Growing revenue is usually the first thing business owners focus on when they want to improve profitability. More customers, more sales, more projects. But sometimes the biggest opportunity to increase profit isn’t just bringing in more business. A high-revenue, low margin business is vulnerable.

Your financial leadership team looks at growth from a different perspective. Rather than focusing just on how much money is coming in, a CFO will examine how effectively the business converts revenue into profit and which decisions are delivering the strongest financial returns.

In this article, we go through the things that a CFO might actually change if they were brought in to increase your business’s profitability.

Read Next: How An Outsourced CFO Can Benefit Your Business

1. Rethink What You Sell — And How You Sell It

A good start is examining profitability at the product or service level to determine two things: whether certain offerings are underperforming or taking up disproportionate resources, and whether your current business model is making the best use of those resources.

Of course, the goal isn’t simply to discontinue everything with a lower margin, as some offerings might serve a purpose beyond their immediate financial returns like attracting new customers, encouraging repeat purchases, or complementing higher-margin products and services. In these cases, a CFO might recommend adjusting pricing, packaging, or promotional strategies to improve profitability without compromising their contribution to the business as a whole.

This leads you to the business model itself — evaluating existing sales channels, customer segments, and revenue streams. For example, a business that relies heavily on one-off projects might benefit from introducing recurring contracts to create more predictable revenue. Alternatively, a retailer that sells exclusively to consumers might identify opportunities to expand into B2B markets, opening up new revenue streams through wholesale partnerships.

As we explore in our article on designing your business model for long-term profitability, sustainable growth isn’t just about generating more sales. It’s about building a business model that can consistently convert revenue into profit.

2. Revisit Pricing

Following on from the point above, analysing profitability per product or service can lead to reassessing pricing structures. It’s important to ensure pricing accurately reflects the cost of delivery and the margins required to operate profitably.

Many businesses establish their pricing based on competitor rates, historical figures, or what they believe customers are willing to pay. A CFO would use current financial data to assess whether those prices are actually delivering sufficient profit, taking into account how changes in operating costs, labour, and overheads impacts profit margins.

Of course, increasing prices can affect demand, so the potential impact needs to be assessed carefully. And raising prices across the board isn’t always the answer. Alternative solutions might be introducing minimum project fees, reviewing discounts, or updating service deliverables.

For businesses operating on tight margins, relatively small adjustments can make a significant difference.

Related Reading: Using Financial Reports to Actually Get Results

3. Refine Which Customers To Target

One of the more interesting things a CFO might investigate is which customer segments are actually the most profitable.

Certain customers might purchase less frequently but be more likely to place large orders or commission substantial projects. Others might make smaller purchases more regularly, generating greater value over time.

The cost of servicing different customers also matters. A high-value client who consistently negotiates discounts, requires additional support, or has lengthy payment terms might be less profitable than their revenue contribution suggests.

A CFO would look beyond customer acquisition numbers to understand the profitability and long-term financial value of different customer segments. These insights can be especially useful for marketing strategies, helping the business identify which audiences are worth investing resources in to attract and retain.

In some cases, increasing profit might mean becoming more selective about the customers the business wants to attract, identifying a profitable niche rather than trying to appeal to everyone.

Read Next: How to Use Competitor, Audience, and Market Analysis Effectively

4. Invest Resources Wisely

A CFO is always looking for the most financially effective allocation of resources. Often this means cutting spending that isn’t delivering sufficient value. But a common misconception is that improving profitability is only about cutting costs. In reality, it can sometimes mean recommending additional expenditure.

For example, outsourcing a particular business function might be more cost-effective than continuing to manage it internally. Maybe your senior employees are spending a significant portion of their week on administrative tasks; hiring an assistant or investing in automation could free up those employees to focus on higher-value, revenue-generating work.

A CFO would assess these decisions by modelling the potential financial return, rather than focusing on the upfront expense alone.

5. Fix Operational Inefficiencies

One of the biggest mistakes a growing business can make is assuming that more revenue automatically requires more operational capacity. And sometimes it does; but sometimes the existing business could handle considerably more work if its systems and processes were more efficient.

A CFO is an expert in the art of optimising operations, identifying where time, money and resources are being wasted and where improvements could increase productivity.

They’d examine things like:

• Are employees losing billable hours to avoidable administrative work, poor scheduling, or inefficient processes?
• What other bottlenecks could be limiting how much work the business can complete?
• Is work being distributed efficiently across the team, or are some employees overloaded while others have spare capacity?
• Could better systems, automation, or process improvements increase output without additional staff?

6. Stop Pursuing Growth at Any Cost

Not every opportunity is worth pursuing. Expanding into a new market, hiring additional employees or launching a new service might increase revenue, but each decision also introduces costs, risks, and demands on the business’s resources.

A CFO would use financial forecasts and scenario planning to assess the potential return on these investments, helping the business distinguish between opportunities that are likely to generate sustainable profit and those that might increase revenue without delivering a worthwhile financial return.

We dive deeper into this in our article on The Cost of Saying Yes to Everything in Business.

The changes a CFO recommends aren’t always dramatic. Sometimes they’re relatively small adjustments to pricing, customer targeting, cost management, or operational processes. But when these decisions are based on accurate financial information and a clear understanding of what drives profitability, their combined impact can be substantial.

Having access to CFO-level financial expertise can make a big difference. Importantly, these insights aren’t exclusively reserved for large corporations with an in-house finance department. Through Outsourced CFO Services, growing businesses can access strategic financial guidance without necessarily employing a full-time CFO.

At The Co., we work with business owners as a flexible extension of their team to understand what’s driving their financial performance and identify practical opportunities to improve profitability. If this sounds like something your business needs, we’d love to hear from you.