Making the most of it

At a time when we are told that the economy is going gang busters, and Treasury is looking to rake in billions of dollars, it is not surprising to see crocodile tears from retailers year-on-year performance has hit a flat spot.

There can be no doubt that the floods, fires and natural disasters have created downward pressure on our urge to rush out to the sales, and online access to quality offers from overseas are biting into domestic sales forecasts.

People have rediscovered the security of savings and downsizing personal debt levels, at a time when household disposable income grew by 6.4% over the year to September in nominal terms.

NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne suggests that there will be a pick up in business lending in the first half of the new financial year. The RBA is already preparing for counter-inflationary interest rate rises as the commodities boom puts pressure on wages and the three-tone economy divides the nation into boom time, disaster reconstruction and slowdown zones.

Smart companies will make the most of a strong national economy and the proximity to Asian markets to reach out for export opportunities and find ways to expand the quality and diversity of their offer to premium customers.

The strong Australian dollar, recoveries in Europe and USA and an the rising cost of capital over the next year demand a review of plans and priorities towards emerging markets and strong quality customer relations.

Marketing managers need to examine their client books to find those that have started to expand into new territories and improve the quality of their data-mining capacity to find the growth prospects.

It’s time to get access to small and medium enterprise data bases to find the hot spots that require targeted advertising and  quality sales calls in order to make the most of the overall high level of pent-up demand.

Equally important is a review of the elements of the business that are in decline to find a way to cull those divisions that are going to require substantial reinvestment to stay in the same spot over the next six months.