How to ruin a company - fast.

Raise all prices by 15 percent.

We had 4,000 employees and had been the world leader in our field for about 10 years at this time.

We were not the price setter, though. But we did very well and had a reasonable operating margin, enough to satisfy our corporate owners and shareholders.

Then we got a new president, an American B-school graduate. He came from Stanford, as I recall.

After some time he declared to us in the sales department (about 90 people), operating worldwide.

• Raise all prices 15 percent
• Go back on all orders in house and negotiate a 15 percent higher price.

I tried.

We all tried.

We suffered, badly.

• No new orders for nine (9) months.
• The customers with orders in place said a flat “are you out of your fr…..g mind?”

Our build cycle, order to delivery, was about 18 months.

Nine months later the factories started to look empty and were laying off staff, weekly — NO NEW ORDERS.

“Biggest boss” at our owning company got wind of this and came to town.

Our president was fired the same day and we all in sales got new instructions.

• “Forget all orders about price increases — go sell as competitively as you can.”

It took about two years for the company to regain its world-leading position.

By that time, I and just about half of our previous sales organization were gone, replaced by eager young souls.