In this Issue

🪶    Prices Fall Like a Feather
🌋    Fast Shocks, Slow Shifts
⛳️    In the Game to Play the Game

🪶  Prices Fall Like a Feather

With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, prices are rising everywhere.

I am struck by Tommy Norris’s quote in Landman, “When [oil] hits $100, every product in America has to readjust its price.” The underlying reason is fuel surcharges.

Costs are being passed on from one end of the supply chain to the other. Everyone is paying the price for 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas being cut off.

The key message: Increase your prices sooner than you think.

Very few companies have the margins or resiliency to absorb another cost shock. Since 2022, we’ve been fighting rising costs, customer price sensitivity, and thinning margins.

I often hear business owners say, “It feels like we have to grow by 20% to earn 5%.”

Even if raising prices feels risky, running an unprofitable business is riskier.

Get ahead of rapid cost increases, because the trend is not in our favor. Prices aren’t going to suddenly drop once the Strait is reopened. It’s the old adage: Prices rise like a rocket and fall like a feather.

🌋  Fast Shocks, Slow Shifts

There is no return to “normal.”

An earthquake, for instance, can cause sudden, devastating damage. Whole communities can be leveled in a matter of hours.

From the rubble comes a rebuild, but it’s different. The community doesn’t rebuild as it was. It builds something new with new building codes, new infrastructure, and new communities.

Many of the residents and businesses return, but it’s never what it was.

Rebuilds always follow external shocks.

The rapid succession of shocks we’ve gone through since 2020 has left businesses reeling. The area we’re not discussing enough is the build phase.

What your industry will look like has yet to be written, and this is your opportunity. The build after the shock is where new category leaders are born. What will your business look like in the next normal?

📊  One Stat to Watch

28

Since 2009, Europe shuttered 28 of 100 refineries, exacerbating the jet fuel crisis. With only weeks of inventory in reserve, refinery capacity will shift from commodity to strategy.

⛳️  In the Game to Play the Game

The biggest risk of uncertainty is lost time. It’s easy to spend six to twelve months waiting for signs to act. What is that costing you?

Six months is ten percent of five years. Twelve months is twenty percent. Indecision consumes your business’s future.

It’s counterintuitive, but uncertainty requires action: You have to be in the game to play the game.

Strategy comes second. In CoStrategy, we use sales sprints for market research. This has two advantages:

1. Sales Activation: You can’t drive sales if you don’t speak with your customers. The first step is to dramatically increase the volume of sales activity to activate the organization.
2. Market Validation: Your customers will tell you what they want to buy if you sell to them. Noes reveal as much or more intelligence as yeses. You can identify your next stage of growth through direct sales.

As you sell and deliver, you learn, adapt, and grow. This is how you become strategic. You make better decisions with real customer insights, not assumptions.

Growth strategy doesn’t happen on the sidelines. To learn how, the next CoStrategy Cohort starts on July 1st. Message me for information.

🤔  Thoughts on Today’s Issue?

We’d love to hear your feedback. Message with any thoughts, comments, or ideas for future issues.