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3 Creative Ways C-Level Leaders Can Increase Profitability

October 10th, 2022 (Updated 03/09/2023) | 9 min. read

By Patrick Moorhead

Complicated and unfavorable economic times sometimes call for new and courageous ways of thinking, especially for C-level business leaders looking to discover new pathways to profit. If you are at the C-Suite level of a large-scale enterprise business organization, you do not need me to tell you the past few years have been shaped by a global pandemic, doubling-down into the fractures of increased political and economic uncertainties and followed up by a dizzying combination of fluctuating commodity prices, rampant inflation, supply chain disruptions, labor shortages and falls in corporate profits. With volatility at all-time highs, C-level leadership globally face immense pressure to scrutinize what they have been doing, eeking out the successes of what has worked well previously and put their creative thinking caps on to unearth new and exciting ways to increase profitability in the face of uncertainty. If you believe your business is going to get there simply by cutting costs, it might be time to reconsider. In that spirit, I would like to take you on a journey through the top 3 creative ways that C-Level business leaders can increase profitability for their organization in an ambiguous era. 

For a little over a decade at Pricefx through good economic times and bad, we have been working alongside hundreds of large-scale enterprise business organizations just like yours assisting them to realize their unique pricing niches with the use of innovative cloud-native pricing software technology. 

As such, Pricefx is perfectly positioned to assess the viability of what works (and what does not) in addressing corporate pricing pressure points through periods of far-less-than-ideal economic conditions. So, let’s dive straight into a quick introduction of the top 3 creative ways that you as a C-suite businesses leader can use to potentially drive your organization to increase profit, before we head into more in-depth explanations of the 3 methods. 

The 3 Creative Methods to Increase Profitability for C-Suite Business Leaders

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Let’s make something quite clear from the outset, I’m not going to bore you here with the usual ways for increasing profit like reducing costs, increasing turnover, increasing productivity, and increasing efficiency.  

While those are all critically important, highly valued, and valid methods for increasing the profit for your business, you could read those in any one of a hundred or more articles you will find on any Google or Bing search.  

I would like to think if you have found your way to this article, it is because you and your business are already thinking that the time to jump outside the usual profit paradigm has well and truly arrived. Nor do the changes need to be massive, sometimes the smallest shifts can yield surprisingly big results. 

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Learn More Here How a Small Percentage Can Make a Pricing Difference & Unlock Profit 

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With unpredictability becoming the predictable new normal, C-level business leaders have accumulated the equivalent of a lifetime of experience in coping with the extraordinary challenges that COVID-19, the following regional conflicts, associated supply chain breakdowns and 50-year high inflation levels threw at them. Consequently, C-level leadership teams globally are currently well-practiced in coping with the flak splatter. 

But that does not mean you should rest on your laurels, nor does it mean veering away from what you have always traditionally done well like providing exceptional customer service and supplying excellent quality products to your clients at fair and competitive prices.  

It’s not the intention of this article to present you with a simplified and exhaustive list of methodologies to present as a total fix.  

However, if you are looking for new ways for your organization to creatively find profits that that you never knew you had, or locate alternate revenue streams in non-traditional ways, consider the following; 

  1. Create an Incredible Team 
  2. Reframe What Success Means for Your Organization 
  3. Creatively Extend & Repurpose Your Pricing Technology 

1. Create an Incredible Team

Increasing your profits is certainly about the service or product you are offering, no doubt. However, it also revolves around your success in building a team that works and is aligned in your company vision for success and how you plan to get there.  

Do you have a team on your side that supports you 100%? Is it a team that works for your business that not only knows the company inside and out, but is willing to enthusiastically rave on about your organization to whoever is listening and deliver new customers? 

To increase profitability for your business, developing an internal culture of raving fans can be just as crucial for your success as discovering your target audience. 

 

Assembling a team of people who are excited to work for your brand and spread your message without the need for prompts will make it immeasurably easier to be successful. 

 

That enthusiasm usually filters through to your customers too, and they can also become important advocates for your company brand.

Through social media and word-of-mouth, loyal clients can encourage other organizations to do the same which in turn, can generate long-term income over a sustained period to allow your company to create profit and grow. 

If you have the right people in the role best suited to their skill set, working with the latest tools and technology in a strategic and targeted way, then you have discovered your best opportunity to optimize your products for quality and performance. 

Once your people and product have become aligned, you have prepared the best possible foundation for increased profit to grow out of that calibration in a very natural and organic way.  

2. Reframe What Success Means for Your Organization

C-level executives are the company’s role models when it comes to setting your organization’s vision (e.g., where do you want your business to be in five or ten years?).  

CEOs in particular do this by considering their mandate and expectations (from the Board, your investors, your employees, and other stakeholders), the relative strengths and goals of the organization, transparent awareness of what facilitates the business to generate value, opportunities and identifying trends in the marketplace, and their own aspirations and values.  

Usually, the most imaginative CEOs and other C-suite executives go one step beyond and reimagine the organization’s reference point for success.

For example, rather than your manufacturing or chemical company endeavoring to be number one in your respective industry sector, C-level leaders can agree on broadening the company’s objective to be in the top 25% among all industrials.  

This type of reimagining of success acknowledges that your company is a real player in the competition for capital, talent, and influence on a bigger stage rather than in your industry sector alone.  

Rethinking success can shape-shift key performance measures such as cash flow, organizational health, and of course, margin and profit to be perceived in a different light.  

The reframing can cut through any existing biases and internal dynamics in your business that can lead to complacency and suddenly sprout internal company optimism and belief that your profit targets are achievable. 

3. Creatively Extend & Repurpose Your Pricing Technology 

Of course, leveraging data analysis & automated technology to enhance the outcome of your chosen pricing strategy is a given nowadays. Applying a pricing strategy that can keep pace with the current rate of inflation and rising fuel prices, tackle supply chain disruption head on and plug your profit margin gaps with real-time fixes is critical, and data-informed pricing software is the key to achieving that.  

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However, there may be ways to use your existing pricing software technology in ways you may not have considered before. 

Repurposing a Sales Compensation Tool to Find New Profit Points  

For example, consider the Pricefx Sales Compensation tool for a moment. 

For many businesses, their salespeople are the main drivers of bringing in new deals, making money and increasing profitability. Naturally, you want to make sure that they are well compensated, so making the sales compensation plan effective and fair ensures that your sales team continues to be motivated to bring in deals that grow your business. 

Essentially, the Pricefx Sales Compensation function is a transparent method for your salespeople to gauge how much money they will make. 

But what’s more, the tool can ALSO be used as an indicator of how your organization will grow its revenue and pathways to profit by ensuring:  

  • That salespeople sell within the given guidelines  
  • That they sell larger deals 
  • Or sell more deals depending on your business strategies

So, you can effectively you repurpose a tool originally designed to bring clarity to salespeople and account managers on how the team are performing on their sales targets, into a method of projecting forecasts of the likelihood of achieving your quarterly or annual growth targets. 

With that kind of early notification, (e.g., that maybe your organization is performing sluggishly overall against individual sales targets), then you could go ahead and push your products more aggressively where and when required to discover profit possibilities you never previously knew you had. 

Drive An Increase in Profit with Pricing Software 

Now you know 3 creative ways C-suite business leaders like yourself can consider to increase profitability in your respective organizations. 

In the current volatile environment where uncertainty itself appears to be the only constant, disruptions to the way your organization operates will inevitably rear their ugly heads. Being able to protect your company and its potential for profit by identifying fresh profit points with the latest in pricing software like that offered by Pricefx can help your organization grow and prosper. 

If your business is ready to look at exploring your pricing software options, this article below can help get you started; 

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However, if you would like to continue your learning journey and gather more practical tips on the ways that pricing software can assist your organization increase your margins, check out this handy article – 

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Happy Pricing! 

Patrick Moorhead

Chief Marketing Officer , Pricefx

Patrick Moorhead is currently Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Pricefx, leading global brand marketing and demand generation for the pricing industry's most innovative SaaS solution provider. Before Pricefx, Patrick harnessed 25 years of experience in digital brand strategy and demand generation, focused on B2B and B2C SaaS solutions. On the weekends, you will find Patrick serving as a diligent butler to his two young sons, enjoying Prague’s many wonders, and struggling mightily with the Czech language.