Virginia Economic Outlook Index Flat Versus Q2; Ninety-Eight Percent of CEOs Prefer the Fed to Hold or Reduce Interest Rates; Sixty-four percent Have Concerns About Inflation and Revenue
CEOs Again Expect Revenue and Employment to Increase Over Next 6 Months with Capital Spending Remaining Flat
Ninety-eight percent of small business CEOs indicate that they prefer that the Fed either reduce interest rates or hold them at the current rate with only 2% preferring that rates increase further. Sixty-four percent of respondents view inflation and revenue concerns as the biggest challenges facing their business in the near term versus 74% in a national survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That’s the latest from the quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Survey conducted by the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business and the Virginia Council of CEOs.
Fifty-four percent of CEOs expect revenue to increase, with 23% expecting at least a 10% increase, while 50% expect employment to increase over the next six months.
The survey found expectations over the next six months for revenue and employment were both positive with capital spending to grow slightly faster than expectations a quarter ago.
More than half (54%) of CEOs indicated that they expect revenue to increase over the next six months.
- 4% expected revenue to be “significantly higher.”
- 50% expected revenue to be “higher.”
- 25% expected revenue to be “lower.”
- 21% indicated they expected no change.
Forty-two percent of CEOs expect capital spending to increase over the next six months (up slightly from 32% last quarter), while 15% expect capital spending to decrease. Forty-four percent expect capital spending to remain flat.
Fifty percent of respondent CEOs expect employment to increase over the next six months. Additionally, 46% expect employment to remain flat while only 4% expect employment to fall.
Taken as a whole, the results pertaining to revenue, capital spending, and employment expectations are down very slightly from last quarter with the overall Economic Outlook Index decreasing (84.0 versus 85.1) relative to the results from the end of Q2 2023.
Additionally, CEOs were asked their preference with regard to further interest rate changes by the Fed. They reported that they preferred the following:
- Further raise rates: 2%
- Reduce rates: 44%
- Leave rates as they are: 54%
They were also asked to rank order the challenges facing their businesses in the near term. They reported the following as the most challenging:
- Inflation: 32%
- Revenue Concerns: 32%
- Interest Rates: 23%
- Supply Chain Issues: 13%
“The survey results suggest that CEOs have positive revenue growth expectations but see inflation as an ongoing item of concern. They also strongly prefer that the Fed avoid further interest rate hikes” said Rich Boulger, associate dean at the Robins School, who administers the survey and collects the responses. “The overall index is approximately flat (84.0 versus 85.1 at the end of Q2 2023) and up from 73.4 of a year ago.”
“The sentiment from CEOs I am talking with lately is far more pessimistic than this data. The storm clouds they are seeing must be beyond the survey’s six-month outlook!” said Scot McRoberts, executive director of VACEOs.
The Robins School and VACEOs jointly conduct the quarterly survey, which regularly asks about expectations for revenue, capital spending, and employment, plus other relevant issues, helping Virginia companies anticipate business conditions and plan for growth. The Robins School adapted the survey from the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of American companies that conducts a similar survey nationally. Rich Boulger, associate dean at the Robins School, administers the survey and collects the responses. The quarterly survey has been administered since 2010.
Forty-eight CEOs responded to the survey, which was administered October 4 – 10. Multiple industries are represented in the sample although services and construction represented the majority of the respondents. The average company whose CEO responded to this survey had approximately $10 million in revenue for the most recent 12-month period. The average employment was 45.
The Council continues to expand the survey beyond its members, offering any area business owners whose companies gross at least $1 million in annual revenue the opportunity to participate. If enough businesses participate, the Council will provide survey results by industry. Participation is free, and all participants will receive copies of the survey data.
Business owners and CEOs who would like to participate in the next survey should contact Scot McRoberts at smcroberts@vaceos.org.
Virginia Council of CEOs (VACEOs) is a nonprofit organization connecting CEOs for learning and growth. Formed more than 20 years ago, member benefits include placement in a peer roundtable group and access to a thought leader network, and a robust program of events for learning and growth. This is not a networking group, but rather a group of CEO peers who are invested in the success of each Member. To qualify for membership CEOs must run a business with $1M+ revenue and 5+FTEs. Learn more at www.vaceos.org.
The Robins School of Business is the only fully-accredited, highly-ranked undergraduate business school that also is part of a highly-ranked liberal arts university. The Robins School is also home to the Richmond MBA. The school’s executive education division offers customized training and consulting to a wide variety of businesses.
Turning Insight into Action: Building Your Sales Playbook for 2024
It’s Fall. The temperature is dropping, leaves are changing, and there is a lot of uncertainty about the economy and politics, both logically and globally. No matter what your sales performance has been in 2023, one thing is for sure, you will be at a disadvantage if you don’t start to put together your sales playbook and growth plan for 2024.
What is a sales playbook?
A sales playbook is a resource that outlines your sales strategy, processes, and best practices. It provides your team members with relevant information about your growth goals, sales process, and sales activities/plays to execute during each stage of the selling cycle.
Why is a playbook important?
A sales playbook is vital to your company’s sales success in several ways, especially during uncertain times.
- Provides standardization, alignment, and scalability: Every member is more efficient, spends more time selling and less time searching for tools and answers, and is focused, consistent and effective executing your sales strategy.
- Supports launch of new products or services: Develop a standard play for your team to sell new products and to use existing processes and tools to build each new sales play.
- Use to hire and train: New hires usually have a lot to learn. Having a playbook in place will make it easier for them to get some foundational knowledge about your firm, and find answers themselves, reducing time spent searching and asking questions.
- Provides a better customer experience: Consistency across the organization in engaging, responding to, and answering customer questions is important to the customer experience. When a new best practice is developed, quickly scale it to support customers across the business.
- Reduces risk if you lose key sales leadership or personnel: When best practices are captured in the playbook, they can be reused across the team.
7 key elements of a great playbook:
Your sales playbook should be customized specifically for your company and team. It can be as detailed as you want but should include information necessary to execute your growth strategy. In general, a playbook should include:
- Company Overview: History, mission, value proposition, and goals.
- Products and Services Information: What exactly are you selling?
- Buyer Personas: Who are you selling each product or service to and in what channels?
- Sales Process Steps: Include all stages from finding leads, to qualification, to closing, and post-sale account management steps.
- Resources and Sales-Enablement Materials: CRM, templates, etc.
- KPIs and Metrics: Lead generation statistics, time to close, conversion percentage, etc.
- Commission Structure: What do your reps get if they go beyond their quotas?
What can you do to get started?
Whether you are a small company developing your first playbook or larger company updating your plays as you grow or diversify your product offerings, it is important to be prepared. Having a sales playbook that outlines your goals, plan, and plays ensures alignment across the organization and that your team will execute more consistently to thrive in 2024 regardless of broader market forces. The results of which support capabilities to sustain and further enhance growth in the long term.
The Author: Selena Sanderson, Managing Director Sales Advisory & Growth Practice Lead
If you would like to turn your insights into action and get started developing or enhancing your sales playbook, please join Fahrenheit Advisors and other VACEOs companies on November 1st to:
- Clarify your growth goals
- Develop sales plans, processes, and activities to achieve your objectives
- Install a system of measurement to keep your team on target
- Learn about other resources required to accomplish your plan
A cocktail hour will follow for an opportunity to network with fellow attendees.
Register for the Workshop: Building Your Sales Playbook for 2024 here.
Learn about Fahrenheit Advisors Sales Advisory Practice
Hyper Sales Growth with Jack Daly Recap
This September, the Virginia Council of CEOs held our annual Fall Leaders Conference led by world-class speaker and best-selling author Jack Daly. We had a great time learning from the very best in accelerating revenue and sales in a room filled with committed and driven business leaders and their teams. Save the date for next year’s Fall Leaders Conference on September 26 with the Marcus Sheridan!
Women CEOs on the Rise in VACEOs
– From Connie Bruce, CAE, Director of Operations & Member Services
When my youngest child, who’s now a recent college graduate, first put on her backpack to head out the door to kindergarten, I started my own journey at Virginia Council of CEOs. As she grew in her school career over the years, I grew in mine as well. Along the way VACEOs has also grown — and recently in one key way.
I loved my job with VACEOs from Day One. I knew right away our members and sponsors were special. Our CEOs share a willingness to share and learn from each other. I also noticed our group of wonderful CEOs was mostly men. I sensed we were missing the voices of women CEOs in the sharing and learning.
Early on, VACEOs was fortunate to have some strong women CEOs as members — shout-out to Gail Johnson, founder of Rainbow Station now LeafSpring Schools, Elissa Mast, CEO of E&R Sales, and Connie Hom, founder of Buckingham Greenery. However, even as VACEOs grew, the percentage of women CEO roundtable members consistently hovered around 16%. I recall joking with Executive Director Scot McRoberts that we needed to “pink” the group up.
While golf and baseball are not gender-specific, they tend to be stereotypically associated with men. Both were common member activities at that time in VACEOs’ history. It wasn’t that we needed to not do golf, it was that we needed to do golf plus other events and activities to appeal to a wider audience. I wanted us to become more focused on reaching women CEOs, in order, to broaden the experience share for our members.
Back in 2018, Debbie Fisher, Associate Director of Graduate Programs at the Robins School of Business, was having similar thoughts about their MBA Program. Debbie and I connected to co-host an event exclusively for women business leaders, called Future-Proofing Your Career, that proved extremely successful. Seeing more than 140 women connect to discuss the challenges they faced in business was exciting. The event was so successful we repeated it.
In 2019, our VACEOs roundtable leaders started asking us to add women CEOs to their groups. I was thrilled our member CEOs recognized that diversity was an advantage, but we struggled to find enough new members to fulfill the request.
To meet the challenge of attracting more women CEO members to join our group, we strategically appealed to women CEOs in our marketing, in the speakers and topics we offered, and in the special events we developed. Slowly, our percentages of women CEOs began to tick up — and we reached 18% by 2021.
This year, something bigger happened. As of August 2023, our percentage of active roundtable members who are women is now at 19%, the highest it’s ever been. Even more exciting is that 46% of new VACEOs members this year are women! Now we are starting to provide more diversity in our roundtables thanks to the intentionality of looking beyond our traditional member.
Maybe it’s the influence of the Barbie movie, but I’m feeling like we should add pink to our logo.
Commercial Services: Six Ways to Improve Your Cash Flow
The foundation of smart business management is maintaining liquidity. This is particularly true during times of uncertainty in the financial market. You want to have a reliable source for funds should you want, or need, to be prepared for changing opportunities.
If you run a small business and find yourself dealing with restricted cash flow on a regular basis, it’s time to review some basic steps to get things moving again.
1. Invoice immediately
As soon as the job’s complete, send the bill. Consider asking for upfront deposits or partial payments if your business undertakes long, complicated and/or expensive projects.
2. Incentivize prompt payments
Make it clear when payments are due and offer a small discount for quick payments. For example, 2 percent off if paid within 14 days.
3. Pay bills when due
Don’t pay your own bills sooner than required. Check when bills are due and schedule payments accordingly to keep your cash on hand for as long as possible.
4. Check your customers’ credit
Don’t risk taking on clients who have a long history of making late payments (or not making payments at all). Be proactive in conducting credit checks so you can feel confident your clients will pay you in a timely fashion.
5. Evaluate your inventory regularly
It costs money to store products that aren’t selling – and it can also cost you to not have the products readily available that your customers want. Analyze inventory and purchase trends regularly so you can meet demand (without undue surplus).
6. Cooperate with similar companies
Obviously, you probably don’t want to partner with direct competitors. But if you can find similar companies who use some of the same supplies as you (but ultimately sell different products), consider asking them to make combined purchases from suppliers. That way, you’ll both benefit from bulk pricing.
About Blue Ridge Bank
Chris Layne, market president for the Richmond Metro region at Blue Ridge Bank, is a commercial banker with over 17 years of banking experience. His primary clientele includes closely-held businesses and non-profit organizations. If you have any questions for Chris. please feel free to reach out to him at 804-518-2625 or chris.layne@mybrb.bank.. If you have any questions for Chris. please feel free to reach out to him at 804-518-2625 or chris.layne@mybrb.bank.
Blue Ridge Bank is a community bank with a national reach. Blue Ridge Bank is all about business. Our team exudes an enterprising spirit in each local market so we can best serve our business clients. We provide a wide range of financial services including retail and commercial banking, wealth management, insurance, and government-guaranteed lending.
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