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Don Welker's Financial Minute

May 26, 2016, 6:26 PM

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Much more than “just” a “numbers person,” a CFO is a business person with many skills – including the ability to analyze your numbers and help you make informed decisions based on this data. If your business is growing, you don’t have to wait until you need a full-time CFO to start reaping the benefits of a CFO’s expertise. You can bring in a part-time CFO like me right now!

Even working on just a part-time basis, there’s a lot that a CFO can do that will have a significant impact on your business’ success, including:

1. Develop a strategic plan to achieve your goals – What are your goals for the next 12 months? Does your management team have a workable plan to make them happen, or is everyone just showing up and hoping for the best?

2. Understand if you’re adding value to your company – Are your financial ratios improving? If so, you may be able to get better interest rates, larger credit limits on your trade payables, and more money when you sell the company.

3. Analyze and strengthen your customer base – As I discussed in a previous article , some customers bring a lot more to your bottom line than others. Take a close look at your margins by customer, especially your largest volume customers. Take steps to up-sell higher-margin products to your lower-margin customers. Reduce customer-caused fire drills overall. And consider firing your least profitable customers.

4. Ensure you’re getting the best prices – Are you getting the best prices from all of your vendors? When was the last time you got competitive quotes on your top 10 spending line items aside from labor? And speaking of labor, do you participate in industry wage studies, such as those done by your trade association? Are you paying a competitive wage? Are you paying too much for your brother-in-law, or about to lose a great employee because you’re paying less than the going rate?

5. Identify and eliminate wasteful spending – This often involves looking at the “miscellaneous” expense category, which is usually either money that should not have been spent, or things that only benefit the executives. Sometimes it’s the owner’s “slush fund” – but the owner has no idea where the money is going.

The bottom Line is, an experienced CFO can make a significant difference for your bottom Line.



May 16, 2016, 7:27 PM

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As an experienced CFO, I know that some customers bring a lot more to your bottom line than others – and your biggest customers are often the least profitable. Which is why one of the things I do for my clients is to take a hard look at their customer base, analyze it and recommend ways to make it stronger. Here’s how:


1. Analyze margins by customer. How labor intensive is it to fill this customer’s orders? How long does this customer typically take to pay? What is the average mark-up per order? 

Say you’re in the fuel industry, and your truck can carry 8,000 gallons of fuel. Each delivery to the customer site incurs time and travel expenses. Your delivery cost per gallon will be much lower for the gas station that typically takes the full 8,000 gallons of fuel with each delivery than for the trucking company in the same neighborhood that takes only 2,000 gallons of fuel with each delivery. If the gas station usually pays their bill within seven days while the trucking company takes longer to pay, your margins will go down that much more.



2. Up-sell customers with higher-margin products. For customers that want to buy a particular product as cheaply as possible, see if you can also add your higher-margin products to their orders, too. 



3. Consider firing your largest volume customer. Quite often your largest volume customer can be the one with the lowest margins. They can be the most labor-intensive to serve and the slowest to pay you. Plus, they often create the most stress in your office, because they have the most “fire drills.” Take a hard look at whether or not this customer’s business is worth it. Maybe it is. But maybe it’s not.



4. Reduce customer-caused fire drills. Before you fire a customer, though, look at ways that you can be more successful with them. 

For example, what if your major customer often calls demanding that you drop everything to send a truck out because they just noticed they can’t wait for their regularly-scheduled fuel delivery? Could you put an electronic monitor on their tank so that you can proactively serve their needs? Could you have the sales person win over the person who’s supposed to check the tanks? Could your CFO explain to their management that in exchange for great pricing, they need to reduce these “emergencies”?


Need help strengthening your customer base? Give me a call! I’m here for you.



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