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From Economic Insight to Growth Strategy: What CEOs Should Do Now
At our most recent CEO Growth Talks, I spoke with Taylor St. Germaine, Senior Economist at ITR Economics. The timing couldn’t have been better — the latest GDP numbers had just been released, and Taylor broke down what they mean for CEOs planning growth.
As always, ITR brought a clear and fact-based perspective. The economy is growing. Consumer spending is strong. And while some industries are facing headwinds, opportunities abound for leaders who are ready to act.
But the real question for CEOs isn’t just what the economy looks like. It’s: how do you prepare your business to grow in this environment — and the one coming next?
Pricing Optimization: How Best To Do It?
Thu, Aug 20, 2015 — In a business environment characterized by recovery from a severe recession, seven years of tepid growth, high unemployment and underemployment, and the explosion of ecommerce (with the lowest price always just a click away), it’s no surprise that optimizing pricing to maximize revenues and/or profits is a critical issue for many businesses. But how does a business know when it can safely raise prices without losing market share? Is market share the right goal, or should it be bottom-line profit? Either way, what pricing optimization information do you need to achieve the chosen goal? If you are asking these questions, you are not alone. Only 15% of all businesses do any kind of systematic pricing study.
Why You Should Spend More Time Evaluating Your Pricing
Thu, Aug 13, 2015 — In the end, there are three avenues to increasing your profit margins: cost, sales volume and price. In our experience, companies tend to focus on the first two, costs and sales, at the expense of the third, price. There are good reasons for this: any company that is competitive over the long term is very good at managing costs, continually measuring and reducing costs over time, and they have invested in elaborate processes and technologies just to stay in the game. Similarly, companies know their sales histories and are comfortable forecasting sales revenue, with a fair degree of precision, with mathematical models that have withstood the test of time.