Revenue, margin and cash flow gaps identified within 48 hours of your evidence pack
How to improve margin without losing customers
Margin Improvement
Fixer48 Advisory is a Melbourne-based commercial performance advisory practice for Australian B2B businesses turning over $5m to $100m. It is led by Ash Kent, who has spent more than 30 years as a GM, CEO and MD carrying the P&L. It works differently from conventional advisory: every recommendation is built from your own numbers, a named deliverable lands every week of the first four, and Fixer48 stays in the business through implementation until the result shows in the numbers.
Margin in a $5m to $100m B2B business improves when you know the true cost of serving each customer, price to it, and protect that price in every channel. The work is finding where margin drains away: discounts that were never written down, overheads that are not recovered, and orders priced below the floor at which the business trades at a loss without knowing it.
Why is margin shrinking when turnover is holding?
Because turnover measures what is sold, not what each sale earns. The signals Fixer48 looks for are margins shrinking despite turnover holding or growing, a business that is busy but not profitable enough, and pricing that has not been reviewed in more than 12 months.
Where is the margin going?
Fixer48 starts with the evidence: the top 20 customers ranked by margin contribution as well as revenue, current pricing by product, service line and customer segment, and the cost structure, including how overheads are allocated and recovered. Where the cost picture is incomplete, Commercial Forensics maps the business from customer order through to delivery: order handling, labour by process step, input cost, supplier terms, warehousing and delivery cost, and the true cost of winning each customer. The result is the true cost per unit and the pricing floor below which the business is trading at a loss without knowing it.
Can you lift prices without losing customers?
The approach that protects the customer base is a price that rests on evidence and a structure that is the same for everyone: a price architecture with clear tiers, a gross margin floor that only the owner can go below, written pricing protection, and one governed rate for each channel instead of discounts negotiated deal by deal.
What happens in the first four weeks of the sprint?
Four gates, one decision at each. Week 1 sets the Commercial Performance Index baseline across six primary revenue drivers. Week 2 delivers the Findings and Strategy Report, quantifying the revenue and margin recoverable and sequencing the initiatives. Week 3 scopes the one or two priority initiatives that were not visible from the outside. Week 4 confirms the implementation schedule, locks the KPIs and gives every action an owner. Every deliverable is returned within 48 hours of the evidence being received. You can stop at week 4 with the signed-off plan and run it yourself.
What happens in weeks 5 to 13?
The plan goes to work, completing the 90-day commercial sprint. The new price structure, overhead recovery correction and cost structure changes go in, in priority order, with Fixer48 working inside the business alongside your team. Activation of every initiative is tracked and reported every week, and business KPIs are measured monthly and reviewed with your leadership team. Commercial Calibration runs alongside, so a margin initiative that is not landing is adjusted before the gap becomes a problem. Day 90 is a formal review that confirms your 12-month commercial trajectory before the engagement proceeds.
What happens in the following three months?
Strategic implementation that builds on the framework set in the first four weeks. Reporting moves to a monthly KPI cycle, with a special sprint reactivated where the business needs extra resource. The overhead recovery model is rebuilt from the ground up, calibrated to volume and time, so every product, service and customer carries its true cost. Every margin initiative still in train is embedded with a named owner and a live KPI, and the engagement closes at week 26 with a validated 12-month commercial plan your leadership team owns and runs.
What margin improvement should you target?
Targets are confirmed in week 3, once the evidence is in, aligned to industry benchmarks and the current capabilities of the business. A full six-month engagement locks a target of a minimum 2 to 3 point margin improvement and 20% revenue growth within 12 months.
What does margin improvement look like in practice?
For a critical power equipment and service business, quoting, pricing authority and freight were fixed first, so every new order would land at the right margin. A three-tier price structure with a 30% gross margin floor followed. Read the Critical Power case study.
For a premium confectionery manufacturer, six commercial policies were in force by day 19, including pricing protection. A price increase went live and the price list was rebuilt so retailers earn a consistent 40% margin on every line. A multi-store specialty grocer accepted the trading terms and removed its rebate. With breakeven at 27% of installed capacity, each additional unit carries only its materials cost while capacity is idle, so growth flows straight to margin. Read the Confectionery case study.
Questions owners ask about margin
What is a pricing floor?
The price below which a product, service or customer is trading at a loss once its true share of overhead is recovered. Fixer48 establishes it from the true cost per unit, after the overhead recovery model is rebuilt wherever cost is incomplete or misallocated.
What is overhead recovery?
How overhead is allocated across products, services and customers. Where the method does not reflect true cost, some lines carry less overhead than they should and look more profitable than they are. Fixer48 rebuilds the overhead recovery model, calibrated to volume and time.
What are three margin points worth?
For a $20m business at 5% EBITDA, three margin points and 20% revenue growth take annual profit from $1m to $1.92m, an extra $920,000. The worked example shows the calculation.
Start with a conversation
Every engagement begins with a confidential conversation about what your business really earns on each sale and what it could earn. Contact Fixer48 Advisory.
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