The Profit Map

See where your
profit actually lives.

Four numbers you already know. No data project, no upload, no login. In thirty seconds you will see how your revenue and your profit split across your customer and product mix — and a conservative estimate of how much profit is trapped in the parts nobody is managing.

Your business

Round numbers are fine. Precision changes nothing here.

Total company revenue, last twelve months.
Revenue less cost of goods, as a percent of revenue.
Roughly what share of revenue do they account for? If you cannot answer this within ten points, that is itself the finding.
80%of revenue
Same question, on the product side.
80%of revenue
Refine the assumptions
Everything below the gross margin line.
60%of blended margin
25%of the tail's overhead
5%revenue growth
The prize
As % of revenue
Basis points
Gross profit today
Where it lives

Your four quads.

Quad 1  ·  A customers × A products
The Fort
Your best customers buying your best products.
Revenue
Share of revenue
Margin
Gross profit
Defend it. Then grow it.
Quad 2  ·  A customers × B products
Could Be Great
Good customers buying your long tail.
Revenue
Share of revenue
Margin
Gross profit
Lower the touch. Keep the customer.
Quad 3  ·  B customers × A products
Necessary Evil
Small accounts buying your core products.
Revenue
Share of revenue
Margin
Gross profit
Price it properly. This is usually the prize.
Quad 4  ·  B customers × B products
Can't Realize a Profit
The tail selling to the tail.
Revenue
Share of revenue
Margin
Gross profit
Simplify. Almost all of it.

The concentration

Revenue by customer quartile.

QuartileRevenue % of revenueShare CumulativeCum.
Q1 — your largest quarter
Q2
Q3
Q4 — your smallest quarter
Total100.0%100.0%

How you get it

Three levers, in order.

Stop the bleed
Recover Quad 3 and Quad 4
Remove the complexity
Overhead serving the tail
Grow the Fort
Share gain where you already win
The prize

Every assumption behind that number

    Read this part

    What this cannot know.

    This is a benchmark, not an audit. It assumes your customer ranking and your product ranking are independent of each other. In a real business they are correlated, and the direction of that correlation moves these numbers.

    It cannot tell you which customers and which SKUs are in Quad 4. It cannot tell you whether the overhead serving your tail is genuinely removable or structurally fixed. It cannot tell you what pricing power you actually have, by segment, with the accounts that are underwater today.

    Those three answers require your transaction data. That is a different exercise, and it typically finds substantially more than this page does — because it works on what is true rather than what is typical.

    If the number is big enough to bother you

    Bring me the mix you have never actually looked at.

    I run this on real transaction data for operators carrying a number they have to defend. If what you see above is directionally right, the conversation is worth thirty minutes.

    Talk to me