While the economy is problematic it is not 'the' problem. If you identify the economy as the problem you will never find the solution. The problem today is businesses have become unable to sell their products without the aid of incentives, easy credit and free money. For decades businesses and individuals became overly dependent upon artificial stimulus and quit training their people how to effectively sell their products and services. Selling skills and sales training lost out to advertising and gimmicks.
Sales is the name of the game again and must be relearned from the CEO to the sales teams. The company will be forced to break its reliance on incentives, gimmicks and government stimulus. Easy money, free credit, special terms and incentives are gone from the landscape requiring each of us to learn the most basic of abilities. Selling skills are the fundamental backbone to the solvency of every company. It is time companies quit blaming the economy and start training the company how to sell, promote, market and assist in revenue generation.
I was recently interview by The World News Journal for making a claim that I can make any company regardless of the market conditions profitable. This is not just meant to blow my own horn but to give people some hope, do the right things, focus on the things that count, and insist on market share and you will succeed regardless of the economy. A few examples; one our clients in Georgia up 150% over last year, another one in the Midwest up 28% in the first month and another one in the Rust Belt up 23% in just six weeks.
For any company it must start with the CEO and management deciding to gain market share, then push all initiatives at developing new skills and the insistence that all become unreasonable with the execution of these new actions and ideas. The companies that are moving the needle have decided four basic things: (1) gain market share, (2) not use market conditions as an excuse to settle for other results, (3) to disagree with the actions and thinking of the majority of the market, (4) get help from outside to hold the company accountable for taking new actions.
The economy itself is not the problem because I can show you companies, individuals and entire industries failing long before the current economic contraction. The problem today is that those that make up the economy lack the skill set, determination, work ethic, creativity and willingness to do whatever it takes to resolve the problems of the market.
It is impossible to be in business for any length of time and not experience an economic contraction. Some will be long, some short, some very painful and some just a blip. The good news is twofold: (1) there are exact and precise actions that you can take to counter any contraction, and (2) contractions are excellent opportunities to gain market share. Remember the economy may be problematic, but it is not the problem. The solution today is to make sales training, sales skills, and selling the priority of every post in the company starting with the CEO.
Grant Cardone, Sales Training Expert and Author
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Maybe. But I think we need more.
We also need to disperse fairy dust across the USA with crop dusters.
Then we'll see this economy really start to hum.
If marketing was still "Tell the customer what your product or service is," attached to either an explanation of what advantage it can provide or how your product is better than the competition, then I wouldn't have a problem with marketing.
But at some point it changed to "Our product is cool, if you don't have our product you are not cool," and variations of that theme. We went from trying to get the customer to choose our product over an alternative use of their money to treating our product as a need instead of a want. Now we "need," a new car, a new purse, a new video game, and because these are "needs," instead of wants, we can justify any behavior to get that stuff, including borrowing beyond our means or ignoring other needs (such as the security of savings).
If you look at when that change occured in marketing, you will see that was also when Americans went from savers to spenders. Which is not surprising, you can have spending discipline if you are spending on wants, but if you have unmet needs you will do what you have to to meet those needs. Granted, Americans need to learn what is truly needed again, but marketing as it currently stands is not helping that learning process-and is activly fighting it.
I worked for years in product dev., sales and marketing. I agree sales folks are pretty lame. I had 28 working for me at one time. I started making money when I let them all go and niche marketed the goods myself. If you are lucky about 2 in 10 are good salespeople, the rest are order takers, or replacement part specialists, as l like to call them. Lazy, lazy , lazy.............good at golf though, and I never had the time to play!
For the last 25 years the marketing & sales mantra of most US companies has been............."we want the same thing, that looks different, that's $2.00 cheaper and we can sell it." One wonders why there is no growth?
But if easy credit wasn't available then the underlying problem of outsourcing and wage disparity would have been addressed years ago, instead of allowing it to fall out all at once. People would have noticed long before now that we indeed had a problem. Without good paying jobs there is nobody to push imported junk on. And my guess is Main St. is never going back to those ways again.
So it's time for real solutions from the business community instead of endless spin and telling middle America to just keep spending. Middle America is wiped out. People in the business of necessities will thrive and non essential goods businesses will be hit hard. $5 dollar cups of coffee are now a thing of the past.
oil has nothing to do with it
On Monday, August 3, the author of How America Can Escape the New Great Depression will be interviewed on the KBZNZ Money Talks radio program hosted by Jerry Slusiewicz. The times are 1pm, and 7pm Pacific Time. The link is:
http://kbznz.streamon.fm/player/player.php?username=KBZNZ&stream=24k&type=3
Until the crime is squarely confronted for what it truly is, legitimate business efforts simply cannot continue. The first thing that you must do in any emergency room is to STOP the bleeding. Thoughts of "rehabilitation" and so-on can only come much later.
This is some of the funniest economic related comments I've ever heard or read.
A brand spanking new ecconomy is the only real fix tho.