"customer profitability analysis" (parte II)

 Parte I.

"Unlike measures that gloss over differences among customers or omit cost-to-serve elements, pocket margin gives a company a clear view of how much revenue each transaction generates, how much it costs the company to generate that revenue, and — crucially — when and why those costs are incurred. And because pocket margin is measured for every transaction, metrics based on pocket margin can provide insight into costs and revenues at any desired level of detail, from individual clients all the way up to broad marketplace segments."

Gosto destes títulos e das mensagens que ilustram: What your customers won’t tell you (but pocket margin can):

• You're losing money on me
• “You’re spending too much to serve me”
•  “I’m in the wrong segment”
• “You should be charging me more for …”
• “Sell me _____ now, and I’ll keep coming back for more”

Trechos retirados de "How profitable are your customers … really?"

"customer profitability analysis"

Interessante e talvez sintomático, talvez não seja obra do acaso, mas fruto das circunstâncias que vivemos com a pandemia, com o crescimento acelerado do online (recordar esta epifania), nos últimos tempos tenho encontrado vários artigos que ilustram a importância de pensar nos clientes-alvo, a importância de perceber a curva de Stobachoff e o seu significado:

"No company can afford a flawed understanding of customer profitability, least of all in a recession when the margin for error (as well as profit) is whisper-thin. The flip side is that improvements in this area can be a very effective way of bolstering the bottom line — and companies can often make those improvements with only a modest initial investment. 

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A customer profitability analysis, done right, tells you not just which customers are profitable, but why certain customers are more or less profitable than others. At a strategic level, this information can help guide decisions on everything from growth initiatives to marketplace segmentation. And, tactically, the information can suggest a variety of ways to improve profitability, such as lowering the cost to serve, improving the sales force’s bargaining position, and developing more effective prices and promotions.

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However, many companies that believe they understand customer profitability are actually working with the wrong information. Most use aggregate measures of profitability, typically gross margin, that fail to account for costs that are difficult to measure or that can’t be attributed to individual transactions (such as marketing expenses or distribution costs).

Even when these costs are considered, they’re often computed at an aggregate level using metrics that ignore the nuances of serving particular customers, segments or other populations of interest.

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Pocket margin refers to the amount left in a company’s “pocket” after all of the costs related to a transaction, as well as the cost of goods sold, are subtracted from the list price. These costs can range from the obvious, such as off-invoice discounts and promotions, to the easily overlooked, such as costs associated with freight, warehousing and other activities that may be generally classified as “overhead.” The costs incurred at each point in a transaction are often graphically represented in a “price waterfall,” a bar chart that depicts the impact of each successive cost-to-serve element on the list price."

Trechos retirados de "How profitable are your customers … really?"

Qual é a distribuição?

Uma forma interessante de analisar um setor de actividade e a sua cadeia de fornecimento (ecossistema):

Quem é que emergiu e teve uma década seguinte de sonho?

E na cadeia de fornecimento em que a sua empresa participa, qual é a distribuição?

Imagem retirada de "If You're in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth" 

Os consumidores, mudam e a oferta?

Ainda ontem em "Mongo e o café" referimos a importância crescente do "single serve food".
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Nem de propósito, hoje encontrei "The Customers Who Are Happy to Pay More for Less":

"Size is perhaps the most neglected marketing tool.
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It seems that marketing managers seldom question the product sizes they’ve inherited.
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When marketers do change product sizes, it’s nearly always in one direction: up. This makes financial sense in industries with high fixed costs and low variable costs: larger sizes enable the company to charge higher prices that, even if they are just slightly larger, absorb a higher portion of fixed costs, while reducing packaging cost per volume and attracting value-minded consumers.
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To begin with, reducing product size for a given (or less than proportionally reduced) price can is a great cost-cutting strategy when most of the costs are variable rather than fixed, when the production and transaction costs of selling more units are low, and when the cost of packaging increases with product size.
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The bottom line is that many marketers are ignoring a powerful and simple tool for improving margins. By thinking strategically about size as well price, and by balancing the effects of the two levers, they will find many ways to make more by selling less."

O artigo lista 5 situações em que os consumidores podem preferir pagar um custo unitário superior para aceder a doses mais pequenas.

Alternativas para subir as margens

Fonte.

E outros sectores, por cá, não podem fazer o mesmo?

Ideia interessante "Starbucks red cups runneth over with holiday cheer (and wide profit margins)":

"He says department stores can promote huge holiday inventories, but coffee shops just have coffee. “What they need to do is come up with special items to break the habit consumers have of getting the same thing in the same way every single day.”
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Even if it’s just putting plain coffee in a pretty red cup."

Por exemplo, por que é que uma padaria não pode fazer o mesmo? Por que é que não se podem criar produtos sazonais, como o bolo-rei, apostando na escassez, numa tradição, num ciclo natural, para obter margens mais interessantes?
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E outros sectores, não podem fazer o mesmo?

Margins feed on ideas

Um texto para reflectir sobre o papel das ideias como criador e impulsionador da margem:

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"Products make the leap from pedestrian to premium when their creators think of them as ideas.
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Margins feed on ideas.
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our concept of luxury has evolved. Luxury has become more about personal pleasure and self-expression and less about status.
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Luxury goods are no longer a sign of status; they're the mark of connoisseurship.
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But we haven't completely left behind the status era, because connoisseurship only works when you are recognized as a connoisseur. What fun would it be to wear the world's nicest watch or jeans, and have no one recognize it? A connoisseur lives to be recognized by fellow aficionados. Kindred spirits can only recognize each other, though, if the product allows some "signal" that insiders can notice, such as the subtle back-pockets of ultra-premium jeans that can only be decoded by other connoisseurs. (Moi ici: Trabalhar para 'tribos' no sentido que Seth Godin lhes deu? Explosão de nichos ou a mongolização do planeta que, afinal de contas, não é mesmo plano. É o triunfo da cauda longa?)
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When does an outrageous price for a product become acceptable and even desirable? When the item transforms us from consumers to connoisseurs."
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Trechos retirados de "The Inevitability Of $300 Socks"