensity and rigor they apply to costs."