Return to Archive
#1. Jeff Seeley - 11/18/2008 The Best of Times and The Worst of Times

Recent events the business and financial community and within the Carew organization remind me of the opening lines of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities… “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”

Given the current challenges in our economy and financial sector, I would be hard pressed to call these “the best of times.” But from where I sit, the silver lining is in plain view. As the leader of a professional training firm, I am often asked how the economy is affecting our business. After all, isn’t the training budget just a sitting duck for redlining during the next round of cost reductions? My answer often surprises… business is up and we are getting “better” clients than ever before. 

Seem ironic? It actually makes perfect sense. A challenging market creates a fork in the road for business leaders: Cut training budget to save money (or) invest in the professional sales training for your employees to create or maintain a competitive advantage. The choice to invest is typically part of a strategy to offset the sluggish market or gain market share while competitors are “marking time.”

Business leaders who are investing in training at this particular time have several key attributes in common. They are long range, strategically focused.  They recognize their employees as a primary (if not the most valuable) competitive advantage of their business. They believe that training will make a tangible difference in the outcome of their organization’s performance. They are committed to proper implementation, follow up, creating an effective sales strategy, and a support for programs such as our supervisory training.  No training provider could ask for more than that. These clients “get it.” They all but ensure the success of their company’s training investment. 

In a recent issue of Fortune magazine, Apple’s CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs talked about his strategy through an economic downturn: “We’ve had one of these before…  What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn…  In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.”

Without minimizing the genuine challenges presented by the current economy, I encourage everyone to look long and hard for opportunities -- they do exist.  Keep in mind, growth during this downturn will be amplified, making for improved position upon the inevitable economic recovery with an professional sales training solution is implemented.