Financial Turmoil – Monday Morning Memoir 10/20/08

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote. The last few weeks have been filled with market turmoil and internal growth struggles.  As the Presidential race heats up it appears as though the markets will take their time recovering. The crash of ‘08 will be felt for a long time. Frankly, I have been hearing a lot about changing life styles since everyones 401K is worth 40% less.  It’s amazing how bloated our life styles can get and what we really need.  Since I can’t say, “this is what we did through the last recession”, I can only say don’t listen to the noise and cut back as much as possible to make ends meet.  Get rid of as much debt as possible and put your cash in a safe place i.e. a bank or Gov’t bonds.  In regard to the growth pains, I am continuously amazed at how some space between management and sales can help grow your revenue stream.  When we were very small, about 10 people, we micro managed every aspect of the sales process.  Maybe it helped us understand our clients better and helped refine the sales process quickly but it sure hampered their performance.  At this time, we are finding better success allowing leaders to emerge and push each other on the sales floor. Since the motivation is coming from within the sales team it’s much more effective.  It’s evident that the team feels more empowered to achieve their goals and when the goals are achieved they are more proud of themselves that they accomplished it.