New Sales Quarter Quotes

The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.

In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all. These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger. What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

What’s really worried me over the years is not our stock price, but that we might someday fail to take care of our customers, or that our managers might fail to motivate and take care of our associates. I also was worried that we might lose the team concept, or fail to keep the family concept viable and realistic and meaningful to our folks as we grow. Those challenges are more real than somebody’s theory that we’re headed down the wrong path. As business leaders, we absolutely cannot afford to get all caught up in trying to meet the goals that some retail analyst or financial institution in New York sets for us on a ten-year plan spit out of a computer that somebody set to compound at such-and-such a rate. If we do that, we take our eye off the ball. But if we demonstrate in our sales and our earnings every day, every week, every quarter, that we’re doing our job in a sound way, we will get the growth we are entitled to, and the market will respect us in a way that we deserve.

Here lies one of the biggest differences between traditional and subscription businesses. In a traditional business, the cost of sales reflects how much I spent to get that dollar of revenue. But in a subscription business, sales and marketing expenses are matched to future revenue. Why? Because the sales and marketing I spent this quarter adds to the ARR, but the revenue I will see from that ARR growth will come in future quarters. In traditional accounting lingo, your sales and marketing now acts more like a “capital expenditure,” or capex. Essentially, these are costs you spend to grow the business, either from existing customers or from acquiring new customers.

It is worth noting here, that in attracting 100,000 readers to issues of The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens was reaching an unprecedented portion of his country’s audience. While no formal records of literacy rates were kept at the time, Francis Jeffrey (Lord Jeffrey), the eminent jurist and founder of the Edinburgh Review, wrote in an 1844 issue of that magazine that there might be 300,000 readers among the middle class in England (out of a total population of about 2 million), with perhaps another 30,000 in the upper classes. And even if the total readership was 500,000, as some commentators have suggested, Dickens was still selling his work to somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of the literate public of a nation. Compare those figures with modern-day America, where 200 million or so working, literate adults constitute the potential “book-buying public,” and where a sale of 75,000 to 100,000 copies—one-twentieth of one percent—is often enough to put an author high up on the list of New York Times bestsellers.

Farmland’s plants had a key advantage: they were located right next door to their customers—the farmers. This gave them an edge on transportation costs. If these plants closed, there would be a dramatic fertilizer shortage. It would be simply impossible to import all the fertilizer that midwestern farmers needed. The Farmland plants were similar to Koch’s oil refinery in Pine Bend. They were perched on exclusive real estate, giving them an advantage over their competitors. Demand wasn’t going to disappear, and it wasn’t feasible for new competitors to set up shop nearby. Perhaps most important, nobody else in the marketplace attributed this value to the Farmland plants. When Farmland put the plants up for sale, the co-op got very little interest. There were two big, publicly traded fertilizer companies that seemed like natural buyers, called Agrium and CF Industries. But these companies were also embroiled in the natural gas crisis and seemed obsessed with their quarterly losses and the near-term economics of the fertilizer business.

Charles Koch loved the idea, and so did Markel. Getting rid of budgets would instantly dispose of hours’ worth of drudgery that defined a financial controller’s life. Koch invented a new set of metrics to replace budgets. And the numbers that the company focused upon were telling. Charles Koch didn’t care much about sales or costs—he cared about profits. He wanted to know how profitable any line of business was and how profitable it could be under the right management. He steered all of his managers to think this way. The key thing they needed to focus on was the return on investment, or ROI—what was the best use of Koch Industries’ money? Soon each division was writing a profit goal for the quarter, rather than a budget.

What Vann-Adibe had discobered was that the aggregate market for niche music was huge, and effectively unbounded. He called this the '98 Percent Rule.' As he later put it to me, "In a wordl of almost zero packaging costs and instant access to almost all ocntent in this format, consumers exhibit consistent behavior: They look at almost everything. I believe that this requires major changes by the content producers - I'm just not sure what changes!"... Everywhere I went the story was the same: Hits are great, but niches are emerging as the big new market. The 98 Percent Rule turned out to be nearly universal. Apple said that every one of the then 1 million tracks on iTues had sold at least once (now its inventory is twice that). Netflix reckoned that 95% of its 25,000 DVDs (that's now 90,000) rented at least once a quarter. Amazon didn't give out an exact number, but independent academic research on its book sales suggested that 98 percent of its top 100,00 books sold at least once a quarter, too.

In the late 1990s, Parachute was the market leader with more than 50 per cent market share. Fresh from its success in taking market share in toothpaste away from Colgate using Pepsodent, HUL entered the coconut oil category to take on Marico. Dadiseth, the then chairman of HUL, had warned Mariwala to sell Marico to HUL or face dire consequences. Mariwala decided to take on the challenge. Even the capital markets believed that Marico stood no chance against the might of HUL which resulted in Marico’s price-to-earnings ratio dipping to as low as 7x, as against 13x during its listing in 1996. As part of its plans to take on Marico, HUL relaunched Nihar in 1998, acquired Cococare from Redcon and positioned both brands as price challengers to Parachute. In addition, HUL also increased advertising and promotion spends for its brands. In one quarter in FY2000, HUL’s advertising and promotional (A&P) spend on coconut oil alone was an amount which was almost equivalent to Marico’s full year A&P budget (around Rs 30 crore). As Milind Sarwate, former CFO of Marico, recalls, ‘Marico’s response was typically entrepreneurial and desi. We quickly realized that we have our key resource engine under threat. So, we re-prioritized and focused entirely on Parachute. We gave the project a war flavour. For example, the business conference on this issue saw Mariconians dressed as soldiers. The project was called operation Parachute ki Kasam. The leadership galvanized the whole team. It was exhilarating as the team realized the gravity of the situation and sprang into action. We were able to recover lost ground and turn the tables, so much so that eventually Marico acquired the aggressor brand, Nihar.’ Marico retaliated by relaunching Parachute: (a) with a new packaging; (b) with a new tag line highlighting its purity (Shuddhata ki Seal—or the seal of purity); (c) by widening its distribution; and (d) by launching an internal sales force initiative. Within twelve months, Parachute regained its lost share, thus limiting HUL’s growth. Despite several relaunches, Nihar failed against Parachute. Eventually, HUL dropped the brand Nihar off its power brand list before selling it off to Marico in 2006. Since then, Parachute has been the undisputed leader in the coconut oil category. This leadership has ensured that when one visits the hair oil section in a retail store, about 80 per cent of the shelves are occupied by Marico-branded hair oil.

EARNINGS McDonald's Plans Marketing Push as Profit Slides By Julie Jargon | 436 words Associated Press The burger giant has been struggling to maintain relevance among younger consumers and fill orders quickly in kitchens that have grown overwhelmed with menu items. McDonald's Corp. plans a marketing push to emphasize its fresh-cooked breakfasts as it battles growing competition for the morning meal. Competition at breakfast has heated up recently as Yum Brands Inc.'s Taco Bell entered the business with its new Waffle Taco last month and other rivals have added or discounted breakfast items. McDonald's Chief Executive Don Thompson said it hasn't yet noticed an impact from Taco Bell's breakfast debut, but that the overall increased competition "forces us to focus even more on being aggressive in breakfast." Mr. Thompson's comments came after McDonald's on Tuesday reported that its profit for the first three months of 2014 dropped 5.2% from a year earlier, weaker than analysts' expectations. Comparable sales at U.S. restaurants open more than a year declined 1.7% for the quarter and 0.6% for March, the fifth straight month of declines in the company's biggest market. Global same-store sales rose 0.5% for both the quarter and month. Mr. Thompson acknowledged again that the company has lost relevance with some customers and needs to strengthen its menu offerings. He emphasized Tuesday that McDonald's is focused on stabilizing key markets, including the U.S., Germany, Australia and Japan. The CEO said McDonald's has dominated the fast-food breakfast business for 35 years, and "we don't plan on giving that up." The company plans in upcoming ads to inform customers that it cooks its breakfast, unlike some rivals. "We crack fresh eggs, grill sausage and bacon," Mr. Thompson said. "This is not a microwave deal." Beyond breakfast, McDonald's also plans to boost marketing of core menu items such as Big Macs and french fries, since those core products make up 40% of total sales. To serve customers more quickly, the chain is working to optimize staffing, and is adding new prep tables that let workers more efficiently add new toppings when guests want to customize orders. McDonald's also said it aims to sell more company-owned restaurants outside the U.S. to franchisees. Currently, 81% of its restaurants around the world are franchised. Collecting royalties from franchisees provides a stable source of income for a restaurant company and removes the cost of operating them. McDonald's reported a first-quarter profit of $1.2 billion, or $1.21 a share, down from $1.27 billion, or $1.26 a share, a year earlier. The company partly attributed the decline to the effect of income-tax benefits in the prior year. Total revenue for the quarter edged up 1.4% to $6.7 billion, though costs rose faster, at 2.3%. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of $1.24 a share on revenue of $6.72 billion.

Large corporations now owned dozens, if not hundreds, of franchises. AutoNation Inc., a publicly traded car seller based in Florida, was the largest with 265 franchises in the U.S., selling everything from Chevrolet to BMW. In 2012, AutoNation employed 21,000 people (compared to the 2,964 full-time workers at Tesla). Its largest shareholder was Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who invested $177 million in the business that year. The company generated $8.9 billion in revenue off the sale of more than a quarter of a million new vehicles.

C Current Quarterly Earnings and Sales: The Higher, the Better A Annual Earnings Increases: Look for Significant Growth N New Products, New Management, New Highs: Buying at the Right Time S Supply and Demand: Shares Outstanding Plus Big Volume Demand L Leader or Laggard: Which Is Your Stock? I Institutional Sponsorship: Follow the Leaders M Market Direction: How You Can Learn to Determine It

When New York passed its Internet sales-tax law, Amazon’s sales in New York State dropped 10 percent over the next quarter, according to a person familiar with Amazon’s finances at the time.

Ben: “Well, then why shouldn’t I hire him?” Joe: “He’ll be a terrible cultural fit.” Ben: “Please explain.” Joe: “Well, when I was teaching new-hire sales training at Parametric Technology Corporation, I brought in Mark as a guest speaker to fire up the troops. We had fifty new hires and I had them all excited about selling and enthusiastic about working for the company. Mark Cranney walks up to the podium, looks at the crowd of fresh new recruits, and says, ‘I don’t give a fuck how well trained you are. If you don’t bring me five hundred thousand dollars a quarter, I’m putting a bullet in your head.