Almost every business will be affected by a recession and if you don’t take the appropriate steps, you will have to file for bankruptcy and close. Fortunately, there are things you can do to prevent this from happening. I have been hit by recessions countless times but I managed to survive and keep my businesses afloat. How did I do it? How did I handle the cash crunch and how can you do the same?
“I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon’s advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.” – Anita Roddick
In this article, I will be sharing with you some tips and strategies to surviving a business recession. In previous articles, I gave insights into the business challenges and recessions I have faced; how I got over them and the lessons learned. You can read about it below.
Recession Strategies: How your Small Business can Survive a Recession
How to Start a Business from Scratch: My Entrepreneurial Journey So Far
Now how can your business survive a recession? Well, below are simple but powerful strategies that can help your business survive a recession.
How Your Business Can Survive a Recession and Still Grow
“We were most creative when our back was against the wall.” – Anita Roddick
1. Focus on customer service
In any business, you have to provide exceptional service to the customer so he/she will be able to buy from you. If you do this well, that customer will come back and buy from you even if times are tough. Customer service is a vital key to getting repeated sales; and repeated sales is essential to surviving a business recession.
“There is only one boss; the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
Of all the business recession survival strategies that exist; focusing on the customer is the best and most effective strategy that can guarantee long term stability for your business. Now how do you focus on customer service?
You can focus on customer service by going all out to make every time spent by your customer in your office or store worthwhile. You can focus on customer service by touching the customers at the point of their needs. Exceptionality should be watchword when dealing with customers.
Now how do you achieve exceptionality in your customer service? The basic key to achieving exceptionality in the way your business handles its customers is to train and re-train your employees on customer care and service delivery. By retraining your staff and making sure they understand the fact that providing exceptional customer service is the only way your business can survive a recession; you are strengthen the bottom line of your business.
You can train your employees by hiring someone from the outside to handle a seminar or workshop. If this is not within your budget, do it yourself and also give them a refresher course on the products or services that you are offering.
If you fail at improving or maintain a good level of customer service; if you fail to take care of your customers and meet them at the point of their needs, then every other recession survival strategy you implement will be null and void in the long run. If your employees fail at the frontline; the customer will just go in and walk out, never to come back.
2. Promote your business from inside out
During a recession, most businesses will cut back on spending and one of such cut backs is the marketing budget. Instead of reducing your marketing effort, it’s advisable you double it. You must strive to promote your business cost effectively and few ways to do it include creating your own website or distributing flyers; rather than paying for ads in the newspaper or billboard, which might cost your business some fortune. You can also encourage your employees and loyal customers to talk about your business outside because word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.
3. Be Committed; lead by examples
Are going to cut back on salaries? Will an increase in productivity keep your business afloat? If your answer to these questions is yes; then lead by example. If you are going to increase work time and cut back on salaries; start with yourself. Take a pay cut and work longer hours; this way, your staff will see the amount of effort you put in and with that, nobody will have the right to complain.
Are there other tactics to surviving a business recession? My answer is yes. You can talk to other business owners within or outside your industry and see what they are doing to stay afloat. Some of the steps they have taken may be applicable to your situation but you will never know until you try.
As a side note, I want to add that staying afloat and surviving a business recession requires a little bit of creativity. There are other ways to stay afloat during a recession that can be applicable only to your business or industry so it’s up to you to figure out such.
Written by Ajaero Tony Martins
