The media has been full of doom and gloom stories about the economic situation with phrases like ‘global recession’ being bandied about. I’ve spoken to a hundred small to medium businesses this year already and a fair proportion of them have caught some sort of scarcity lurgy that has made them believe that the outside world situation is causing an uncontrollable loss of sales for them. perhaps it is to some extent but you can only be certain and blame the outside world when you know for a fact that you are doing all you can.
Most businesses are running with sloppy sales and marketing, don’t follow ideas through and don’t have excellent customer service. They’re very good at hosting their own little pity parties (Zig Ziglar said “I feel like bring some cheese to make it a cheese and whine party”).
One excuse is that “people aren’t buying”. Then why are ASDA creating 7,000 new jobs in 14 new stores and the extension of 15 existing ones? “Oh, but that’s food etc, our service is a non-essential one”. If that’s true then why is BSkB creating 1000 new job?
“Yes, but we are a real luxury, quality, high end product/service”. Yes, and so is Apple Inc. No-one really needs to by a Mac – there are much cheaper PCs on the market yet they sold 2.5 million in the last 3 months (up 9% on last year). No-one needs an iPod but they sold 23 million in the last 3 months (up 3% on last year). No-one really needs an iPhone but they sold 4.4 million in 3 months (up 88% on last year). Apple made their best ever profit in the last 3 months of $1.61 billion. Read that again a PROFIT of £1.61 BILLION!. Turnover was $10.7bn.
How did they do it? Read more here.
Are you doing all you can?
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Ding! 