How to deal with employees in this economy?
It has been a brutal year for employees in the contracting world. With massive layoffs from manufactures and distributors and with sales slow, owners have no choice but to fire or lay off employees.
As painless as it is they really have no choices or do they? Maybe sometimes it’s easier to cut then to sit down and rethink there business model.
Does there model work in this economy? For some they cut there marketing budget which is by the way the worse thing they can do. How do you get sales without marketing?
Every marketing guru I no will tell you that this will be the kiss of death. But how do you get the pigheaded owners to understand this. To me this is not a plan. But an easy way out?
Speaking of plans I believe that you need to have one if your in business and the nice thing about your plan is that it needs to be tweaked and tweaked again.
But the main thing is to have a plan and WORK it. Look I know things are tuff out there right now. And many of the owners who have been doing this for awhile need some advise from the pros out there on how to survive this market. They are all up to there neck in debt [some but not all] and they have no clue what to do next.
So at what point do they get help and ask or hire outside help to navigate this market. My belief is that as long as you have sales you can make the company work. So a marketing expert is needed most as far as I can see.
Yes, there are marketing pros out there for hire but how can you afford them because the ones that shine are very expensive. Well my answer to this would be to take a look at how much in sales that you need to break even. Let’s face it just breaking even for some is worth it right now.
I say you do what needs to be done to keep your world in order. A lot of the marketing pros will work a percentage of increased sales only. Now they might what in for a year so that they can reap maximum benefits but hey it’s worth every dollar to keep the ship a float.
So tell me what you think about this post. Are you one of the contractors out there that needs help? Please write me and let’s see how we can help you FREE of charge. This will be my way of given back to our industry.
Happy Selling
Glen Kohlenberg
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