Home » Credit Crunch Corner
Updated: 31/5/10
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| What are we & our manufacturing partners doing to help you in the current climate? |
What we were already doing as standard
For more information, please call our sales team on 0844 8800 765 or +44 1488 73366 |
| Useful Advice & Links |
What's going on out there? |
We are certainly in interesting times. Right now, there are more significant influences on our businesses than there have ever been and they aren't all positive. Having said that, every cloud is supposed to have a silver lining, it's just hard to recognise it for what it is sometimes. Commodification. That's an interesting word we have been hearing more of recently. It is meant to mean that more and more of the products we have been selling in the past are fast becoming commodities. As such, it's not just projectors & flat screen monitors that are now being sold off the page and on the web. It's no use us digging our heels in saying "that's our domain" and ploughing on regardless trying to sell what we have always sold. We will just find ourselves sitting in our ivory tower with very little business left to shout about. Unless.... finding a niche, be it product or by vertical market sector. The internet. Gone are the days of users using the local yellow pages to find us. In those days, it was quite hard for them to find out much about the products we sold and our competition too. Now of course anyone can find out all about the products for themselves. They can also find a long list of people prepared to provide them too. All this in minutes and out of hours. If we can't be found on the web and justify why they should call us, they won't. 2nd generation/more savvy users. They know what they want and the options for where to get it. Here's where the bun fight starts. If we don't want to get into a Dutch auction, it's back to good old proper selling. That is, if we can remember how to, or ever knew in the first place? Too many people in our industry have never been invested in and actually had any proper sales training. AV kit working on IT networks. How many of us could hold our own in a conversation with an IT manager, unless it was about football? They don't like people messing about with their networks, especially if they know we don't know what we are talking about. Oh dear! I can see a need for some training here. IT resellers selling AV. There's nothing to stop them. Anyone can sell a projector, a flat screen monitor and an electronic white board, can't they? That's where really knowing AV rather than just what's flavour of the month, comes in handy. If we really do know our stuff about how and where to site the display and speakers to best suit the audience, then we will win hands down every time. Here's another reason to get niche and avoid the bun fight. The IT market is used to working on low margins for the hardware. The pound. The UK appears to be one of the worst off in this recession. As a result, the pound has dropped like a stone compared to the US dollar and the Euro. Anyone importing product has to put their prices up. Sadly the exchange rate market doesn't give us any warning, so most of the recent price increases will have come with very little or no notice at all. It's the same for all of us, so it shouldn't mean we lose business as a result. It's worth taking a look at how long your quotes are valid for though. The economy. Aagh! Sadly we are in a recession. Not much we can do about that. Here's where you could take a very negative view: getting hold of money is much harder than it used to be. People who have it won't spend it and people who don't have it, can't get it. However, if that were true, no-one would be buying any av kit would they? That obviously isn't the case, because we are still getting business. The cake is still there, it just got smaller. The task now is just to get a bigger slice. Credit insurance. Who cares about that? We all should! As a result of the financial institutions messing things up, they are now being much more careful about who they lend money to and who they will insure. That presents us all with a potential problem. Whether we are a manufacturer, distributor, reseller/dealer or user, we all buy from our vendors. Most vendors insure their debtors (we do). That means most of us are given an 'insured limit' by someone. The credit limits we are set are based on these insured limits. These insured limits are under constant review. If the underwriters see something about our business that they don't like so much, that limit gets smaller or sometimes taken away altogether. That makes it harder for us to do business with each other. Avoid submitting an annual return that doesn't look good and not going to court will ensure changes aren't triggered. |
Gems of Common Sense |
Since August 08 we have been hungry to read anything we can get on how to stay strong in this recession. Books, articles, magazines, web sites, you name it. Most of it was irrelevant to us or waffle, but there were some gems of common sense that struck us and we have done our best to apply them to our business: "Be pro-active. Don't batten down the hatches and hope to ride it out". "Communicate, communicate, communicate". When times are tough it is easy to slip into uncertainty, confusion and fear. Constantly keeping our colleagues informed of our situation and what we are doing to help ourselves by email, walking about and monthly 'state of the nation' company meetings has been key to maintaining morale and avoiding this. People don't like surprises. Proactively keeping our bank informed of our situation and plans, they don't like surprises either. "There is nothing better in life than a life or death struggle to get your priorities straight". Enough said. "Company strategy must be flexible to take advantage of shifting markets". No one likes change, just because it's change. However, we have been monitoring what's going on out there and changing our approach accordingly. Our colleagues have all been involved during the planning and as a result, have bought into every change we have made. "Develop your existing customer base". Finding new customers is hard enough in any climate. It's much easier and faster to sell new products and services to existing customers. Then keeping them by providing the best possible customer service. "Go and visit your customers to find out what you are doing that is right, what is wrong and then fix it". Our senior management team got out from behind their desks and went to see a random selection of our customers. We are also giving our customers every opportunity to give us their feedback - to bridge any gaps between what we are promising and what we actually deliver. As a result, we have made numerous changes. "You can't expect your sales team to be both great farmers and hunters". We were. Not any more. We have identified those who are naturally suited to one or the other role and restructured our sales team last November accordingly "Develop sales in markets that do have money". We have been getting much more involved in Digital Signage and 3D. "Cash is king". It's always important, but in this climate where overdrafts are being reduced or removed rather than increased, it's critical. So, staying on top of our debtors, reducing our expenses budget and turning dusty cardboard boxes into cash has been our goal. We even looked at invoice discounting. We discounted that idea the minute we realised it wasn't at all appropriate in a flat or declining market. "If statistics are delayed, you have no way of guiding the ship other than looking at your wake". We used to just monitor sales revenue and wait for quarterly management accounts. Not any more. We have prioritised getting the information we need to run the business and are now able to produce reports for our now monthly board meetings where we can see exactly where we are and make decisions much faster. "Hit the competition where they aint. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if they are undefended". We won't go into detail here because we don't want to point out to our competitors, where they aint. "Goals are useless unless they are so clear that everyone understands them and can do something about them every day". Brilliant when applied. We hope that some of these points struck you as they did us. Links
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| Special Offers |
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| Time is money |
A current marketing campaign highlighting labour saving features to save you time and money |
| Part Exchange |
When you are upgrading an existing installation, why not turn the unwanted products into cash? Click here for our dealer area. You will require a password. Or, call our sales team on 0844 8800 765. |
| Packages |
We and our manufacturing partners have put together a selection of product packages that offer you great value for money. Click here for our dealer area. You will require a password. Or, call our sales team on 0844 8800 765. |
| Combi Deals |
Receive additional discounts by combining 2 or more manufacturers product on the same order. Click here for our dealer area. You will require a password. Or, call our sales team on 0844 8800 765. |
| Clearance |
We regularly publish an up to date list of our Clearance stock items. These items can be ex-demo, repaired, superseded or just slow moving. They all represent fantastic value for money and are available on a first come first served basis. All sensible offers are considered. Click here for our dealer area. You will require a password. Or, call our sales team on 0844 8800 765. |
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