Economy Update - CFO's Pessimistic - What to do?!
The see saw we are on is moving fast...how should we be thinking about all this?
There is without a doubt an information war happening right now to frame the economic outlook.
And it’s very clear that you can’t take anything on its face.
This week CNBC released a piece (full article here) with the headline reading:
“Recession is coming before end of 2025, generally ‘pessimistic’ corporate CFOs say: CNBC survey”
That sounds bad.
But look a little deeper into the piece and you’ll see that 60% of these CFO’s say they expect a recession in the second half of the year. Still bad right?
Look a little deeper, and you will see that this survey included a whopping 20 respondents. 20!
That means we have 12 of them, who say they are pessimistic and see a recession coming.
Further, as the article states, these are “chief financial officers at large organizations.” In other words, CFO’s at huge companies. They may have a great view of the economy, being that these massive companies do sometimes track along with consumer sentiment. And maybe their views have downstream implications.
But I’m sorry, I just don’t think the views of 12 CFO’s at big companies should be driving how we feel about the economy. Had they wanted to get a different result with this survey, and painted things more favorably, they would have designed the survey differently and the article would have been much different. Like I said, I believe now is a time more than ever to be cautious not just about the economy, but about the information being fed to us.
Unfortunately though, these kinds of headlines have an impact on people.
And definitely there are real things and big changes happening right now.
For example, a California winery I support recently lost all of their Canadian export business due to tariff uncertainty. This will be tough for them to overcome.
You can not discount that some industries face potential upheaval, and this casts uncertainty over the entire economy.
So what do we do about it?
Of course the advice I’ve given many times before is applicable even more so today. We have to keep pushing forward, even harder. Double down on your marketing. Ramp up the number of leads you are bringing in, because conversions may be down. All that stuff.
And keep in mind that in a lot of ways…all the economic turmoil discussion being hoisted upon us is about something that hasn’t happened yet. These are people talking about something that maybe might happen down the road. So let’s not get too carried away with the bad news bears.
But more importantly, we can not ignore the fact that many of our prospects are thinking about these things, and feeling uncertain.
When moving a prospect from lead to client, we all have to deal with objections. If you understand the mind of your prospect, often times you are tackling objections that you know they have, but they have not verbalized.
And so, it’s important to speak to economic uncertainty in your sales presentation. To leave it unsaid leaves an objection unaddressed. The elephant is in the room. Some may tell you “we’re gonna wait on this because we are unsure about the economy and thus our growth prospects.” Others won’t be so direct. But you know they are thinking it.
It doesn’t work to tell them that they are wrong and that everything is ok. After all, they likely know their industry pretty well. But you can still build a case to demonstrate that DESPITE this uncertainty, right now is the right time to get rolling with your product or service.
How you do that will be different for everybody. So give it some thought.
I believe most businesses should be looking at this, and potentially building some modified messaging into their marketing and sales messages.
Here are a couple more pieces I shared last year on this topic:
On Marketing in Times of Fear and Uncertainty
There’s some good stuff in there ^^.
Pushing onward and upward,
Josh
Josh Turner
Multiple times Inc 500 + 5000, WSJ Bestselling author, dad, #LetsGoBlues, top LinkedIn expert, helping small businesses get more leads and clients online.
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