Recession – Top 5 Things to Do in a Business Recession
The recession is firmly on everyone’s doorstep ready to come into your business. If you read the news or watch television you can see that the business side of the recession is accelerating faster and faster. It seems that Money and CNN have a new story every day on how the recession is impacting businesses across the globe. The one things is they never really say much about what you can do to protect your business during a recession.
Here are the top 5 things you can do to protect your business if the recession is on your business doorstep wanting to get in.
1. Evaluate all of your expenditures across everything it takes to run your business.
Find places that you combine services, reduce services, keep older hardware, and so on. We believe in reducing things instead of reducing people in a recession if you can help it. If you do have to reduce people see if you can reduce salaries across the board temporarily so you don’t have to let people go. The worst thing that is happening now in this economy is people are getting let go so fast that they have no money to buy the things that you may produce.
2. Build an Ideal client profile and only target the people that you have a great business relationship with.
Do not waste dollars on potential customers that do not fit. This will decrease your cost of acquiring a new client during the recession. As you refine your ideal client profile contact your current clients that fit that profile and begin reinforcing your relationship with them and be sure to ask if there is anything you can do to help them utilize your product or service better or sell the products you produce better.
3. Increase your marketing and sales efforts.
This is one place that many businesses start to cut during a recession and in our opinion is a BIG BIG mistake… During a recession you need to increase your visibility because your customer or consumers mind will begin to forget about you as they are filled with news of the recession and how much they need to cut back. If they do not remember they want or need your service it is much easier for them to lump you in the OK TO CUT CATEGORY. Remember as the recession grows the cost of most advertising and other services usually decrease with the lower demand. This way it will actually cost you a lot less than you would normally spend anyway.
4. Get involved in your community.
During this time you want to be seen as a company that gives back and cares for the folks around them. This will build brand loyalty during the recession. Remember If you are a local business then stay local. Save the people in your market because they are the ones who will most likely buy your product. Recently Dennys had a free breakfast they advertised during the SUPER BOWL. It was huge hit and gained media attention all over the country. I read the comments on some of the business BLOGS and the number one comment was how people couldn’t believe someone cared about then enough in this economy to offer something free. I bet next time those people go out for breakfast they will not be going to IHOP.
5. Keep a positive attitude during the recession.
This may sound like something you would hear from your preacher or some self help or meditation book but it is really true. You need to keep a positive attitude especially if you are the leader of an organization because it will help your workers and managers focus more on the work at hand instead of the world around them. It will also make sure that any fear of being in business or not during the recession will not trickle out to your sales team, then clients and customers. If they start to get the feeling that you are unsure of your business then they will unfortunately STOP buying from you and begin to look for someone more stable.
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Article written by Mark Ferguson.
Rapid Success Partners is the leader in leadership development, business marketing strategy, and Small Business Success Workshops. Transform your business, Transform your life with Rapid Success Partners.
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