Growth is the least questioned objective in most businesses. Revenue rises, the market reads it as health, and the internal conversation moves to how to get more of the same. The question of whether this particular revenue is worth having is rarely put, because the reporting that would answer it does not exist.

Gross margin flatters the tail

Most contribution analysis stops at gross margin, which is where the flattery happens. It excludes the cost to serve: the account that needs three site visits a quarter, the customer whose orders arrive as spreadsheets and have to be rekeyed, the contract with a service level that requires holding stock nobody else needs.

Add those back and the picture changes materially. In the range reviews we have run, it is common to find that a fifth of lines or accounts generate no contribution at all after the cost of serving them, and a smaller group actively consume it.

Winning more makes it worse

This is where the growth objective turns against the business. A sales team incentivised on revenue will find more of whatever is easiest to sell, and the easiest thing to sell is usually the thing that is underpriced relative to its cost to serve. Success in that segment scales the loss.

The symptom is familiar: rising revenue, flat profit, and an operations function that is visibly struggling while the commercial function reports a good year. Both are telling the truth.

Decide what you will not chase

The remedy is not a pricing exercise. It is a decision about which segments the business is prepared to lose, taken deliberately and written down, so that the sales team is not quietly punished for declining work it was previously rewarded for winning.

That decision is uncomfortable in the quarter it is taken and almost always right by the second year. It also has the useful side effect of freeing capacity for the segments that do pay.