Cost or Investment?

Recently, I was talking to a friend about some stuff going on in his company. Times are tight and he was complaining about all his company's cost cutting. He mentioned that the latest thing that their corporate office is focusing on is mileage reimbursements to the sales guys when they travel to see customers. The accounting department is coming down hard on field sales because of the money being spent and demanding that they cut cost.

I couldn't help but think of how differently two people can see the same situation. One guy can look at this travel cost and see an "expense," something that the company should cut back on. I on the other hand look at this cost and see "investment." If anything in these hard economic times, we should be seeing our customers more not less!

There are a lot of things going on in this economy that we can't control. Companies are cutting back on spending money. Loans are harder to get. People are unfortunately losing their jobs. But one thing I know, we still have choices. We can choose to carry a positive attitude about us. We can choose to spend more time with our customers stressing the value our products bring to market. We can choose to give better service, not worse.

Sure, times are tough. But we can either focus all our energies on what we can't do, or we can choose to use this as an opportunity to invest and beat our competitors to the punch!