Customer Reviews

Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets

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This is a six figure pricing consulting engagement in the palm of your hands. The book covers key pricing concepts that all managers should know such as: profit/volume tradeoffs, natural spaces, public messaging, price contamination, customer differences in willingness to pay...and more. It is a very readable book with several real world customer examples. If only we could get our competition to read it...

Many executives, especially those running large companies, get easily pulled away from increasing profits to an almost ego-driven pursuit of market share.

This book explores nicely the origins of how market share became king, why it is a problem, and how companies could and should become profit-focused. The authors have presented a large set of case studies to support their argument and to help others bring about change in their companies. There are powerful yet simple examples of successes from grass roots efforts within companies that chose the path of profit and also of colossal mistakes that must be avoided.

Manage for Profit Not for Market Share could help conscientious executives to reflect upon how to right the wrongs by changing company practices and provides managers the material to build their roadmap for profit leadership. MBA students should also read the book not to just unlearn something that was perhaps perpetuated by B-schools but also to chart their careers. For a pricing professional like me, this book is a great ally in making and reiterating the case for profit.

More profit obviously means more money for a company's stakeholders, so why do companies continue to insist that market share is the top organizational priority? The case for changing minds over to a profit-centralized viewpoint is clear. This is the mission authors Simon, Bilstein, and Luby undertake in this book and succeed gracefully at. Such ideas as understanding your company's comparative advantages, improving salesperson performance by removing the emphasis on sales volume, raising prices and optimizing marketing are all covered. Such topics as decreasing costs are not considered, as this book takes a very customer-centric view of profit and leaves the topic of cost alone as it is covered quite extensively in many other publications. The range of tools the authors provide is excellent and not overwrought with dense explanations. Experienced managers can effectively improve their companies' bottom lines by reading the ideas and example applications and then customizing the information to fit their organizations. Companies and their shareholders all stand to profit from the information in this book, so I cannot recommend it highly enough to managers at all levels of all organizations.

Expertly co-authored by Hermann Simon (Founder and Chariman of Simon-Kucher and Partners Strategy and Marketing Consultants, Germany), and SKP partners of Boston's division, Frank F. Bilstein and Frank Luby, Manage For Profit Not For Market Share: A Guide To Greater Profits In Highly Contested Markets is an important and timely study of the issues concerning adoptive profit versus market share in today's volatile stock market. Introducing readers to investment management, marketing, and providing a clearly presented and accessible explanation a complex monetary subject, Manage For Profit Not For Market Share provides a clear and applicable guide for understanding the differentiation between mature products, as well as addressing such issues as effective price increases, new orders to segmenting customers, proper timing to various activities, and the effect of consumer preferences. Manage For Profit Not For Market Share is very strongly recommended and profitable reading for investors, account managers, brokerage executives, and consultants for all formats of corporate or business sales as an exclusive and expansive interpretation of competitive profit sales, marketing, and innovative, practical guidance through modern business progress.

This book gives powerful insight into how using tools and analysis can direct you to make small pricing changes that result in significant bottom line impact. The most powerful aspect of the book is the real world examples describing what previous companies did and the resulting impact. These examples build confidence for the reader so that they can make similar changes to their business while everyone else continues to say "we can't do that" with their opinions based solely on past practices.

The book starts with a very good quote by a CEO of a global market leader: "We need to free ourselves from this market share mania. Market share should be a means to an end, and not the end itself." And that's the essence of this book. Very interesting and overall highly recommendable.

The authors have addressed the biggest mistake that large corporations make in using the classic BCG growth-cash quadrant that was popularized by Bruce Henderson in the 60's that lead to the fad for the market share as the key to success, in fact Henderson was very clear that market share in itself could never be the root to free cash flow. Today One Big Idea Consulting International is a modern disciple of Henderson and all Marketing Strategists should revisit Henderson before reading this book.

Excellent presentation on practical ways pricing can help generate profits. Provides quantitiative evidence that some popular pricing schemes are not always good for the bottom line. Marketing managers in these hotly contested industries tend to get caught up in the seemingly easy answer by competing with price. This book highlights that folly and shows how they can turn pricing policy into a real value creator.

The strategies and tools in this book are a must-read for all managers in mature markets. It clearly defines steps to optimize pricing, marketing, sales and positioning to maximize profit.

Expertly co-authored by Hermann Simon (Founder and Chariman of Simon-Kucher and Partners Strategy and Marketing Consultants, Germany), and SKP partners of Boston's division, Frank F. Bilstein and Frank Luby, Manage For Profit Not For Market Share: A Guide To Greater Profits In Highly Contested Markets is an important and timely study of the issues concerning adoptive profit versus market share in today's volatile stock market. Introducing readers to investment management, marketing, and providing a clearly presented and accessible explanation a complex monetary subject, Manage For Profit Not For Market Share provides a clear and applicable guide for understanding the differentiation between mature products, as well as addressing such issues as effective price increases, new orders to segmenting customers, proper timing to various activities, and the effect of consumer preferences. Manage For Profit Not For Market Share is very strongly recommended and profitable reading for investors, account managers, brokerage executives, and consultants for all formats of corporate or business sales as an exclusive and expansive interpretation of competitive profit sales, marketing, and innovative, practical guidance through modern business progress.