Contain Costs and Put the Savings to Work

By John Lafferty

Simply stated, cost containment is all about managing margins. Gross margin and operating margin are the two key drivers in cost containment. Take a look at this $1 million sales company and note the margins: Just How Important is Cost Containment? There is not a business anywhere that could not put even a 1% improvement…

How to Create a Sales Growth Plan

By John Lafferty

To develop a strategic plan for sales growth, start with the basic sales formula. Total sales is how many customers you have multiplied by the number of times they purchase from you and how much they pay. So for example, 100 customers who average 10 purchases per year with an average value of $1,000 per…

Even More Uses for the “Trailing Twelve Months” (TTM) Tool

By John Lafferty

In our last issue, we showed how TTM could be used to track sales growth throughout the year regardless of seasonal or other variations. You can use the same process to track month-by-month trends in gross margin and operating expenses. If you are concerned about the instability of gross profit, a Gross Margin TTM is the…

The "Trailing Twelve Months" Tool

By John Lafferty

A CEO recently told me his company’s sales fluctuated from month to month. He was concerned because he could never tell if they were making progress in sales growth until the end of the year. This is just the type of situation that calls for the Trailing Twelve Months (TTM) tool. When you look at…