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+15% Credit Crunch Impact

October 8, 2008 at 1:14 pm · Filed under rant, anti-biscuit dunking

Listening to BBC Radio 4 most mornings recently, they’ve an innovative approach to consistent programming. Eight o’clock, Business Editor Robert Peston talks you through constructing your own gallows. Quarter-past eight, a pair of luminaries recommend their take on which rope makes the sturdiest knot and how to tie the most effective noose in it. 8:24, six minutes of adverts for ‘wonderful’ programmes to look forward to elsewhere around the network.

Normally a pretty positive person, this repetition is getting a bit much for me. A former Chief Investment Officer of Baring Asset Management (Michael Hughes) passed on sobering facts. There have been (a remarkable) 42 banking crises since 1970. That’s more than one a year around the globe. The average impact has been to reduce GDP by 13%. He intimates that this one is worse than ‘average’. At any rate, does this mean that if our selling numbers currently add up to 100, then pretty soon they’ll drop to 87? If we’re hitting “8″, then are they destined to fall to “7″?

Of those with the binoculars looking for golden skies, retail giant BHS’s boss, Philip Green, reminds us that (even though his latest profits have dropped) we need a little perspective. Business will not disappear, he reminds us.

So how will this effect the solution selling rep? The low-hanging fruit has clearly all been picked. One mindset is to overshoot last year’s results. If previously you could reach 100, and this year doing the same would lead to 87, then perhaps now, simple maths tells us we must focus on how to sell 115.