Owners Whose Sales Fell 10% or More a Year Rank Finding Qualified Staff 13th. Owners Growing 10–24% Rank It 3rd.

NFIB’s 2024 problem survey, cut by sales trend: when sales fall, the money problems climb the list. The staffing problems drop down it without getting any smaller.

One survey, two different lists

NFIB has run Problems & Priorities since 1982. In the 2024 edition, member owners rated 75 problems from 1 (critical) to 7 (not a problem), and NFIB ranked them by average score. It also ranked them separately for owners grouped by their average yearly sales change over the last three years. The two biggest groups at either end are owners whose sales fell 10% or more a year (451 owners) and owners whose sales grew 10% to 24% a year (702). Their lists are not the same list. Uncertainty over economic conditions is 1st for the shrinking group and 6th for the growing one. Poor sales moves 48 places, poor earnings 34 and cash flow 27. The staff problems move the other way: locating qualified employees falls 10 places and managing and training employees 16 each.

For owners with falling sales, the hiring problem was still there. It had been outranked.

The money problems climb the list

Some of this is close to built in. An owner whose sales are falling is more likely to call poor sales critical, and 19.0% of the shrinking group did, against 3.1% of the growing group. The wider pattern is the useful part. The shrinking group rated 69 of the 75 problems as more severe on average, and the gap clears the survey’s noise on 31 of them. After poor sales, the two biggest climbs on the list are about money coming in: poor earnings (22.9% critical against 7.0%) and cash flow (19.6% against 7.1%). Highly variable earnings climbs too (17.4% against 6.6%). Uncertainty over economic conditions takes first place, with 36.0% calling it critical.

The staff problems drop down the list without getting smaller

Locating qualified employees sits 3rd for owners with growing sales, with only 2 problems above it. For owners with falling sales it sits 13th, with 12 above it. Yet 28.4% of the shrinking group call it critical, against 30.2% of the growing group, a gap inside the survey’s noise. The same holds for finding and keeping skilled employees (9th against 20th), managing employees (34th against 50th) and training them (35th against 51st). On none of the four do the two groups differ by more than the noise, on the average score or on the share calling it critical. Two staff problems make the growing group’s top ten. None makes the shrinking group’s. The people problems did not shrink when sales fell. Everything around them got louder.

What to take from this when your sales are falling

When sales are falling, everything feels urgent, and the urgent problems are about money: the next sale, the next payroll, the next month. In this survey those problems climb the list, and it makes sense to focus there. The trap is what drops off. The staff problems did not become less severe for owners with falling sales. They sat lower on the list only as the problems around them were rated more severe. Hiring, keeping good people and training them are long-term problems, and they are the ones that decide what the business looks like when sales turn. Put one of them on the short list on purpose, even in a bad quarter: keep in touch with the two or three people you would hire first, and keep training the ones you have. The urgent list will look after itself.

Four limits worth holding. The respondents are NFIB members who returned a mail survey (2,873 of 40,000 mailed), and 2,479 of them reported a sales change. Sales change is the owner’s own estimate of their average yearly change over three years. The survey is one point in time: it compares different owners, not the same owner before and after sales fell, and it shows what each group rated, not why. NFIB publishes no margins of error; the comparisons here use the overall spread of answers for each problem and the size of each group, and only gaps well clear of that are reported as differences. And ranks are relative: a problem can fall down the list without changing at all.

Published by The Lonely Entrepreneur — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. lonelyentrepreneur.com

This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.