First, stop expecting companies to increase year-on-year sales. Total revenues are the key metric by which any company is measured. If they are rising, everyone is happy. When they fall, it’s time to call the head-hunters and start looking for a new CEO. With inflation at 3pc or 4pc a year, and growth at 1pc to 2pc, it wasn’t all that hard for a big company to grow at 5pc or 6pc annually. Just keep up with the market, open a few shops or a couple of factories, and that should do the trick. With deflation, it is going to be a lot harder. To some degree, we are already seeing that. Tesco has a lot of problems, but Sainsbury’s is a perfectly well-run company – and yet it is still getting hit by falling food prices. Investors are going to have to learn to be more selective. In fact, if a firm can hold sales and profits steady, that’s a pretty good result – and there will be no point in sacking chief executives for a modest fall.