Many of us like to think the economy has recovered and is flourishing after the recession. While various aspects have improved, a study we have conducted at Mereo for the past four years appears to say something many others are not—businesses are not thriving.
Mereo’s annual revenue performance index of Fortune 500, Global 500 and Russell 2000 companies for the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years uncovered similar trends to reports of previous years — which has been trending similarly since the recessionary period of 2007 and 2008 —underperformance on the top-line.
There was some improvement in performance from last year but still a relatively small percentage of companies can claim strong revenue performance. For instance, nearly 48% of Fortune 500 companies actually shrank last year (compared with 51% the year before) and nearly 67% of Global 500 companies shrank (as compared with 73% the year before). The somewhat brighter area was in mid-size companies, where a comparatively small 29% of companies shrank this past year.
Thinking about strong growth defined as over 5% revenue growth, we found that only 17% of the Global 500 companies, 25% of Fortune 500 companies and 47% of mid-size companies met this hurdle.
So for the fourth year in a row mid-size companies outperformed their larger counterparts, while the Global 500 performed the worst.
While this news seems dismal, it offers insights and opportunities to B2B sellers.
Visit B2B News Network for four tips for B2B sellers in today’s economic climate…