Confidence is definately coming back to the economy and we are seeing this come across when speak to our long standing and new clients.  Many clients are very starting to look to the prospects of 2010 and we seeing a good level of interest in sale training courses.

This has been backed up by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) who described an optimistic outlook across sales and marketing with its latest Marketing Trends Survey. The ninth such survey, the autumn 2009 report shows that levels of optimism have increased dramatically since last year's low point.

The CIM says that this outlook demonstrates how initial signs of optimism seen in the previous survey have been consolidated by the events of the past six month. Out of the companies surveyed, many report that they have increased sales and marketing spends whilst reducing their redundancy levels over the last half of 2009.

Marketing's bleakest hour was in autumn 2008. Then, just 11% of those surveyed expected economic conditions to improve. However sentiments have continued to brighten throughout 2009, with the number of people expecting conditions to worsen halving from 70% to 34% by spring. Now, levels of pessimism have dropped to a mere 12% and over half of all surveyed expect the economy to improve (51%).

UK marketers and sales professionals have also become more positive about the business prospects of their own organisations. In the 2008 survey for autumn, nearly as many were pessimistic (27%) as were optimistic (29%). In 2009, this has changed significantly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 51% are confident that their business will improve over the next year - the same amount as are optimistic about the economy. Only 16% expect that their business will get worse.

Although the CIM says that the industry's outlook has yet to reach the same levels of confidence seen prior to the recession, a recovery in market confidence is a welcome sign for sales recruitment. CIM's director of research and professional development, David Thorp said "2010 will certainly be an interesting year for marketers, with the continuing uncertainty about an economic recovery, the UK general election and an ever-growing presence of digital and social media."