I haven't written here for a while for many reasons, causing limited time to be devided over an abundance of projects. But I guess I should say something about the "hard times", or depression or hwatever people want to call it. To keep things in perspective, the unemployment rate during the Great Depression was more than ten times higher then it is as I write, but to hear the media and our government officials tell it, we are one step from caves and clubs.
Things are turely not so bad. I know a real estate agent who has been working the industry for three years. she has all the business she wants. She works hard, keeps herself aloof from negative reports and naysayers, does time-honored productive ativities, and collects her checks. The are wh works in is said to be one of the worst for real estae sales in the country.
It has always been my belief, and, knock on wood, my demonstrated ability, to find business in sales in virtually any economy. There have been a few times that, in retrospct, I might well have had een greater success had I given in to the draw toward greener pastures. Truely, it is not unreasonable to think that when business is slouchingin one geographic area or industry, that it may be booming in others.
I made a decision while living in Fort Smith Arkansas during the early 70's while selling Monroe's electronic claulators, to go back to school. My alternative option would have been to move either to Oklahoma or to Houston. Thhis was durin the oil boom years at those places. For a good eight to ten years, people in virtually every profession made obscene amounts of money.
Years later, after the boom, I worked as an area Sales Manager for Canon, USA. I heard numerous stories of the years of excess when companies following in money as did the oil, would call up and order a dozen top of the line copiers sight unseen. Even small dealers in little places like Enid Oklahoma, or Lawton, who sadly remenisced about their private jets and overnight jaunts to Vegas, racing to get home before business at morning opening time. Yes, those seemed like the days--and I missed them by my choice.
Instead I graduated and pursed a carrer within a region that seemd to always be in our own perpetual recession. When the boom days were over in the oil states, salesmen were often heard to say there's just not any business out there. It is because they had never learned the basic prospecting and grooming skills that most salesment take for granted. They had to either learn the skills, or more often than not, just got out of sales entirely.
There is something to be said for weathering any industry or economic downturn. Had I taken the easy route, I would not have developed a set of sales and marketing skills that have kept me at the top of the list for all of my sales history.
However, I do concede that if it is necessary, you may indeed find greener sales pastures either in a new industry or by finding a geography where the economies are booming. There are books published and studies all over the Internet that can tell you which industries are booming as well as which geographics are are faring best. You may even decide to change both industries and geographies.
Whatever you do--don't buy into the wholesale media cloud of storms and darkness--unless you sell umbrellas or bear the name Franklin.
