NBOP National Board of Operations Professionals

The free course · Volume IV

Revenue and Sales Operations

Nothing Sold Less, and the Number Nobody Owns

Nothing sold less. Everything cost more, one decision at a time.

Start with the diagnostic Or read from the beginning

15 lessons, free, no account and no email field. Each one teaches a single instrument: not an idea, a thing you can do this week and afterwards be able to tell whether it worked.

Take the Operator's Diagnostic first. It spans all eight domains, so it will tell you whether this is the volume you need. The lessons are answers, and answers are hard to hear before you have the question in your own words.

Before you start

What this is, and the sentence the rest of it hangs from.

  1. Start here What this course is, what it is not, and why none of the arithmetic in it requires financial training.
  2. Nothing sold less Every line grew. Every line was defensible. The business lost money and no report showed it.

Part one. The Cost

What a thing actually costs, which is two different numbers used interchangeably.

  1. What a hamburger costs Two definitions of cost, both correct, used interchangeably, producing opposite decisions.
  2. Six pickles The recipe says four. Nobody counts. The variance is invisible per unit and enormous per year.
  3. The half percent A price change of half a percent usually beats a cost reduction of five, and nobody proposes it.

Part two. The Mix

Why an average can improve in every segment and get worse overall.

  1. The mix table Revenue by segment, margin by segment, and the change in each. One table, and it is rarely built.
  2. Every segment improved. The total got worse. Simpson's paradox is not a curiosity. It is a routine feature of any business with a changing mix.
  3. The apples-to-apples column Before comparing any two periods, add the column that removes what changed for other reasons.
  4. Where you sit is a cost Geography, channel and account size are cost structures wearing the clothes of a sales strategy.

Part three. The Owner

The numbers that decide the business and belong to nobody.

  1. The number nobody owns Find the figure that decides the business and has no name against it. Every organisation has one.
  2. The passion owner The person who cares most about a number is not automatically the right person to own it.
  3. The manual test Compute one important number by hand. What you learn is rarely the number.

Part four. The Decision

What to do when the arithmetic says stop and the room does not want to.

  1. Ten to thirty percent A procedure for the accounts that lose money, including the two cases where you keep them anyway.
  2. The steak When the arithmetic says stop and the room does not want to, the argument is never really about the arithmetic.
  3. On method: the retention statistic The most quoted numbers in revenue, and why this volume does not use them.

Common questions

Does this course cost anything?

No. All 15 lessons, the videos, the transcripts and the diagnostic are free. There is no account, and no email address is asked for until after the diagnostic has already shown you your reading.

Do I have to take it to sit the NBOP assessment?

No. It is not required, and it confers no advantage. The assessment is built from the published standard, not from this course, and the people who write the questions are not the people who wrote these lessons.

How long does it take?

About two hours to read all 15 lessons, and about ten minutes for the diagnostic. Most operators do not need all of them: the diagnostic points at the three or four that address what it found.

Who is it for?

People who already hold accountability for how work gets done. It assumes you run something. It is not an introduction to operations and it will not qualify anyone to enter the field.

What is the Operator’s Diagnostic?

A nine question instrument from Volume I. You rank the eight domains by how accountable you are for them, say what share of last month each one actually took, and name the external standard you would be judged against for each. The disagreements between those three columns are the findings. It is the front door to every course here, because it spans all eight domains rather than one endorsement worth of them.

Two things worth doing, neither of which costs anything

One Help decide what a competent operator is expected to know The eight domains carry equal provisional weighting until practising operators say what the work actually is. Takes about eight minutes. Two Check whether you are eligible About a minute. No account, no email field, and nothing you enter is kept.

Read the standard in full, free and in the open, before you pay anything or give anyone an address.