An Exception to Sloppiness

I had a client with an approximate $60 AOV. That client couldn't get away with anything. Absolutely anything. Any level of sloppiness was met with p&l challenges. When you have a low AOV, you have to have a high attention to detail to make the business work.

In B2B, you might have a high AOV ... it's common to see $2,000 orders or $4,000 orders. Do you know what happens when you have a $3,000 AOV? Sloppiness. You can get away with any level of marketing expense mismanagement, because you are generating $1,800 of gross margin per order. Make a ton of mistakes? $1,800 of gross margin per order might go down to $1,750.

Meanwhile, the same $50 level of sloppiness puts the $60 AOV brand out of business.

If you are a marketer, you might be amazed at the level of discipline (or lack of it) that the B2B marketer with a $3,000 AOV possesses when you switch jobs from a low AOV brand to a high AOV brand.

If you work for an agency or are a consultant, you intuitively know this fact. Your job is much harder convincing the $3,000 AOV B2B brand to do anything that improves the p&l. The agency pro needs to know the audience the B2B brand speaks to before determining whether a B2B brand is smart or not.