220. Election Polls, Smart Risks and Dumb Mistakes

Lessons from Bad Polling Forecasts

Massive money was spent on polls and flipping Republican senate seats. Alas, no Blue Wave happened. Key lessons:

  1. Models – based on past results for a complex, ever-changing system – don’t accurately predict the future.
  2. Money wasted on “dumb bets” (like the $300MM democrats spent trying to flip 5 Republican senate seats unsuccessfully) can’t also be invested into smarter risks.
  3. If you want to get rich, you must have vital information – about stable systems – that no one else has and upon which you can act.

Your, Actionable, Proprietary Information

No other competitor has the same, most net and unprofitable customers that each of your locations has. With good Customer Profitability Analytics (CPA), you can zero in on:

  1. The 5% of your customers who are massively profitable. And, if you run them through some simple criteria, you can identify the few that are also fast-growing due to: great management; focused-disciplined strategy; and a high-performance culture starring perpetual innovation. (aka Gazelles). Smart bets? Apply more team resources to taking 5+ key accounts to the next level at each location.
  2. Those customers – some large, many small – that are chronic losers. They – habitually, year-in-year-out – give you money-losing orders. Their average margin-dollars per order are less than the average fulfillment-cost per order. Fix some big losers creatively into winners. For others, you may have to dictate profitable terms. Most will begrudgingly oblige. A few may leave to leech on competitors. Good! Reinvest the freed service-activity slack into growing, key accounts. Average margin and profit dollars per employee will soar.

Why Not Pursue CPA Insights? Because:

  1. Your “too busy” fine-tuning and trying harder at what you have always done?
  2. Your data-free opinions conflict with CPA’s mathematically grounded logic? You choose to ignore CPA insights?
  3. You fear trying big changes? You assume that many of our best-paid employees will fight for the status quo?

The Curriculum That Answers All Concerns

Try these smart risks; invest time to check out:

  1. My free (anonymous access, no form to fill) 12 webinars that will teach you about the urgency to use CPA to fix the dumb to feed the smart. And, then how to use the same analytics to reinvent new e-selling models to win at ecommerce by 2023. https://merrifieldact2.com/ecommerce-2023/
  2. To engage all employees in the all-win transformational process, check out my: “Core Renewal Roadmap”:https://merrifieldact2.com/core-renewal-roadmap/

Then, take small steps to all-win results.