I knew the economy was bad - I've seen how much my own business has dropped off over the last 18 months, I've had conversations with people who were laid off about leads on new opportunities and about going out on their own. I've seen how many firms don't have enough RFQs/RFPs to need to outsource SOQ and proposal writing services.
But I absolutely didn't realize how bad things had actually gotten until I sent out my company Holiday cards last week!
If I cut out family, friends and people who know me strictly as a professional entertainer, I still had almost 1,000 people in my Outlook address book. And I sent Holiday cards to every one of them, in more than two dozen group emails. I also sent a number of individual emails so I could send a personal message with those cards.
As always when someone does a bulk mailer, there were "daemonmailer" emails about messages that couldn't be delivered. What was scary was that there were almost 160 messages that couldn't be delivered, or about one out of every six!
I was absolutely mortified. But I was also reminded that, as the A/E business winds down in such times, firms rarely lay off the technical folks for whom they have no upcoming work. They always seem to lay off the marketing folks first, because these folks are overhead. Most of these firms have never snapped to the question, "If you lay off the marketers today, what will your technical folks bill their time to tomorrow, or next month, or next year?"
I just hadn't realized how bad things had become. I hope that many of these 160 undeliverable holiday messages were due to people changing jobs, whether they've stayed in the A/E industry or not. And I hope that, at some point, all of them will send their new contact information to their mailing lists because these are people I don't want to lose track of.
At any rate, to all my business friends and acquaintances, whether currently in touch or out of touch, I send my best wishes for a wonderful and safe Holiday season and a healthy, challenging, busy and prosperous New Year!