{"id":29,"date":"2012-11-14T18:14:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T18:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wensmedia.com\/\/salesarchive\/permalink\/2012\/11\/14\/131424.html"},"modified":"2012-11-14T18:14:24","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T18:14:24","slug":"planning-to-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ensmediausa.com\/ens-on-sales\/uncategorized\/planning-to-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Planning to Fail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Planning to Fail<\/b><\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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I<\/span> admit I’ve always been a glass half-full kind of guy. But I’m really tired of the negative rhetoric I hear every day.<\/span><\/p>\n

I received an email this week from a sales trainer who said "Let’s face the facts. We’re currently in the toughest economic times we have experienced since the Great Depression of 1933."<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, it’s not a ‘fact’. And just because everyone keeps saying so, doesn’t make it so. We have had several recessions worse than this one since 1933. Here are the facts:<\/span><\/p>\n

Unemployment in the last recession peaked in 2009 at 10.0%. Post Great Depression unemployment rates peaked above that 10% figure in both 1937 and 1982.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Gross Domestic Product was down 5.1% at the peak of the 2009 recession. Two recessions since 1933 saw shrinkages far worse than that, and in fact the 1945 recession saw GDP slip by 12.7%! <\/span><\/p>\n

The first recorded recession in North America was in 1797 when the Bank of England teetered on insolvency due to the costs of the French Revolutionary Wars spilling into North America. Since that time, we’ve learned to live through 47 recessions….an average of one every 4.5 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the ‘facts’ as I see them from my glasshalf-full perspective. It seems that advertising and training budgets are the first to come under the knife during ‘tough times.’ Yet I’ve managed to weather 7 recessions during my career.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m totally fed up with distorted ‘facts’ and negative thoughts which breed negative outcomes. Those planning for tough times in 2013 will inevitably experience tough times in 2013. <\/span><\/p>\n

Noted management expert, Peter F. Drucker, said "The best way to predict the future is to create it."<\/span><\/p>\n

What kind of future are you creating as you plan for 2013? You’ve heard me say it before, but "Our problem isn’t that we aim too high and miss our targets, it’s that we aim too low and hit our targets."<\/span><\/p>\n

I, for one, plan to fill the rest of my glass in 2013. Even if it doesn’t get filled to over-flowing, it will be exhilarating to try!<\/span><\/p>\n

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