The High Cost of Waiting: Is Your Decision to Wait Costing You Millions?

Doing nothing is expensive. - Seth Godin

What if your decision to wait literally cost you millions of dollars.

Because it does. 

When it comes to business, time is money. 

And every decision we delay is costing us something. But what exactly does it cost? 

Real Money

While the average industry growth is around 5%, commonsku distributors average 20% growth. And let’s not mistake that for a percentage, percentages can sometimes seem non-specific;  20% growth is real money. Let’s do the math on what the high cost of waiting is actually costing.

• If you’re doing $1 million in annual sales, an additional 20% growth would be $200,000. 

• If you’re doing $5 million in annual sales, an additional 20% growth would be $1 million

• $10 million in sales? The opportunity cost is $2 million. 

• $20 million in sales? The opportunity cost is $4 million. 

You get the picture. This isn’t some made-up projection. We often think that the more we wait, the more we delay change, and it’s true, we do delay change, but we often only think of change as a negative and not a positive; we rarely count the cost of waiting. The real cost of waiting is actual money. 

But there are opportunity costs that are even more important than money. 

Real Relief from Mistakes

You know it’s chaotic. 

You feel it with every order. And again, the numbers clarify just why and how frustrating it really is: For every order in this business, there are, on average, eight manual follow-up interactions between distributors and suppliers. 

Multiply that times the number of orders you process in a year and the inefficiency is staggering.

Moreover, 66% of all orders received by suppliers from distributors are either missing information or have incorrect information. 

Mistakes cost clients. Period. You can do everything right with a customer, they can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars with you, and yet you still have to ensure that everything goes right with every order. But the odds of something going wrong with double (and triple!) data entry and multiple software programs increases the odds that something will go wrong. 

A delayed decision can literally cost you a client.

Real Relief from Frustration

commonsku was developed for promo professionals by promo professionals, people who understand this business. And our mission has always been to create a connected workflow, reducing the amount of time and attention you spend on orders. 

A streamlined, connected workflow takes the ideation process, the quote process, the order entry system -in short, your entire production- and makes it seamless, eliminating the most difficult and most frustrating parts of the experience for your team. 

So, while we weigh the cost of change and its impact on the team (worried it will be a frustrating process), we forget that the faster you deploy a solution, the less stressful your team will be! 

In short, we tend to believe six myths about change, we tell ourselves:

1. Myth: “We’ll do this when business slows down.” Truth: Business in today’s economy is steady, you won’t ever have “the perfect season” for change. 

2. Myth: “This doesn’t really solve all our problems so we’re going to wait.” Truth: Does it solve most of your problems (yes) and does it alleviate your most aggravating problems? Will it make you faster, less stressed? Will it bring harmony and save clients? Yes.

3. Myth: “We need to get consensus on this before we move forward.” Truth: You’ll never have full consensus, it’s time to lead. 

4. Myth: “We need to wait until year-end.” Truth: Um … why? What’s the magical thing about year-end? Is Jan 1 going to be any different than October 1? The faster you make the change, the faster you will change. 

5. Myth: “Maybe we should just tip our toe in the water, beta-test with a few people.” Truth: Over $650 million in orders goes through the commonsku platform, that’s $650 million worth of “beta-testers” that have proved the system works. 

6. Myth: “Yes, but we need to make sure it works for us. You see, we’re different.” Truth: Yes, we believe you are unique, every distributor is unique, but they all have more similarities than dissimilarities in the way they handle their ideation to order to billing process. And with over $650 million in users, we’ve seen it all. 

The bottom line is the bottom line: The faster you change, the quicker you’ll be on the road to a frustration-free experience that saves clients, scales your business, improves your culture, and earns you more profit. 

So, what are you waiting for? Opportunity costs and opportunity awaits! 

Our only security is our ability to change. - John Lilly 

This post was originally posted to the commonsku Blog on July 23, 2019. it has been edited and updated as of May 3, 2021.