Featured Article

PACCAR Pricing Spineometer: 2 of 5 Vertebrae

By Tim J. Smith, PhD May 16, 2025

PACCAR, a multinational truck, parts, and financing company, had a negative 2024. Examining PACCAR’s Truck, Parts, and Other business specifically, revenue fell 5% to $31 billion and earnings before interest and taxes fell 17% to $4.5 billion over the last year. (This article excludes PACCAR’s financial services business and makes no comments regarding how pricing should be managed in that line of business.) A review of PACCAR’s 28 January 2025 earnings call…

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In This Issue

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How to Stop Discounting Practices of Salespeople from Destroying Your Profits

By Tim J. Smith, PhD July 3, 2016

Neither revealing the company’s cost structure to front line salespeople, nor managing sales performance metrics and salespeople’s compensation with constantly varying variable costs isn’t strategically beneficial or managerially realistic. Alternatively, profit sharing plans have been used, but they don’t reward individual performance, just team performance.

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Tesla’s Software Upsell

By Kyle T. Westra July 3, 2016

What Tesla has changed for the automotive industry is now that upselling process can continue long after the purchase of the vehicle. If you buy a S60 then get a better-paying job with a longer commute, you can choose to upgrade with essentially no additional cost to serve for Tesla. And spacing out the payments for the vehicle and later the capacity may make the original vehicle purchase more palatable for the consumer.

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Will Bid for the Presidency Destroy the Trump Brand?

By James T. Berger July 3, 2016

Politico writes: “But as Trump the candidate has ascended, hitting the top of the polls and staying there thanks to a series of controversial statements and a groundswell of Republican populist support, the opposite has happened to Trump the brand.”

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Profit-Based Incentives: Doable and Valuable through Alignment of Goals

By Tim J. Smith, PhD June 7, 2016

While deal points are a powerful tool, implementing them requires careful thought. List prices, sales kickers, commission rates, and various approximations through product groupings have to be determined to create a workable plan. And, once a workable plan is defined, sales managers may determine that sales territory realignment is furthermore in order.

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