What you will learn How to judge the third question, why this area gets pushed back, and how to check whether you are ready for it.
Does it directly affect revenue or margin?
"Directly" is the operative word. Almost every project helps revenue eventually, by some route. What is being asked here is whether the path is short.
| Path | |
|---|---|
| Indirect | meeting-notes automation → time saved → more selling time → maybe revenue? |
| Direct | price optimisation → revenue |
Price is the variable that touches revenue most directly. And in most organisations price rarely changes. Changing it needs justification, justification needs research and analysis, and that takes a long time.
Watch what happens when that cycle shortens:
Fast reaction is itself revenue. If a competitor cut prices and you find out three months later, the churn in that window does not come back.
To adjust price you have to know today's market price. Done by hand:
Most organisations set prices without knowing the market price. Not from ignorance — because checking is expensive.
Revenue is price (P) × quantity (Q). Raise price and quantity falls; lower it and quantity rises. Where profit peaks differs by product and by season.
With a handful of products a person can do it by feel. With hundreds they cannot. So most apply the same margin rate to everything. That is not optimal.
Impact: direct financial results
HyperTeamsgraph TD
A["To do revenue work"] --> B["price data must be organised"]
A --> C["demand and sales history must exist"]
A --> D["authority and process to change prices"]
A --> E["ability to track the outcome"]
B --> F["Most stall here"]
C --> F| Prerequisite | The common reality |
|---|---|
| Price data is organised | several spreadsheets, exception rules only one person knows |
| Sales history exists per product | it does, but in separate systems that are hard to join |
| You can change prices | needs head-office approval, locked by distributor contracts |
| You can track the outcome | no record of price changes, so no before-and-after |
The last row catches people most often. Change a price with no record of when, what, and why, and you cannot prove the effect.
Answer these five. If any answer is "I don't know," solving that first is faster.
Most organisations stall on 3 and 5.
Missing prerequisites do not mean you can do nothing. Make the preparation itself the project.
| If you lack | Do this first |
|---|---|
| Competitor prices | automate price research (start as a cost project) |
| Sales history scattered | automate data collation |
| No price-change history | build the change-record system |
The interesting part is that most of these preparation projects are cost projects. The advice to do cost reduction first lines up here too — the prerequisites for revenue work get built along the way.
The second is exactly the "make the preparation the project" shape.
Importance and sequence are different things. The most common failure pattern is this:
Start with a revenue project → four months of data cleanup → nothing to show → momentum lost
The advice is not to do the big thing later; it is to build one proof first. Produce a cost result in three months and you earn the credibility to be given four months on a revenue project.
Even with fixed prices, margin moves.
Do not read "price" narrowly as list price.
1. What is the test for "direct impact"?
Whether the path is short. Almost every project helps revenue eventually. Direct means almost no intermediate steps, like "price optimisation → revenue."
2. Which prerequisite stalls revenue projects most often?
No price-change history and not knowing competitor prices. The former especially — change a price and you cannot compare before and after, so the effect cannot be proven.
3. What do you do when the prerequisites are missing?
Make the preparation the project. If you do not know competitor prices, automate price research; if data is scattered, automate collation. Most of these turn out to be cost projects, which lines up with the advice to do cost reduction first.
That is all three principles. Now, how to decide which goes first → Sequencing
Adjust quarterly → react to market changes 3 months lateAdjust weekly → react one week late12 competitors × 40 key products = 480 prices to checkDoing it weekly: one person, all dayIn reality: monthly, and only the top 10 products1. Can you pull per-product cost right now?2. Can you see monthly per-product sales for the last 12 months?3. When did you last change a price, and what happened?4. Whose approval do you need to change a price? How many days?5. Do you know competitor prices right now? When were they checked?