The Recession (sorry couldn't come up with anything wittier)

I have seen the recession hit the hardest at my job. I work for a large, national, privately-owned company with about 65,000 employees. Being privately owned was an area that our company took a lot of pride in. The company was started in 1957 and had never laid a single person off in the 50+ years they had been in business. This last year that all changed. We laid off about 4,000 people nationwide. People were nervous about the security of their jobs, lots of areas were restructured, pay freezes were implemented, and the office overall felt like a cemetery. People were walking around lifeless, afraid to talk to anyone!!

I work in the outside sales division for the company. I knew as long as I was performing my job wouldn’t be in jeopardy…they need the sales people to bring in revenue! Traditionally, within any company, I think the finance and sales positions are usually the safest. People need finance guys to operate the business successfully and they need the sales people to bring in the revenue.

However, this still was posing a challenge!! I work directly with other large and small businesses to generate revenue. Due to the recession/tightening economy/whatever you want to call it…many businesses are very ‘hesitant’ right now to move forward with any kind of purchases. Keep in mind, last year I brought in nearly $4,000,000 in revenue for our company. These are large purchases my customers are making! Needless to say, I spent a lot of time and hours getting creative and coming up with solutions that would help to increase cash flow for my customers, but still allow them to make their quarterly purchases with us.

Things seem to have slowly been getting better. It seemed as though after the first of the year, people were more willing to move forward with projects associated with their business. However, businesses are still downsizing and laying people off, which can affect us directly. I have learned that the relationships you build with your customers can be the most important thing during these hard times. If they can trust you to come in and make recommendations that will positively impact their business then you can stay successful.