Get market share now in Swaziland !

By FAITH SHONGWE, Swazi News, on November 20,2008

The best time to get market share is when the economy is at its lowest point.

Reports indicate that some of the world’s biggest economies such as the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States of America are sliding into recession and it has been said that this will have crippling effects on growing economies like Swaziland.

International Speaker and Entrepreneur-Sales Specialist Bill Gibson said the best way to understand the economic cycle was to first understand how it worked.

Economy

"The best time to gain market share is when the economy is down. Having said that, one will probably ask when one could tell the top of an economy. This very simple because this is when everybody is excessively optimistic about where the economy is going.

When this happens credit and cash dries up, production slows and as the economy goes down, layoffs begin and people start putting off buying. As the economy picks up again there is more hiring and buying, higher prices and the scramble to produce," said Gibson.

He was speaking during a seminar on How To Succeed in Business In any Economy organised by Nedbank Swaziland Limited yesterday at the Swaziland Water Services Corporation (SWSC).

He added, "The best time to get market share is when the economy is down because when this happens everything else is down and the energy among other competitors is down as well. The competitors tend to take it easy on advertising their products because they probably think that there is no point in advertising because of the state of the economy and this is the best time for businesses to take into the loophole and use it to benefit their companies. For instance, if companies in the same industry were making average sales of about E500 000 last year and the market is reduced to an average of E300 000, but one company is making average sales of about E450 000, this means that this company has used the loophole to attract more clients from the other companies in the industry," he explained.

Gibson further warned that this may not necessarily mean that there would be more sales for the company that took the chance while the economy is down, but what it meant was that they would have increased their client base.