Why You Are Missing Profit Targets Even When Sales Are Strong

Sales are strong. So why aren’t the profits following?
The answer is rarely found in the P&L alone.
It is deeper - in the way your organisation is set up to reward behaviour.

The Story That Plays Out Too Often

The Sales Director gives a “record month” update.
Finance quietly notes gross margins are down.
Ops is frustrated, they had to rush a large, low-margin order to meet a volume target.
The MD’s gut says something’s not adding up.

The MD is right.
This is not about Sales. Or Ops. Or Pricing.
It is about how the business is rewarding behaviours that destroy profit.

The Real Problem: Conflicting KPIs

Each department is hitting their targets.
But together, they are driving conflicting behaviours that quietly drain your margins.

Departmental Objectives vs Pricing Discipline: A Breakdown

This Isn’t Just Your Business. It is a Widespread Problem.

Cross-functional misalignment is one of the most common and most overlooked causes of pricing failure.

Departments operate in silos, each optimising for their own KPIs, often at the expense of profitability.

• Sales incentives tied to revenue or volume lead to discounting, even if it destroys margin.

• Finance and product teams rarely own deal profitability, so pricing becomes fragmented.

• No-one is accountable for the overall commercial outcome.

And the signs are everywhere: price inconsistencies, internal tension, eroding trust in pricing. When pricing is shaped by competing departmental goals instead of commercial strategy, profit suffers quietly, consistently and sometimes irreversibly.

The Fix Is Not Just in Pricing. It is in Governance.

This isn’t about tweaking price lists or running another margin analysis.
It is about creating commercial alignment.

Pricing needs ownership.
It needs cross-functional accountability.
And it needs to be tied to incentives that reward profitable growth, not just activity.