In this article, I will lay out three areas you need to triage, four areas where you should respond and three strategies on how to profit during these times.

Three Areas You Need To Triage.
Triage, when ER doctors and nurses determine who lives, who dies and who will be healed later, is exactly the right approach to take in your business as do in their jobs. Instead of patients you will be triaging your customers, projects and cash.

1. Triage your customer relationships.
   • It’s going to be critical to decide which customers you can keep, which ones you need to renegotiate terms with.
   • Fire your unprofitable or difficult customers now and use great discretion in choosing the prospects to pursue. Someone else may have fired them first.
   • Most companies start first by providing extra value and service to their incumbent customers. During these times, their loyalty and fear of switching will keep them close to you if you stay close to them.
2. Reevaluate ongoing projects.
   • Take a hard look at what you’re working on. Kill any project with an unclear payback or one, which will consume more resources than will plausibly make in the next 36 months.
   • Restructure any project that’s critical but has no clear payback, accountabilities or resources.
   • Prioritize and focus on completing any project with the ability to enhance revenue, reduce costs or protect wealth.
3. Manage your cash.
   • With liquidity likely to be scarce at best, hoard what you have. Use cash as a reward for vendors, employees and others who are sacrificing for you or your goals.
   • Use your cash or lack of it as a weapon in dealing with companies and customers who rely on you and previously expected you to finance receivables.

Four areas where you should respond.
Once you have triaged your customers, projects and cash, look to four areas where you can respond to your new reality. These are:

1. Price for profit and to avoid loss.
   • Price your products and services in terms of the value they not only provide to your customers but how they help your customer’s customers profit. Learn where and how your products make others money and align your pricing with theirs.
   • Where you must make sizable investments in raw materials, ensure your pricing terms allow you to recoup your investment as soon as you’ve made it.
   • Reward your customer’s liquidity with favorable pricing. Those who can pay you up front deserve discounts.
   • Finally, use your pricing to protect yourself from those who exploit you. Immediately raise prices on customers who pay slowly. Create collection terms for poor payment just as you would offer good terms for fast payment.
2. Manage your credit furiously.
   • Do what you can to get more credit. If you can open a second line or other source of credit, do so even at a price you would not normally pay, especially if these are from confidential or “angel” sources.
   • Use your credit prudently. Don’t assume you need to finance everything yourself. Get creative and aggressive in what you ask others to carry and fund.
   • Thirdly, use other people’s money wherever possible. Many aggressive sellers and bargain hunters may have credit you can use in the course of doing business with them.
3. Lead decisively.
   • Show your confidence in all you say and do. While you may not feel it, your optimism, confidence and conviction will be a beacon of hope for those who are more scared than you are.
   • Motivate your vendors, staff and customers to stay committed, keep their promises and take the same risks you are in an anticipation of better times and the promise of deferred rewards.
   • When times are tough, show your stoicism in the face of bad news and inevitable hiccups.
   • Demonstrate balance in your short-term pursuit of survival and your long-term perspective for better times and deferred rewards.
4. Reinforce your Best and Highest Use®.
   • Ensure that you and your company are focused on what you like doing, you are good at doing and your marketplace values you for doing.
   • Bring as much value and enthusiasm to getting better and doing better at what you focus on.
   • Take heart in knowing you are very good at what you do and this is a true advantage in these times where impostors are exposed, pretenders prove incapable and amateurs just give up.

Three strategies on how to profit.
After you have triaged your business and responded in four areas, turn your focus to new strategies to profit now and over time:

1. Take market share.
   • Understand switching costs for the prospects you are trying to close. Make it easy for them to move their business to you and your superior value.
   • Buy up your rivals for pennies on the dollar. Many companies today do not have enough sales to cover their overhead. Better yet, just buy the companies’ customers without the overhead of their failed companies.
   • Grow your share of your existing customers. If you are trusted and invaluable, then ask for more of their business. Be quick to respond if another supplier stumbles, or is on the ropes.
2. Sell new value.
   • Instead of selling just your product or service, take responsibility for your customer’s success and outcomes. Offer to warranty or insure that their success will come from your product or service.
   • Recast your value proposition if your customers’ needs are changing. If so, rethink how you get paid, how you package your services and how you price your products.
   • Realize you are going to work harder, spend more time, and possibly get paid less for serving the same customers. Consider it an investment in the future.
3. Invest for the recovery.
   • Now is a great time for buying services and raw materials at a discount. If you can, invest now at a fraction of what it may cost to buy what you need when the economy picks up.
   • With sales down, you probably can find extra time to work on the future. Take advantage of not being busy and get busy building your next success.
   • Finally, as you come out of denial and self pity, push yourself into actions that will ensure your success and preserve your survival. Work harder and more decisively while your competitors are whining and paralyzed.

Our next year will continue to be hard as credit remains tight, new sectors of the economy are impacted, and the country adjusts to our new reality. You can grow your business during this recession if you triage, respond and develop strategies to profit. As the small guys in a world of goliaths, the recovery is largely in our hands as it always has been and will surely be again.

Need assistance growing your business during recession or difficult economic times. Contact Andy Birol below for more help.

As you take power for what is the most remarkable statement our country has made in ages and having run the best campaign ever, we know you are taking over what will be the worst job in the world.

• We want your optimism to be contagious and your can-do-attitude to inspire us
• We are terrified you will tax us and hold us up as scapegoats, while we are survivors
• We are hopeful you will see us as family leaders not large corporate thieves
• We are one-third democrats, one-third republicans and one-third independents*
• We love your dreaming but worry we are not included in those dreams
• We care little about NAFTA but worry more about being virtual
• We want to give people jobs but aren’t sure we can carry them
• We believe we give service to society by virtue of the value we provide to customers, the people we hire and the young that we train
• Lastly, it’s always been lonesome as a small business owner and we have no expectations that government will help us. We love our country and want to see it, and you, succeed.

While the entire world is holding their breath as to what an Obama victory really means to them, fear, uncertainty and doubt have already gripped most small business owners. From losing or maxing out their credit lines, to fearing that consumer demand will simply dry up, entrepreneurship is in upheaval. On one hand, it is still the American dream for so many; on the other, it is a grim reality for so many who depend on it.

Regardless of their industry, tenure, or age, never before have most business owners been so apprehensive about their futures. Why? Because, all the institutions and resources they count on—particularly banks, big customers, skilled and available workers, and economic stability—are all in disarray. Whether they voted for Obama, believing that a recovering middle class will lift all small business ships, or against him, fearful that the new burden of regulation, health care costs and increased taxes will torpedo their plans, business owners are downright scared. And when entrepreneurs are scared they become inactive or at the very least stop expanding. Why? Because owning a small business is all about:

• Being confident that you know your threats
• Knowing how to avoid and exploit your threats
• Confidently spending the resources to do so

Why are business owners so nervous? Because for the first time in decades, they don’t know what to do. Nothing has prepared them to cope and face what is upon them. Wondering if they will have a working business at all has replace traditional “E Myth” goals of “working on one’s business” as opposed to working “in one’s business.” The new threats are not the same as the old threats and knowing how to even respond, let alone find the courage to invest the needed time, money and energy in the correct responses, is beyond the “pay grade” of most owners.

But before we can address these concerns, how did entrepreneurship get to this point? Since 1980, business ownership has grown from a wry dream for most to a total investment for so many. From under ten million in the 1980s to some 25 million† today, nearly ten percent of Americans depend directly on their own businesses for financial security and another ten to thirty percent are customers, vendors, employees or investors of small business. From being seen as outsiders or rebels, the small business owner has become in many ways the focal point of the American Dream. Large corporations spend billions marketing to them. This last election created “Joe the Plumber” and the small business owner’s laments of paying too much in taxes, having bad health care options and struggling for visibility and respect are daily themes our news media covers ad nauseam.

As importantly, the entrepreneurial movement has produced a new lifestyle and set of values. Magazines, such as Fast Company and INC. along with owners-only support groups such as EO and VISTAGE have sprung up to enhance the entrepreneurial way of business and personal life. Entrepreneurship is so ingrained in our society that it has outgrown the stereotypes of being part of one political party. A 2007 Fortune Zogby Poll of business owners reported that 37% are registered Republicans, 35% are registered Democrats and the remaining are Independents.

While the novelty of entrepreneurship has worn off, today’s business owner remains as much a lone wolf as ever. All of the 20% who survive their first five years† do so by quickly learning to sell, manage cash, find and keep good people and create satisfied customers. But over the last few years, multiple forces in the economy and society in general are converging into a perfect storm and threatening both established business owners as well as the dreams of emerging ones.

So in closing, President Obama, we as business owners are fearful of what you may do to us and the harm you can bring to our small businesses yet we wait with baited breath to see if you can deliver your promises and help us continue our American dream of successful entrepreneurship because “Yes, we can.”

* 2007 Fortune ZOGBY Poll of Business Owners

† US SBA

Tags: Business, Owner, Prayer, for, Obama,, Business, Growth,, Fear,, Anxeity,, Entrepreneur,, entrepreneurship

• Big customers don’t pay you for 60 days or more
• Credit-unworthy prospects approach you after stiffing your competitors
• Clients make you subsidize their growth by discounting your services

Being owed money and not getting paid is always disturbing and disrespectful to you and your company. You counted on the cash and undoubtedly had it earmarked for some critical purpose.

But in bad economic times, broken promises of timely payments are more than a nuisance. Many good businesses are struggling with bad cash flow. With their credit lines tightening, and their customers not paying them, how do you respond when your client says he or she can’t pay you on time, in full, or at all? How do you choose which customers to keep, which to ditch and how can you do so to your advantage?

Here are ten rules for bending your credit policies when your customers want more than you bargained for.

1. Make concessions based on joint accountability.
   If they are asking you to compromise, demand a similar giveback in return. For example if a business owner is asking for relief, have they first taken a pay cut before they are asking you to do the same?
2. Don’t change your terms because your client changes their mind.
   If he or she suddenly makes the excuse your products or service no longer solve their pain or create new profits they are distancing themselves from keeping their promises. Stand your ground and take legal action.
3. Watch what your customers do and not what they say.
   If they aren’t cutting back everywhere or still taking vacations, don’t subsidize their bad judgment or unwillingness to sacrifice.
4. Credit their Credible Behavior.
   If they have kept previous promises you should trust the same individuals to do the same. Beware of the same bait you have taken in the past. Learn only to get screwed in new and different ways.
5. Don’t assume any accountability for their dysfunctional behavior.
   Bad times expose impostors. Learn all the reasons why your customer is in hot water. The chances they will cut the same corners or shirk their responsibility again are much greater in bad times.
6. Prepare the “MIL’s” that you Must, Intend and Like to get through every negotiation and establish your BATNA (Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement) where it’s better to walk away than settle. .
   The book Getting To Yes by Fischer and Ury is a must-read for preparing for any negotiation.
7. Stand firmer on receivables in a transactional business than you would a relationship business.
   Lawyers and accountants usually let their receivables slide because they know they can bill their clients for years to come. If you have no chance to make it up in the future do not compromise in the short run.
8. Negotiate as a peer, never as a subordinate.
   When a customer informs you they are breaking a promise, its no time for them to be heavy handed with you. They made an agreement and cannot live up to it. If they are telling you and not asking you for relief they think they can squeeze you; so squeeze back.
9. Keep reminding them of their commitment.
   Most creditors are good people who want to pay up. Follow up persistently and incessantly. The squeaky wheel gets the attention and paid first.
10. Getting paid equals respect.
    If you are known as a tough cookie, you are more likely to get paid. If you are known as a pushover, well…

Tough times will bring the best and the worst out of people. While past behavior is usually a good indicator of their next actions, desperate people in denial will do anything. Keeping close to your customers, doing reference checks on prospects (just as they do them on you) and providing high value based on your Best and Highest Use is the best defense. Always being this tough has a final benefit. It allows you to subsidize creditors you believe will survive and who will remember you for reaching out to them in their time of need!

Tags: Credit, Economy, Management

Here are some Professional Services Lessons and Small Business Implications that I took away from the discussion:

Lesson I: Partners with the same professional degrees and training form tight, loyal and like-minded groups.
Implication: Small business partnerships are founded by experts with unique and complimentary skills. Don’t expect different owners to think or act similarly. It will be harder and take longer to achieve the same esprit d’corps among small business partnerships.

Lesson II: The real definition of any Partner is to be a Rainmaker, who can land and grow clients, regardless of whether they have managerial duties in the firm.
Implication: Small businesses require strong operations, finance and sales/marketing in equal measures, so different Partners proficient in different functions are needed.

Lesson III: Successful partnerships do not pay compensation to equity partners based solely on their shares but on their performance and contributions to their firm’s profits.
Implication: Regardless of ownership percentages, small business Partnerships would be well-served to set up compensation plans based on their partner’s job descriptions and performance

Lesson IV: Professional services firms make new partners, regardless of their experience or financial buy-in, work in their firm for a couple of years before bestowing formal partnership titles. This ensures they “fit” with the Partners regardless of how they “look on paper”
Implication: Small businesses would be well-served to similarly “date before marrying” instead of rushing into the arms of new partners, VC’s or private equity firms.

Lesson V: Professional services firms recruit talented individuals by offering partnerships, especially to those with books of business that can produce immediate revenues for the firm. Partnerships also provide the firms with the ability to institute and enforce non-competes’ on Rainmakers, protecting the firm’s long-term cash flow and revenue streams.
Implication: Small business partnerships are usually created when partners bring different resources to the table including technology/inventions, operating ability, money and sales/marketing. As a result of these divergent contributions, it is not as easy to protect the firm from the power or departure of any one Partner.

Lesson VI: Partners in professional services firms build long-term client relationships which are leveraged through having less experienced/expensive professionals perform most of the actual “work.” Having the right amount of these professionals is critical to the Partnerships’ profitability.
Implication: Despite the personal relationships small business Partners build with their customers, much of the actual delivery of their firm’s value cannot be done by the partner. Consequently, maintaining the same level of trusting relationships is difficult. So is the actual delivery of consistent “work” in the form of products, especially through distributors or inexperienced professionals.

Lesson VII: The recurring nature of relationship sales allows Partners in professional services firms to wield extraordinary marketplace power by closely managing their clients.
Implication: The transient nature of most buyers and customers makes building relationships much more difficult, especially since sales are usually more transactional than they are relationship-driven. Few Partners in small business know their customers as well as their counterparts in professional services do, despite spending more time and money on formal sales and marketing.

Partnerships in professional services firms have been around for centuries and laws and business practices ensure many of these will continue for decades and centuries to come. The goal of the small business Partnership should be to learn and apply the characteristics that can work in their businesses and not try to imitate what cannot be applied to their businesses.

Tags: Partnerships, Small, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business, Growth

If schottenfreud is fun from a distance, why is it so painful to watch someone you care about become so impervious to their impact? It’s because we care. In my work, I have seen the following examples of owners breathing their own exhaust.

• After failing to eliminate his salesforce by going direct to customers, the leader invites the reps to “come back home as all is forgiven” by his marrying the youngest sales rep.
• Returning from France and bragging at work how much money he spent on wine, an owner cuts payroll and publicly borrows money from an employee.
• After kiting a client’s postal check and firing his partner’s son, the tables are turned when he alerts the sheriff who impounds the owner’s boat just as he’s skipping town on it.
• After showing off his new Ferrari, an owner takes me to his board room where he has taped (not framed) Penthouse centerfolds to the mahogany walls.  

While the stories are horrifying, I can vouch for the good intentions and years of sacrifice that preceded each owner’s fall from grace. But at some point a chip switched in the owner’s head and the disconnection from reality snowballed down a slippery slope of complete self-delusion.

How can you tell if an owner’s ego and braggadoccicio have overwhelmed their confidence and conviction? What kinds of brakes and controls can you hope they embrace? It is high time when an owner

• Dismisses ideas as being irrelevant to their business when the ideas would create accountability
• Responds to questions regarding how their business is doing, by insisting there is no way to better it. Period.
• Believes that luck or being in the right place at the right time played no role in their success.  

Business ownership has so little accountability and oversight that without devil’s advocates and contrarian data to strike a balance, dysfunction is likely. When owners start believing their destiny is assured, it’s more likely that things are never as good or as bad as they think they are.

Here are some simple questions to ask and assure their feet are on the ground and they are not breathing their own exhaust.

1. What is their true price of being wrong?
2. What is their true benefit of being right?
3. Where does their comfort zone really end?
4. Where does their dogma really begin?

In such crazy times, there seems to be a fine line between stoicism and irrationality. Help the owners you know to stay on the right side and remember my favorite quote, “We become what we tolerate!”

Tags: accountability, judgement, dysfunction, owner

• At a networking event, you overhear a colleague refer an ideal prospect to a competitor of yours. When you ask your colleague why he referred your competitor and not you, he says, “I didn’t know you did that.”
• Worse, even, you learn your customer just suggested his friend call an unqualified competitor instead of automatically pushing the work your way. And, when confronted, your client says, “You do that? I had no idea!”
• Your own employee hears and ignores your client drop multiple buying signals. As gently as you can, you point this out and your employee responds, “Oh that’s right, I guess we do that.”

This is painful for three reasons:

1. Your marketing and sales messaging is ineffective
2. You have no idea how much business you are losing every day
3. Your colleagues, customers and employees feel sheepish for not knowing better

But what can and should you do? Keep refining and simplifying your message. Look at it through the eyes of your colleagues, clients and staff. Have you really made it simple?

Who do you refer and why is it easy to refer those you can? Make it as easy for your supporters as you want them to do unto you. Are you able to refer your closest clients and colleagues to their prospects? Where you have done so, isn’t it because your clients and colleagues:

1. Communicate a clear, current and simple grasp of how their best and highest use is purchased and referred
2. Know how their message is understood and repeated by others
3. Track how and who is referring them and conversely who and how they are referring others

Hearing the damning words, “I didn’t know you do that,” is most painful when your own customers or clients are hiring others to do work you could be doing. Ask yourself, “Do you have a 100% share of your customer’s business?”

If not, then start uncovering and gaining these opportunities so your clients will see, first-hand, what you do!

Tags: Referrals, opportunities, clients, referring, prospects

Credit and capital for most our business lives has been close to free and abundant. But alas! While rates are still low, cash is no longer abundant. With the current credit crunch, many perfectly acceptable credit-worthy companies are seeing their lifeblood of liquidity dry up. What can you do to stay liquid in a financial desert?

1. Don’t be a bank to your own bank.
   Reject any bank’s requirement that you must deposit money with them on order to borrow from them. If a bank can’t lend you money, don’t let their mismanagement of sub-prime mortgages become your problem. Don’t be there for them if they aren’t there for you.
2. Don’t be a bank to customers or anyone.
   Many companies, especially large ones, string vendors along as a matter of policy. If large companies were forced to pay smaller vendors on time, our economy would run much better. Do your part by just saying “no” to this kind of business. Remember that you don’t have a customer until their check clears your bank. Build in price-escalation clauses into your contracts for the materials and services you need to buy to meet your customer’s needs.
3. Barter for what you need to buy.
   It is remarkable how far a bit of creativity will take you! I had a client who provides professional services and swapped for office equipment. Once you are sure you need to buy something, shop around and ask. You will be amazed who else is in your situation and might traded with you.
4. Cut down on your credit addiction.
   It is said that in good times, the average American is two paychecks away from being homeless. How dependent is your business on credit? If you don’t like what you see, change it. Pay down those lines and learn to pay as you go instead of borrow what you can. Borrow only for inventory or services that you can convert and sell to someone else right away. Remember, the lower your credit line the more your business is worth.
5. Entice your customers to finance your growth.
   Give your customers generous discounts for prepaying their bills. Ask them to cover your costs of buying special inventory or equipment up front. Hold them accountable for promises they make. Take aggressive actions against those who won’t pay for commitments they make.

My friend and client Joe Pease, says during this environment, it is a great time to buy companies because:

• Valuations assume liquidity. If you can buy a company with cash, you will get a bargain.
• Poorly performing companies can be purchased for the price of their sales, as they cannot afford their overhead.
• Tuck-in acquisitions where smaller companies are being purchased by larger ones with more efficient infrastructures.

The old adage, “Cash is King” is as true as ever. Manage yours as if you were a banker. Actually, manage it better than that!

Tags: Bank, economy, small, business, entrepreneur

Here is what I learned and some implications if you are employing and managing 20 Somethings (2OS’s)

Learning: 2OS’s make short term commitments called hookups which are made and broken quickly
Implication: Don’t expect commitment but hire for projects and structure them to achieve short term goals

Learning: 2OS’s draw great validation from the packs they create
Implication: Hire several people to do a job together or one job that can be shared by a pack

Learning: 2OS’s seek affirmation by their peers within their generation and are always taking pictures, dancing and dating in groups
Implication: Find ways of recognizing satisfactory performance through and by their peers

Learning: 2OS’s - This MTV generation parties and thinks in short bursts, multi-media and sound bytes
Implication: Structure their learning, work days and reward systems to favor bursts of frenetic productivity, not steady 8 hour days

Learning: 2OS’s look for direction from leaders and demonstrate conformity in their packs.
Implication: Pinpoint the leaders and create rewards for their constructive leadership and ability to get their packs to deliver.

Twenty-somethings lead a life and consciousness completely different than anyone older than them. Many live with their parents but probably will be the first generation not to live better than their parents. They have inherited a world of abundance both in lifestyle and problems they did not create and do not relate to.

Blind to what they see as old school and blissfully ignorant of time, longevity and investing for the future, they live in the present. And yes our future leaders will emerge from this group!

Tags: 20-somethings, lifestyle, travel, employment, generation

So when we are talking about entrepreneurs these days, who are we talking about? In working with teenagers to 90-something business owners, their differences are remarkable. Here are my observations by key age groups (yes, these are stereotypes as entrepreneurs are unique by definition):

The Greatest Generation: These octogenarians came out of the military on the GI bill and started businesses after years of corporate training. Disciplined as a group, they’ve built stable companies through sacrifice and are taken with the profound change and dismayed by the lack of commitment, duty and teamwork they must accept in the younger workforce. Hopefully their self awareness allows them to be wise counsels to younger entrepreneurs smart enough to listen to their wisdom.

More Money than Timers: These 60 to 70’ish owners have succession and transition on their minds, regardless of whether their businesses are successful or not. Worrying about retirement, changing competitive trends, and sustaining their own passion, most are not coasting even thought they hoped they would. Coming from corporate backgrounds, these owners strive to run their own meritocracies and believe that everyone wants to be accountable for their results.

Baby Boomers: The great age wave of those from 45-65, many who are second and third generation entrepreneurs, value their lifestyles equally with their businesses and believe they deserve rewards as much for hard work as for results. Their businesses are vehicles for multiple goals and they are often conflicted and their focus suffers. These entrepreneurs are very open for ways to accomplish their unique and complicated goals

Gen X’s: The first of the new generations younger than me, these 25-45’ers place at least equal emphasis on family and personal satisfaction and often see their businesses as much as a vehicle to accomplish this as one to create wealth for themselves. These owners are the most interested in growing their businesses on their terms and as soon as possible. Many of those who started their businesses did so without gaining the typical experience of working for someone else and “making their mistakes on someone else’s dime”

Millennials: These 15-25 old and youngest of entrepreneurs are coming into their own businesses in the most unusual of ways. Without paper routes, or door-to-door sales to cut their teeth (as a parent I can tell you they are not available as they were for me) these youngest of entrepreneurs are understandably turning to the Internet. Not surprisingly the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list is the founder of Facebook.

Whether you are an entrepreneur, work for one, or sell to one, take these differences to heart. As my consulting business is now split evenly between clients older and younger than me, I can tell you I am learning and applying my understandings of generational differences to help my clients grow on their terms every day. But, as Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend proved in their latest tour, passion, conviction and energy are essential whatever your age, as a rock star or as an entrepreneur!

It is logical that in a recession buyers are more hesitant, require more guarantees and have to feel greater pain before investing. But is this recession real or not? While there are job losses it’s not a typical recession, especially since the services sector is up and even the manufacturing sector may not be down. Only construction and financial services seems to prove there is any recession at all, particularly considering energy prices should be causing more inflation.

So, if sales are OK, how are small business profits? While many of us assume they are down, we know some firms are compensating by taking advantage of their ability to export more goods given the cheap dollar.

So is the recession occurring at all? The more you ask, the less agreement you may find! Some feel that sales of luxuries should suffer at the expense of necessities while others will tell you that luxuries are impervious to a recession. If some regions are more prone to recession, then why are many Midwest manufacturers doing quite well?

Perhaps we can agree that a recession is a consequential recession. Namely even if our results are not be off, we react to our customer’s decisions to pull back, and their moves, in turn, are repressing our confidence. So what is the role of confidence in a recession? Here are some conclusions:

• If you do not know how to sell what you sell, you lose confidence
• Not understanding your own business’ value is the definition of losing confidence
• Not understanding how you profit and therefore cannot automate it or leverage it is the path to stagnation
• Not understanding your customer’s buying process means you cannot understand how to modify your selling process to succeed
• Not understanding how you brand means your brand is weak or non-existent.

During recession, guarantees of loyalty, time and experience cannot be taken for granted between buyers and sellers. And unfortunately, the disconnection that occurs between buyers and sellers in terms of relationships and value are the most dangerous outcomes of recessions.

One of the unintended consequences of the 1980’s and 1990’s cost cutting through supply chain management was to separate face-to-face sales people from buyers. Now, not only are they separated but with automation and virtual business they are faceless and don’t even know who to sell to let alone connect with them. So in conclusion, maybe the recession is best defined by this separation and distraction of sellers and buyers to the point that they are no longer communicating. This lack of communication not only diminishes trust in others but leads to reducing trust in one’s self!

Tags: economy, small, business, recession