What you offer to your customers vs sales, profit & cashflow

[Not your average framer]

I have just finished preparing my last years accounts. This year for the first time, I have been using various key performance indicators, (percentage relationships between different analysis columns on my monthly balance spreadsheets), to help me better understand the financial management and performance of my business. I have found this very helpful and my business results are much improved this last year.

I'm now looking at how what I offer to my customers affects my overall turnover, profits and cashflow. I think this is a very meaningful things to look at and to try to understand. Large business organisations run by accountants understand these issues far better than most of us are likely to do, but this does not mean that we cannot make progress in this area also.

Probably many of us already do some of this on an instinctive level without having given this much thought, but can we take things further and gain from doing so?