Article
Many MSMEs think they have a sales problem when they actually have a pricing problem. Orders come in, cash still feels tight, and the team responds by chasing more volume. That usually makes things worse. The Week 3 discipline is to stop treating price as a negotiation reflex and start treating it as a profitability system. Good pricing does not begin with competitor quotes. It begins with understanding your own cost stack properly.
Start with three buckets. First, direct cost: raw material, labour directly tied to delivery, bought-out components, freight if order-specific. Second, overhead share: rent, supervision, utilities, admin support, software, machine time, or founder bandwidth where relevant. Third, hidden cost: returns, coordination time, small customisations, payment delays, credit risk, urgent dispatches, packaging changes, and rework. Hidden cost is where many 'profitable' orders quietly stop being profitable.
Once the cost picture is visible, make one of four moves rather than muddling through all four at once. Raise price if the offer is clearly valued. Reduce cost if waste or poor purchasing is the culprit. Tighten scope if customers are getting extras for free. Change terms if long credit or fragmented delivery is eating margin. The point is not to sound expensive. The point is to stop winning the wrong work.
A strong Week 3 habit is to review the last five quoted deals: one won easily, one won after negotiation, one lost on price, one lost for non-price reasons, and one still pending. That sample tells you more about pricing discipline than a long margin lecture ever will.