What keeps me awake (Part 1)

In my dream, it's next year, sometime. Must be summer, because the grass is verdant and the sky has that deep blue that only happens in July or August.

I'm sitting with Someone Important at End-User X. We've been chatting about business in general, and then he hits me with it:

"You know, we stopped rewarding our key clients in October '08. Had to. Company was hemorrhaging money. Incentives were an "expense", and "expenses" got cut. Now here we are and we're still in business. Our customers and employees still like us."

"Why should we start doing it again?"

I was paralyzed--I searched for an answer, some pithy one-liner that would make Mr. Important realize the folly of doing without rewards and recognition, but I couldn't find it. I struggled to say something, but the words were frozen somewhere between my gut and my throat.

And then I woke up. At that moment I realized that the awake version of Pete didn't have an answer either. That's when I couldn't go back to sleep.

The market needs to find that answer, and quickly. A percentage of the end-user population sees us as an "expense" instead of an "investment", and the current downturn shows in stark relief what happens to "expenses" when things get tight.

Everyone says it's gonna get better. Everybody. And when it does, there will be an expectation that things will return to some point in the past. But if we cannot help our client base understand the difference between "investments" and "expenses" we may not see that change.

"Expenses" don't get reinstated--companies learn to live with less. My livelihood, and that of many others, depends of us coming up with the right words at the right time.

Sleep tight....


Pete