For a start, compared with our European neighbours, we live in a low-unemployment economy. So growth in sales volume is not an acute need from an employment point of view. And what have we been told for the last 10 years by business gurus? That more organisations should be measured on their profitability strategy and results, not their ability to generate sales growth at any price. We now have so many "touchpoints" with the customer - stores, the web, post, e-mail, mobile, and so on - that opportunities to cross-sell are multiplying before our eyes. Harnessing those opportunities efficiently and effectively is another matter.
In the retail sector, the complaints about a softening of consumer spending are entirely to do with the fact that too few organisations in the sector are concentrating enough on fostering profitable customers. With the downward pressure on prices and rising costs, many are having to sell more and more simply to stand still. A sales-volume mentality will always be vulnerable to macro-economic trends. A profitability or "return on customer" mentality enables an organisation to gain control and weather those storms far better.
So when will we hear economists starting to redefine economic growth in terms of efficiency and profitability, instead of sheer output? When will the need to utilise (appropriately) every selling opportunity or touchpoint be well recognised and well executed? After all, it is greater profitability that increases tax revenues and economic prosperity. I, for one, want UK plc not simply to be gaining share, but also to be improving margins.
David Jefferies
head of marketing - Europe, Pitney Bowes DMT,
Feltham
Middlesex
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