The Double Dip Depression
Oh, boy ... look out. Double Dip Depression is here.
You see it, hear it; we're in it. Just the other day, I was driving through a business park – empty – and a tumbleweed literally blew through the parking lot. It was a bad movie.
Today, banks have the bailout money, but they ain't lending. We can’t hire staff without taking a major leap of faith – not in the candidate, but in the system. AMEX, MC/VISA – they’ve got us all by the short hairs, and they don’t let us raise our personal “debt ceiling”; get the scissors out.
Five years ago, there were three U.S. automotive companies; today, just one – and GM don't count.
The times are tough, and our troubles are artificially extended. The current administration doles out plenty of blame and zero leadership. Do people still blame the “test” for poor scores? “The test is unfair,” they say. Really? A product of little leagues not keeping score.
Was it that long ago when we were blowing out quotas? Offices, businesses, mortgage companies and churches were buying a copier, fax or printer for each employee.
Everybody had a job. “Green” was in.
We owned two houses, three cars; bars were crowded on Wednesdays; Vegas was packed every day. Folks who couldn’t sell their mother a box of football candy were making bank, pushing paper.
That paper – that tainted-turned-toxic paper – brought it all down.
Remember those times? Feeling depressed? Suck it up; we’ve got work to do.
There has never been more opportunity for us – the individual selling professional – ever before in history (I know – 25,000 years of history; don’t get me started).
MpS changed everything. We changed our perspective on the print environment, with most of us shifting our gaze off the black marks and toward content, acknowledging the entire ecosystem. The change was a secular impact on our model, our established processes and us as individuals – a shift in power. It is still shifting from OEM to dealership to the individual. The heavens have been blown into stars, falling to us.
Okay, a bit touchy-feely, but my point is a simple one: Now is the best time to improve your unique, individual position. Not your position at work or your position in the MpS ecosystem – your standing, your position in life.
A new age of selling is upon us, and if you're in MpS, you are the vanguard, the tip of the spear, “boldly going” where few selling professionals have gone before.
There are no experts. This is virgin growth. We are on the frontier without guides, yet we have eyes, and our unfiltered and clear vision makes us the experts. Do you see that?
Think about this the next time you are being lectured on closing ratios and hear that very expensive talking head drone on about, “It’s a game of numbers,” “Every ‘no’ gets you closer to a ‘yes’,” “Flex them in,” or “How many dials did you make today?”: Now is the time to sell yourself before your company. Now is the time to expand your outlook before product training.
The battle is not easy. There are those who lament their misfortune, looking to drag us down. And the old guard, the centralized power establishment, will fight the change, will degrade and demote you and your beliefs. The machine doesn’t sweat, bleed or feel. This doesn’t matter; it cannot win.
Why? Analog is bigger than digital.
So while some of your contemporaries are transfixed on the Double Dip Depression, get a good book, study our world and go boldly forward.
Posted by Greg Walters on 08/15/2011