Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Economy: We’re Doomed, I tell ye, doomed….
Anyone remember Private James Frazer the eternally pessimistic undertaker from Dads Army? OK, nor do I, but his strapline as above rings lots of bells for the moment, so lets just put this in perspective.
Without a doubt, the western economy is undergoing a substantial correction. The fallout from any market correction is often, but not always, sustained inflationary pressure, economic uncertainty and some job losses.
Right, now lets’ see who is feeding us this information. In the UK the press are doing their job properly. Now you might think that their job is to report the news accurately – sorry, but their job is to attract attention, justify their expense accounts and sell news. Whether that’s newspapers, magazine articles, radio interviews or the telly. At the moment they are doing their jobs very well indeed using the subject of “The Credit Crunch”
At this moment, the Big Banks are suffering financial fallout due to their own greed, and now they are realising their potential losses, they are pulling back from lending money to each other. This makes corporate debt harder to secure, and more expensive. If any business has to pay more for its debt, it has to make more from its sales, by either increasing sales or increasing margins on those sales, or both.
Now its hard to increase sales when the media are using words like 'Recession' regularly, it undermines consumer confidence, they stop buying, which means the only route for businesses to survive is by increasing margins, which means raising prices, which puts up inflation, which the media latch onto as further proof of the 'impending recession', which undermines confidence even further etc etc. The net effect is that newspaper and magazine sales go up, well done to the journos, shame about the economy eh?
In business, there are two types of people, those that listen to the hype and get sucked in, and those that crack on with the job at hand. It is no coincidence that those that crack on, get on, make money and succeed. It is a sad shame that those that get sucked into doom-mongering and down-talking, are usually the ones to go, usually because their sales figures are bad, usually because they have convinced themselves that the situation is hopeless, these are the sales people that are truly 'doomed' in the words of Pte Frazer.
In the abbreviated words of Mr Kipling (the poet, not the cake manufacturer )
“If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. The world will be yours and everything in it”.
Wise words, but these are wiser:
“Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs”.
So stop worrying about what you can’t change, concentrate your efforts on what you can change, focus on each and every opportunity that comes your way, talk to prospects, listen to them, help them get what they want, and in turn watch what happens to your sales and profitability.
DATED: 20.08.08
FEED: PTL
Without a doubt, the western economy is undergoing a substantial correction. The fallout from any market correction is often, but not always, sustained inflationary pressure, economic uncertainty and some job losses.
Right, now lets’ see who is feeding us this information. In the UK the press are doing their job properly. Now you might think that their job is to report the news accurately – sorry, but their job is to attract attention, justify their expense accounts and sell news. Whether that’s newspapers, magazine articles, radio interviews or the telly. At the moment they are doing their jobs very well indeed using the subject of “The Credit Crunch”
At this moment, the Big Banks are suffering financial fallout due to their own greed, and now they are realising their potential losses, they are pulling back from lending money to each other. This makes corporate debt harder to secure, and more expensive. If any business has to pay more for its debt, it has to make more from its sales, by either increasing sales or increasing margins on those sales, or both.
Now its hard to increase sales when the media are using words like 'Recession' regularly, it undermines consumer confidence, they stop buying, which means the only route for businesses to survive is by increasing margins, which means raising prices, which puts up inflation, which the media latch onto as further proof of the 'impending recession', which undermines confidence even further etc etc. The net effect is that newspaper and magazine sales go up, well done to the journos, shame about the economy eh?
In business, there are two types of people, those that listen to the hype and get sucked in, and those that crack on with the job at hand. It is no coincidence that those that crack on, get on, make money and succeed. It is a sad shame that those that get sucked into doom-mongering and down-talking, are usually the ones to go, usually because their sales figures are bad, usually because they have convinced themselves that the situation is hopeless, these are the sales people that are truly 'doomed' in the words of Pte Frazer.
In the abbreviated words of Mr Kipling (the poet, not the cake manufacturer )
“If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. The world will be yours and everything in it”.
Wise words, but these are wiser:
“Never look backwards or you'll fall down the stairs”.
So stop worrying about what you can’t change, concentrate your efforts on what you can change, focus on each and every opportunity that comes your way, talk to prospects, listen to them, help them get what they want, and in turn watch what happens to your sales and profitability.
DATED: 20.08.08
FEED: PTL
