What’s Up When The Economy's Down?

In yesterday’s RBR (Radio Business Report) Bill Stakelin, CEO of Regent Communications commented they found that its existing clients were, over the course of time, spending less on advertising. He went on to say that there is a need today to have larger sales staffs and that Regent management determined that they needed more sellers on the street to bring in new clients. “Existing clients are not buying as deep and not spending as much, so there is a need to increase the client base,” Stakelin said.

With the current economic situation, we are seeing the same thing happen in Phoenix at our stations. Clients are not canceling, but are cutting back and certainly clients are not buying as deep as before.

We speak with auto dealers and they tell us of the slow down in new and used car sales, gaming, furniture, jewelry, nightclubs are all off as well. And it goes with out saying that anything related to real estate is in the tank.

Stakelin and his team are dead on! YOU MUST GO OUT AND FIND NEW BUSINESS and a large developed staff can do that. We are constantly trying to increase the size our staff, but sometimes it is easier said than done.

To offset the impact of an economic slowdown, we went through an exercise with our team to identify which categories of business are recession proof and even thrive in a soft economy. A few categories that we identified were; resale shops, dollar stores, car repair shops, auto paint shops, discount grocery stores and funeral homes (cremations).

I would welcome your thoughts! Please let me know which businesses and categories of business you think are thriving right now.