Does this sound familiar?
The revenue figures look fine. The profit does not. Everyone is busy, but you cannot say exactly with what, let alone what it earns. Investments get postponed because there is no room.
Usually the problem is not selling but choosing: which customers, which services and which work may stay, and what has to stop.
Where margin usually leaks away
Work that earns nothing
There are customers and assignments that have run for years and were never repriced. As long as you do not look at it per customer, that stays invisible.
Prices never revised
Rates date from when you were smaller and your costs were lower. Every indexation is postponed because the conversation is awkward.
Busy with the wrong things
Your best people sit in work someone else could do, while the work that does carry margin keeps waiting.
What we then do
We start with the figures you already have. What do you earn per customer, per service, per assignment? In most SME bookkeeping that answer sits scattered, which is exactly why the question never gets asked.
Then the choices: what you stop, what you reprice, what you organise differently. That is the hard part, because customers and people are attached to it. We help you reach those decisions and then carry them out, because a decision that is not executed changes nothing about your margin.
How it works
A first conversation
We look together at where you think it leaks. That conversation is free and you do not need to prepare any figures.
Agreeing what we do
We decide which part we take on and in what order. Time and fee are fixed before we start.
Getting to work
We work the choices out with you and the people who have to live with them, and follow up on whether the effect actually arrives.
What we bring
We have steered our own businesses through hard periods, including a tour operator that lost its revenue from one week to the next when COVID hit. We know the difference between cutting and choosing.
Practical questions
Do we have to open our books?
Not for a first conversation. Only when we start working together do we need figures, and we agree then which ones.
Is this about cost cutting?
Rarely only that. More often it is about which work you still accept and what you charge for it. Cutting without choosing pays off only once.
Can you do this together with our accountant?
Yes. Your accountant knows your figures; we look at what they mean for how you work and what you decide.
Get in touch
Is too little left of your revenue?
Tell us briefly where you think the margin leaks away. You do not need to prepare any figures yet.
Ilona or Wim will contact you personally.
The introductory meeting is free and takes place at your own premises.