Everything I Love is Killing Me!

Credit: Bill Gillespie

I love movie lines and song lyrics. If I’m honest, I envy the people that write that stuff. I’m sure it’s hard work but it has to be cool. So much of what we hear in song and film becomes part of our cultural vernacular. I like that.

“Everything I love is killing me, Cigarettes, Jack Daniels and Caffeine.” I toss that one at Her Ladyship when things are tense around the house. I’ll confess to doing my best Alan Jackson imitation when I sing those lines. Sometimes it works! Sometimes not so much but I digress.

I use the line here in a business context. Are you married to work that is bad for your company? Do you, unwittingly, accept business that does more harm than good? Are you selling your way into failure?

Years ago I took a turnaround assignment from an industry friend. We ran into each other at lunch. I was between projects and he asked about us working together. We talked a few times and cobbled together an agreement.

His situation was bleak. Sales had eroded over several years. They were missing that valuable customer that could call and turn their machines on for weeks. Their mix of work was bottom fishing type stuff. Anything that could turn on a machine was accepted at almost any price.

About a week into the assignment my friend came to my office with good news. A motor company had awarded us a large marine catalog. If memory serves it was an $85,000 sale. It was a week of presswork.

I watched it go through the plant. I did casual math in my head. I subtracted the paper and cartons from our invoice. This $85,000 sale was only $35,000 in contribution. We were going to spend every penny of that amount on labor, commissions and delivery. The big job was dilutive, not accretive. Our P&L showed the same thing.

More money left the building than came into the building. This catalog (we printed it multiple times each year) was harming our business. We were better off without this work.

That was a hard conversation with the boss. He asked, “how can we say no to this work when we need volume so bad? How can we replace this revenue?”

My response sold him. “The customer is paying you $85,000 for his catalog. You’re spending more than $95,000 in cash to produce it. If that’s ok, I can get you all the work you want. We’ll be slammed.”

Here’s the sales lesson. I called the client. I explained that we could no longer do her marine motor catalog. It was harmful to our company.

Her response? I wonder if you might be a better fit for some of our other divisions? We do blowers, generators, water pumps and lawn mowers. Those page counts are smaller and so are the runs. I wonder if they might be a better fit. Somehow, we didn’t know those divisions existed.

They fit us like a glove. They fit our schedule better and allowed us a proper margin. Also, because there were more products, there were more orders. It seemed we had something to print each month.

There’s more. Getting deeper into the company (more products and more brand managers) introduced us to a department that floor planned retail partners. We wound up printing a monthly newsletter for these guys. We did floor plan audit reports which were critical to their sales staff. We became visible and valuable all through the client company.

We traded a twice a year catalog that was killing us for a mix of work that was a perfect, profitable fit.

I say it often. You owe yourself and your company a client profile and business plan. You need to consistently explore pockets of business that might exist in any company you sell to. Get to know where the work is and craft a plan for earning it. You’ll sell more stuff and you’ll make more money.