Stop Panicking or You Will Kill Your Business

This has been one crazy year has it not?  With the economy in the bottom of the barrel, people losing jobs left and right and consumer confidence and spending down, us business owners have had one heck of a volatile year to get through (and it may not even be over this year!)  We used to be able to project our next quarter now we can’t even seem to project next week!  All it takes is more sounding of the “recession is still upon us” horn and things get even tighter. It may be sad but guess what; you may be only making it worse!

How you could you possibly be making it any worse you ask?

Well, let me ask one question to you as a fellow business owner: Have you been reacting hastily and panicky to the whole situation or have you taken this as a time when you should completely step back and find out if and how your business has changed?

Before you answer, let me tell you, it’s likely that it has changed… dramatically! On top of that, every time you desperately make a quick move to try and keep your little world in perfect utopia, you kill another little piece of your business.  How do I know this?  Hey, we’re not all perfect you know!

Now is the time to stop the merciless killing and get smart about how we manage our businesses moving forward! But first we need to learn how we’re killing our business.

Three Reasons You’re Killing Your Business

When I meet business owners at different events or sit with them as new prospects, I can quickly tell who are the ones who have a grasp on what this economic meltdown has done to their businesses and those that think their world will get back to normal if they can just “hang in there.”  Here’s the issue with that thought, the world has just about completely changed and each time you try something to get things “back to normal” (which no longer exists) you’re just opening up a new wound in your business to bleed your lifeblood… cash.

The three common culprits:

1. You are hastily making decisions about cutting prices using elaborate promotional schemes that cut into margins while not giving any focus to how that will affect the business in a long-term view.I call this the “well, we gotta get something out of our customers” syndrome. Stop it! You’re bleeding yourself dry!
2. Rather than reviewing the business as a whole and finding the fat around the operational processes and supply chain, you instead quickly apply cuts in terms of employees, marketing budgets, customer service operations and even to the extremes of cutting your operating hours (yes, like “not working” is going to help you grow and survive at all?!)This isn’t just cutting a hole to bleed business out of this is actually chopping off limbs that are key to providing your value! Why would you destroy the strongest assets of your business? There may be fat on them, but they are what deliver your value!
3. You look at the world around you with an “end of our world” perspective that you’re trying to prevent from happening as opposed to a “we have a whole new world of opportunity” perspective that helps you identify how to leverage opportunities in this new economy to that may only require minimal changes to how you currently operate.

So what am I saying in all of this?  If you cut your margins, cut your available resources to barebone levels or have a doom `n gloom mentality then it is likely you are a few months away from the doors slamming shut on you, permanently.

Stop Panicking and Start Thinking Straight

Now is not the time to cry “It’s the end of the world!” Now is the time to realize there is a whole new world of opportunities out there for you to identify and grab a hold of to continue growing your business.  What that requires is for you to NOT PANIC and make rash moves, but to step back to look at the whole picture and think strategically about each step.  We need to remember that every day is “Game Day” as business owner Monica Tate-Maile says in her post for Harvard Publishing titled “For Entrepreneurs: Every Day is Game Day.” Read it, get focused.

So, first off, if you are the panicky business owner: STOP… and breath, count to ten, do some yoga or whatever else lowers your blood pressure.  Now, let’s give ourselves a few actions we can perform and a few things to focus on to help us identify what has changed, what needs to change, where the opportunities are and how we can go after them.

Five actions to take to start thinking straight about your business:

1. Get away from the business with your management team (or with your family if it is just you) and focus on life.
   1. The key here is to relax and not talk about business.  It is to enjoy your time together to strengthen your relationship, which in turn strengthens your ability to work as a team, your ability to listen and be honest with one another and your ability to trust one another with the changes to come.
2. Schedule a “Our Changing World” meeting for your leadership team where you will take a look at the entire economy, not just your market, and point out what has changed
   1. Look at who the new consumer is (what makes them tick, what they want to know about businesses, what they expect from businesses, what makes them buy, how they like to buy, etc.)
   2. Look at your competition and see if and how they have changed or how they are reacting to the changes in the world around them. If you see growth in them, find out how to copy it and make it your own. If you see panic, use that to encourage your team to continuing pushing forward to overtake your industry adversaries.
   3. Look at other industries, whether complimentary or not, and see how they’ve changed and how they are reacting to the to the changes in the world around them
3. Do not look to find a market for your product, find a market that has a need/problem that you can make a product for.
   1. It may be a product you already have that you never thought of how it could help this market. This may require little changes in the product itself and just a new marketing campaign and message to redirect it to this qualified market.
   2. It may be a product you need to develop from scratch, but at least you have found a qualified market that has proven it has the money and will to buy.  This is a more drastic change, but drastic times call for drastic measures.  Can you make a product for them?  Why don’t you if your market has disappeared?
4. Redefine your messaging
   1. Listen, if the world is so dramatically different it’s a sure thing that your message no longer communicates the same value as it did before.  Start over. Again, listen to the market and find what they want first, not what you think you should now represent. Communicate how your product will fulfill their need.
5. Focus on the customer and not on sales
   1. Make every touch-point of your organization the best experience it can be for the customer, not for the business.
   2. Now is the time to beef up and improve the quality of your customer service operations to keep new customers satisfied and current customers loyal.

It’s a whole new world out there and us business owners have to be willing to realize that we may need to start over in order to survive and thrive.  Clearing out the panic and opening our minds to the new opportunities that may be all around us is the only way we’ll make it through another year of this mess. So start now before it’s too late!

So what about you?  How have you handled the change in the economic world of your business?