The most common complaint heard from business people is that margins are terrible. There is a lot of price resistance. Nobody is jacking up margins by hiking prices right now.
Conclusion: the way to better profits right now is to be a better manager. Smaller companies are never in a position to take the lead in raising prices, even in the best of circumstances. But they always have the opportunity to be better managers. The best of them focus on what they can do now internally - not externally. Not by increasing prices, or financing equity or raising money - but by getting more efficiency out of production and more effectiveness out of people.
If they manager better, they will be better positioned to take advantage of price increases when market conditions make price increases possible once again.
