MixProfitable growth strategy

Prices, volumes, costs and margins

You hit the planned revenue, and missed the planned margin.

  • Price
  • Volume
  • Product mix
  • Margin

Nobody made a bad decision. A discount granted to save a contract, a promotion extended by a month, a customer who switched to the entry-level reference, an input cost that slid by three percent. Each gap is explainable; their sum is not.

Mix breaks that gap down. How much comes from price, how much from volume, how much from product mix, how much from costs. Each scenario keeps its assumptions visible, and two people redoing the calculation find the same result.

Set up a first conversationSee an example margin bridge

LEADERSHIP QUESTION

Which combination produces profitable growth?

WHAT MIX LETS YOU DECIDE

Five questions your margin asks every quarter.

01

Where does the margin gap come from?

Price, volume, mix or costs: the four causes call for four different corrections, handled by different teams.

02

What does our discount policy really cost?

Rarely what the sales team estimates, and never what the list price suggests.

03

Did that promotion pay off?

Volume gained against margin given up, cannibalisation included.

04

Which product funds the others?

A mix that slides towards the entry level erodes margin without a single price having moved.

05

Where is the break-even point, at today’s costs?

Not those of the budget voted eleven months ago.

STEERING LOOP

Set, calculate, compare, decide, revise.

The variance breakdown is the step missing almost everywhere. Without it, the margin discussion is settled by the most recent anecdote.

  1. 01Set the assumptions: prices, volumes, discounts, promotions, costs
  2. 02Rebuild the cost structure
  3. 03Calculate with a deterministic engine
  4. 04Break down the gap between planned and actual
  5. 05Compare scenarios
  6. 06Decide: retained price, discount ceiling, applicable rule
  7. 07Revise quarterly

THE PRICE AND MARGIN FILE

What remains between two reviews.

The calculation is deterministic and documented: that is what lets a sales director contest the result without contesting the method.

  • The commercial assumptions — each with its author and date
  • The cost structure — fixed, variable, what has drifted
  • The variance breakdown — what comes from assumptions, what comes from costs
  • The compared scenarios — with the assumptions that set them apart
  • The updated break-even point — at the cost level observed
  • The commercial rule — discount ceiling and conditions for exceptions
  • Assumptions and missing data — what is estimated for lack of measurement

CONCRETE EXAMPLE

Two margin points, four causes.

A company loses two margin points over the year. The bridge shows that the average price actually rose — the pricing policy worked. One point comes from discounts granted at quarter end to hit volume targets. Half a point comes from the mix sliding towards the entry level. The rest comes from input costs.

Three distinct corrections follow, carried by three different owners: a discount ceiling with delegation, a revised pitch for the upper range, a supplier renegotiation. None of them consists of raising prices.

Illustrative case. The engine calculates the gap; interpreting the causes is done with your teams.

BEFORE AND AFTER MIX

Mix quantifies what the other workspaces have decided.

Grid says which segments and ranges are kept: without that decision, Mix optimises the price of products that should not have stayed in the catalogue. Calc makes each calculation step auditable, which matters as soon as the result is contested. Plot puts the scenarios in perspective for the collective discussion.

Pilot takes up the retained prices, volumes and margins to build the trajectory presented to a funder. Atlas keeps the assumptions of previous exercises — that is what lets you say why this year’s budget differs from the last.

HOW TO GET IT

Three modes, plus a short format.

Self-service

Annual licence

Your finance or sales leadership builds and maintains the scenarios.

Scoped engagement

Fixed fee

We rebuild the cost structure, build the margin bridge and the scenarios, then hand the file back in Mix.

Guided review

Subscription

Quarterly. We set actuals against assumptions and document the gaps before they become a year-end surprise.

If the decision is urgent — a supplier raising prices, a competitor undercutting — there is a short format of two to three weeks.

See the three access modes in detail

WHO PRODUCES WHAT

We do not set your prices.

DeliverableProduced by
Rebuilt cost structureThe tool, from your data
Price, volume, discount and promotion scenariosThe tool
Variance breakdown and break-even pointThe tool
Interpretation of the causes of the gapWorkshop run by inNOVAtio
Log of assumptions and missing dataThe tool, completed in the workshop
The retained price and the discount ceilingYour decision, recorded in the file

We make visible what each price level costs or earns.

WHAT THE CALCULATION DOES NOT SAY

A deterministic calculation is not a forecast.

Mix ensures the result follows from the assumptions, not that it will happen. Two people get the same figure from the same inputs: that is what makes the discussion possible, it is not a guarantee of accuracy.

We do not know your price elasticity, and nobody does before it has been tested. The calculation gives the more useful inverse: the volume you can afford to lose before a price rise becomes a loss.

A margin bridge explains a past gap. It does not say the same causes will produce the same effect next year.

Mix does not predict demand. It shows the economic consequence of each commercial assumption.

Do you know where your last two margin points went?

A first thirty-minute conversation about your actual gap, with the figures you already have.

Set up a first conversationSee all situations