How to Make a Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents!
How to Make a Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents! Or How to Sell a Criminal Search for $5.00 and Earn a $9.00 Profit
How many times have you been pushed out of a competitive situation because you didn’t feel you could compete on price?
There is no reason you can’t be competitive at just about any price level and still make a handsome profit. Lets take a look at one example:
Your standard retail price for a county criminal search is probably in the $7-$10 range. Your average cost is probably around $3.00, all depending on volume and how much work you do yourself vs. outsourcing to wholesalers.
Let’s say in order to be awarded a competitive bid you need to get your selling price down to $5.00. Is this still worthwhile? Well, sure it is. Even if you can only make $2.00 on each search, why not make $2.00? Not worth it, you say? Well, look deeper. You can achieve much more than a $2.00 margin because the larger volume should get you lower costs. You can turn what looks like a “puny” $2.00 profit/search into a healthy $9.00 profit/search.
What? I can sell it for $5.00 and earn $9.00 on each search??????????????
Yes!! When you have your own network of direct sources. By doing so, you can get your average data acquisition cost down under $2.00 per county (and that includes still doing a lot of volume through a wholesaler). But you need volume to achieve or even beat this $2.00 target.
Still confused? Look at the following example.
Let’s say you are doing 30,000 county criminal searches per year and selling half at $10.00 retail and the other half at $7.00. With your cost per search at $3.00, your profit (actually your Gross Margin) for this is $165,000.
Now you add a new client who generates 10,000 additional county criminal searches a year, but to get this volume you have to cut your price to $5.00 each. Bad idea? Not hardly!
If you leverage the additional volume to obtain less expensive sourcing, your gross margin per new search will, with only a $1.00 reduction in the average cost per search, jump to $9.00.
Huh? How can I get a gross margin of $9 per search if I am selling the search for $5.00? Well, let’s take a look:
| Current Customer Base | ||||||||
| Clients | Volume | Retail Price | Old Cost | Profit/search |
Total profit | |||
| A-M | 15000 | $10.00 | $3.00 | $7.00 | $105,000 | |||
| N-W | 15000 | $7.00 | $3.00 | $4.00 | $ 60,000 | |||
| Total Profit from existing clients | $165,000 | |||||||
|
Add a New High Volume Client |
||||||||
| Clients | Volume | Retail | New Cost | Profit/search | Total profit | |||
| A-M | 15000 | $10.00 | $2.00 | $8.00 | $120,000 | |||
| N-W | 15000 | $7.00 | $2.00 | $5.00 | $ 75,000 | |||
| Total Profit from Old Customers at New Cost | $225,000 | |||||||
| New | 10000 | $5.00 | $2.00 | $3.00 | $ 30,000 | |||
| Total Profit from All Customers at New Cost | $225,000 | |||||||
| Incremental Profit from all customers | $ 90,000 | |||||||
| Value per search from new customer | $ 9.00 | |||||||
So, because this incremental volume allowed you the leverage to get better costs, your incremental profit attributable to this one new volume customer is $90,000 or an extra $9.00 earned for each of the 10,000 extra searches.
The amazing power of volume. Sell a search for $5.00 and earn $9.00.
To obtain your free copy of this spreadsheet formula so can put in your own numbers or to get more information on reducing your costs, call Berg Consulting Group, 561-712-1277
