As a Milwaukee Brewers fan, I can’t say I particularly enjoy watching the New York Yankees spend $423.5 million on three players this offseason. After all, the combined salaries they are paying CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira are worth more than my entire team. But, I guess a small part of me can appreciate it, at least from a business perspective.

While the rest of baseball is acting very prudent with their spending this offseason, and bracing for a tough year at the ballpark due to the slumping U.S. economy, New York is being aggressive — granted, they are the Yankees and money is not hard to come by. They do, however, have the right idea on how to survive and succeed if Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is wrong and it turns out baseball is not “recession proof.”

Many have said the cleaning industry is recession proof, too, but I don’t think many jan/san distributors are comfortable sitting around to find out if it’s true. The distributors who will come out on top when the economy rights itself will be those, who like the Yankees, were aggressive.

Now is the time to invest in your company. Hire additional salespeople to reach a bigger customer base. If current staff members are underachieving, use this time of high unemployment to your advantage and find new workers. Spend time retraining all employees to continue providing the best service to customers. Utilize new technology to streamline your warehouse or delivery operations. Even take over market share by buying companies that aren’t able to compete in this rough economy.




 

 

 

 

 

 




POSTED ON: 1/1/2009