6 worst things to do in a recession

Are we mired in a long-term recession or will the "green shoots" of economic growth we're seeing be the real thing?

Without a crystal ball we can't predict an official end date to the downturn but one can lookout for the six worst things one can succumb to:

Ignoring the situation. If you're not paying attention to your personal financial situation it's time to start. Has your credit limit been slashed or your APR spiked? Has your credit score dipped? How long could you live off your savings if you lost your job? The ostrich method to money management never works well. That's particularly true if lenders are contacting you about delinquent accounts (i.e. your mortgage).

Take a deep breath and open those bank and investment account statements, review your budget, pay your bills on time and keep in touch with creditors.

Pulling money out of investments. If money's tight it can be tempting to dip into investments to maintain your lifestyle. Doing so, however, will cost you - in several ways. You may have to pay early withdrawal penalties and fees; you'll have to pay taxes on the funds you receive and, you may miss the market recovery and fail to recapture your losses.

If you're considering cashing out because of fear that you'll lose more by keeping it in the market, let cooler heads prevail. Instead remind yourself how much time you have before you need the funds, check to make sure you're diversified and consider wise defensive investment moves instead of stashing it all under your savings account.

Borrowing more money. Do you carry a credit card balance? That's a clear sign that you're spending more money than you earn each month. Until legislation is passed, credit card companies can continue hiking interest rates, tacking on fees and penalties and put you further behind. Get financially healthy and lay off the credit spending before it spirals out of control.

Slacking off at work. It's time to get serious about staying employed. Nearly six million jobs have disappeared in 17 months (since the recession's start in December 2007) and the national unemployment rate is at its highest since 1983. Companies are facing serious cash crunches and making drastic changes to trim costs.

For example, FedEx, which touted a "no-layoff" policy for years, recently let more than 1,000 employees go to save the company $1 billion. The days of assuming your job is secure are over. Get there early, work hard and add value any way you can - your livelihood increasingly depends on it.

Co-signing a loan. With banks tightening lending guidelines, fewer people are able to qualify for a loan on their own. If a friend, partner or family member really needs the funds, they may approach you to help. Remember that co-signing makes you legally responsible for repaying if the other borrower can't (or won't). Can you afford that? If not, risk the relationship and walk away for your own financial safety.

Jumping in to the real estate market. With attractively low home prices and interest rates, the real estate market is enticing for novice real estate investors. Before racing in, accurately assess your risk tolerance - what would happen if you lost your job? Could you float the loan? Do you know how to manage real property assets? What type of return do you need to make? Learn from the housing bust that created the current recession and move cautiously.

Risks of Cowboy Sales Messaging & Four Ways to Avoid It

Source: http://www.zigzagmarketing.com

The article is quite interesting and I am sure, lot fo Sales folks out there will resonate with what the author would like to point out in this article....  it does hold true - i have experienced it myself.. 

Studies have shown that up to 90% of marketing collateral is considered utterly useless by sales. Frustrated sales people feel like they're not getting what they need to succeed from their product marketing team so they create their own freelance messages and sales tools. 

Commonly referred to as "cowboy messaging" it can derail your revenue stream if not collared quickly.   Furthermore, product marketing teams are equally frustrated because they expend tremendous efforts creating sales tools that aren't used.

The three most common risks associated with cowboy messaging are:

 

1.  Wasted Time.   Product Marketing is creating tools of no value, while sales people spend valuable selling time creating their own messaging. In today's economy, sales pipelines are thin and qualified opportunities are more difficult to find.  How much time and resources are lost on this effort?

 

2.  Lost sales.  Confused buyers extend sales cycles and ultimately go to a competitor or do nothing at all.  As buyers research potential vendors to learn who will best meet their needs they seek solutions to problems.   Sales people too often talk all about the product and never mention how it will help the customer.  This usually drives business away.

 

3.  Potential misrepresentation.  Claims and statements of the cowboy messages often appear in proposals, statements of work and even customer contracts where the claims can become legally binding.  Well-meaning sales people overpromise in the sales process and customers hold them to their words.  Once the deal is won others must deliver on those promises while your sales person is off to the next deal.  Over promising and under delivering creates ill will at best and legal liabilities at worst. 

Four Ways to Get Product Marketing & Sales on the Same Page

 

1.  Perform a quick collateral audit. Collect all the collateral product marketing created for sales and ask two questions of the sales team for each tool:

• When do you use this tool in your sales process?
• How useful is it in helping you win?

2.  Create a "Stop Doing" list for product marketing that includes the time they spend creating tools that are not useful in the audit.

 

3.  Get the product marketing and sales teams together in one room and don't let anyone out until they have messaging that works and consensus on the top five sales tools that drive higher win rates

4.  Ensure your messaging and positioning statements focus on buyers - not products.  The more your messaging focuses on the buyer the greater your odds of differentiating and winning.

Buyer-centric messaging is simple, gets to the point and answers the ultimate buyer question, "Who solves my problem best?"  Sales people that offer solutions to problems win more business than sales people who hawk products. 

Effective speaking!

One of the main reasons why Obama is so popular and effective is his oratory skills. Yes, oratory skills can be honed. You can actually improve your public speaking skills by joining Toastmasters. You will learn how to develop the necessary skills in engaging your audience, build on your subject matter, learn about delivery, phrasing, etc... To get to Obama-level, you need natural charisma, much like JFK and Martin Luther King. Leadership qualities, to a large extent can also be honed, but to be a natural leader where people instantly look up to you is a quality that is hard to find. I have come across a few articles that tries to look at how Obama works his oratory skills. Here are the main points:

a) Always know your audience, their expectations, their anxieties, their concerns. When you speak to a group of parents-teachers, its different, when its with union workers about to lose a lot of jobs, its different, when its in front of TV, its different, when you are speaking to political reporters, its again different.

b) Following on the first point, you then broadly define the issues at hand, bring up the context of issues in the audience's perspective, show that you know what they are concerned about. Anticipate what they are thinking. Bringing up points on both sides of the issue and clarify your stance. Justify your stance. At the same time, you must not be seen to be playing your audience - hence you must show integrity, honesty, pragmatism and be realistic about the issues.

c) You have to learn to pause, to allow the audience to reflect and absorb the points. You need to build up your argument and thesis and let your words resonate. When you rush past prepared text, you will lose the impact key words and phrases can have on the audience... e.g. "yes, we can" long pause...

d) Use short phrases. Use phrasing techniques to bring your audience along, like a boat ride, riding out each wave of euphoria and reflection.

e) Be aware of your body language. No fidgety movements. Eye contact and facial expression must be correlate. You have to rehearse how to maintain calmness. If you have to flip pages, do it slow and deliberate. Always look out to the audience as if you were commanding the troops.

f) Always have a good beginning, a casualness (or light hearted humour) to embrace the audience to your side before you launch into your speech. Be aware that you do not climax in your speech too soon, you need to b uild it up, much like a conductor writing the various parts for his orchestra - you want to bring things to a crescendo.

g) Always end well, with the key phrase or what the audience should get from your speech.

A person even of Obama stature cannot do all things by himself. In Obama's case, he has a very very good speechwriter in Jon Favreau. Though only 27, he has the necessary energy and idealism to act as the sounding board. He has the tenacity to understand various tough issues, and drive through the points in a clear way in line with Obama's political views and leanings. That is not an easy task. He has to write the way Obama is thinking, and even the way he usually speak, because if not the speech will sound contrived and regurgitated.

Its not easy to speak well with integrity and class.