Your Reactions To Your Recession
When you discuss the current recession, do you ask yourself:
Is it real or not?
How are you and others responding in order to succeed?
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!
