There is a question that haunts almost every businessman all the time, and that is: "What kind of business is the most profitable?" Undoubtedly, people will answer: real estate, education, automobiles, energy, IT digital products. Obviously, such an answer is meaningless, because since most businessmen are already on board, it is not easy to change careers and jump on another thief boat; What's more, these "most profitable businesses" only make practitioners more likely to make money. What we want is the practical significance of this question: how can businessmen earn more money than others in their industry? Because this is every businessman's lifelong dream. The correct answer to this question should be: "The business with fast capital turnover is the most profitable. In other words, in the same industry, your capital turnover is faster than others, and you are the most profitable. " Actually, business is the same. Once engaged in a certain industry, the target customer base is fixed. At this time, you think about it day and night, and the core question that is as important as life should be: how to sell things faster? Because once a week, you can achieve the fundamental purpose of business operation-making money. The faster the turnover, the more money you earn. Rapid turnover is the result of the times. In the era of commodity shortage, "hoarding" made a fortune, but whoever does this today is a "stupid root"; Today, when excess cash is king, the most important way to get rich is to "sell fast and sell more" before the product is upgraded, and the most effective way is low price. In the past, the most effective way to make money was to sell at a high price-to improve the profit rate. Nowadays, the most obvious means of making money has become low-priced sales-increasing turnover rate. In the past, the profit was high, but in the end, because of selling less, I earned less money; Today's profit is low, but in the end, because I sold more, I earned more money. The price war was once criticized because it harmed the interests of other manufacturers who had not yet understood and followed the traditional profit model, but it was undoubtedly sought after by banknotes. "Turn = earn" is the most important commercial feature of this era. "Earn = Turn" is a business principle that more and more rich people follow in this era. Of course, different industries have different turnover methods and cycles. It takes several years for real estate to be delivered, and thermal underwear takes one year. The catering industry requires multiple turnover rates every day, and the industry with monthly cycle is even more unclear. You can improve productivity, reduce costs and speed up turnover, such as Galanz; Can improve the brand's gold content, stimulate purchase and realize turnover, such as Haier; You can be equally beautiful; Can zero inventory, such as Dell; You can also use ERP like Lenovo. In short, in this era of "fast fish eat slow fish", you must try your best, you must be hungry, and you must find ways to change the capital turnover rate. If the essence of an enterprise is execution, then the essence of business is turnover. In fact, execution and turnover are skills, but skills are ever-changing. Then, try to make them spin faster with better technology. Jack Welch of GE in the United States is thinking about this problem, and vendors selling dried fruits and vegetables in remote towns and villages in China are also puzzled by this problem. From this point of view, Welch and vendors have the same business essence, they have the same business intelligence, and they also face the same eternal business problems. Then, apart from low prices, how can funds be transferred faster? A world in a grain of sand. Some seemingly insignificant small businesses often contain the greatest truth in the business world. Shi, the chairman of Acer Computer in Taiwan Province, helped his mother sell duck eggs and stationery when he was a teenager. Duck eggs weigh 1 kg in 3 yuan, and can only earn 30 cents, with a profit of 10%, and are easy to deteriorate. If it is not sold in time, it will break down and cause economic losses. Stationery has a high profit. Doing business in 10 yuan can earn at least 4 yuan, with a profit of over 40%. Besides, stationery won't break. It seems that selling stationery is more profitable than selling duck eggs. But in fact, Shi later said that selling duck eggs is far more profitable than selling stationery. Although the profit of duck eggs is thin, it can be turned over once every two days at most; Although stationery has high profits, sometimes it can't be sold for half a year or even a year, which not only accumulates costs, but also erodes profits earlier by interest. Duck eggs are thin and sell more, and the profit is far greater than that of stationery with slow turnover. Shi later applied the experience of selling duck eggs to Acer? , established a "small profits but quick turnover model", that is, the product price is set lower than that of peers. Although the profit is low, the number of customers increases, the capital turnover is fast, the inventory is small, the operating cost is greatly reduced, and the actual profit is greater than that of peers. There is a general theorem in business behind the doorway of selling duck eggs by Shi mother and son: return on assets = profit rate × turnover rate. Young Shi's business wisdom lies in his ability to consider both profit rate and turnover rate. (2) But many people in China don't have such business wisdom. They often ask, "What kind of business is the most profitable?" Undoubtedly, they all focus on the profit rate and ignore the turnover rate, that is, focus on projects (industries) with high profit rate. Projects with high profit margins tend to have slow turnover due to high prices. At this time, once the funds can't turn around healthily and quickly, the terminal retailers themselves will not only be overwhelmed by the inventory, but also the whole industrial chain will fall into crisis. Robust suffered such a disaster in He Boquan's time. 1997 He Boquan decided to take a slice of the jelly market. In August, the initial market reaction of Robust jelly was really enthusiastic, and the sales channel was urgent: want goods! Want goods! 1998 Around the Spring Festival, the market seems to have reached the peak of madness, and a province often wants dozens of wagons. He Boquan lost his mind and immediately expanded production capacity, and the number of production lines increased from 2 to 4, 6 and 8. When all 48 machines on the production line were installed and put into production-the terminal suddenly announced that it was unsalable! The original robust jelly was all crowded in the channel and did not reach the consumers. Normal capital turnover failed to form, Robust quickly fell into a sweet "jelly vortex" and the market collapsed rapidly. Hundreds of millions of dollars, nothing in return. Why is this happening? Obviously, this is another version of the beer game. The famous "beer game" clearly tells people how the funds in the whole industrial chain are accumulated in the inventory, and the turnover is ineffective: retailers find that a kind of "lover beer" is easy to sell, so they increase the number of goods reported to the wholesale business once a week. However, it takes four weeks for wholesalers to ask manufacturers to increase delivery (because it takes time for manufacturers to expand production). Therefore, during the five-week waiting period, retailers have been anxiously increasing the demand for goods. At this time, wholesalers will mistakenly think that the terminal is selling well, and they will be hot-headed and multiply the demand from manufacturers. At this time, the manufacturer will be anxious and think that the terminal is selling well, so he will also greatly enlarge the production capacity and expand the output. The whole industrial chain is stimulated by a step-by-step amplification of error information. Finally, when a large number of goods are pressed to the terminal, retailers will find that the actual demand of the market is only a small part of their own mountain of inventory! At this time, he will suddenly stop the goods, but the inventory of wholesalers has increased many times, and manufacturers are still accelerating production day and night! In the end, the liquidity in the whole industrial chain has become terrible "sunk capital" and "dead goods" that no one wants. If we can't turn around, manufacturers and businesses will lose money. The failure of Robust jelly lies in the overstock caused by the effect of "information amplification step by step". By the same token, China's home appliance industry is also full of gloom. In 2004, the inventory of air conditioners in China exceeded 8 million units, and the deposited capital of the whole industry was more than 654.38+0.2 billion yuan. It is predicted that such inventory will inevitably lead to the break of a large number of enterprise capital chains. Sure enough, there were nearly 90 air-conditioning brands less in 2004 than in 2003, and a large number of dealers were buried behind each closed brand. Therefore, Midea believes in one sentence: "It is better to sell less than to stock more." If there is more inventory, the capital turnover will be slow. No matter how much inventory, capital turnover is a dream. (3) We believe that the essence of different businesses is actually the same. Stone is like this, so is He Boquan, that is, grasping the essence of turnover through the appearance of chaos. However, most people are so indifferent to the turnover that authoritative expert John Cheng has repeatedly shouted: "This is the most easily overlooked problem for most enterprises, but it is a very critical and even fatal problem!" Today, the capital turnover rate competition has become the core of modern business competition. You must always be clear: First, how much money do you sleep in the warehouse every day? What is the effective utilization rate of inventory funds? Second, how many times a year do you turn over the funds? Once a week, how much can you get? Bottom line: How to make your capital flow faster? This has become a historic proposition. 7 days of ultra-high-speed inventory turnover, making it earn a lot of money; If the stock exceeds 7 days, the product will be disposed of immediately. "IT products are always cutting prices. If it can't be sold for three months, it is a loss; If you sell it in 7 days, you can sell the best price and the best profit. " Turnover is about speed. The fastest on land is the "maglev train". Speed is also the most attractive secret skill of Hongtu Sanpower. Established only three years ago, Hongtu Sambo is headquartered in Nanjing and has 35 branches in East China, with a turnover of 2.5 billion yuan, making it the largest IT retail store in China. In July 2004, it created an industry miracle that the retail sales exceeded 65.438+0.2 billion yuan in seven days! Ride the dust, leaving all the unprepared competitors far behind. In what way did Hongtu Sanpower achieve faster turnover than its competitors? As we all know, traditional computer cities are all over the world. They are the biggest competitors of Hongtu Sanpower. The mode adopted by the computer city is often the leasing system, that is, the computer city only provides venues, and the products and logistics are solved by the leased dealers themselves. Under this model, it is difficult for dealers who fight alone to form scale effect and lack the right to speak in logistics. Decentralized management ultimately makes it difficult for the interests of manufacturers, computer cities, distributors and consumers to be truly satisfied. Hongtu Sanpower is positioned as a large-scale terminal retailer, and the whole store is self-operated. Hongtu Sanpower chose this positioning because over the years, the strong channels represented by Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Gome and Suning have become brand symbols of quality and credibility, which have great appeal and influence on the terminal market. Similarly, if IT vendors want to enter the East China market, they can't ignore the huge control of the 35 powerful chain stores of Hongtu Sanpower. At this time, manufacturers have no choice but to enter the market and must enter Hongtu Sanpower. Different strategic positioning leads to different scale effects. In the end, the scale benefits obtained by Hongtu Sanpower are as follows: ① The supply of manufacturers is large and the price is low. This is the most important condition for Hongtu Sanpower to accelerate its turnover at a lower price than its competitors. ② More favorable accounting period. Cash holdings have greatly increased, and cash turnover is more benign; 3 product buyout. The huge sales volume makes manufacturers willing to let Hongtu Sanpower exclusively sell its new products; 4 products are specially supplied. Hongtu Sanpower customized special products for manufacturers. These benefits are impossible for dealers in traditional computer cities. When their products can't be sold, Hongtu Sanpower has turned around many times. Just because the strategic positioning of decision makers is different, the fate of the two formats is completely different.