The current lockdown restrictions imposed globally due to the Covid-19 pandemic, is having huge detrimental consequences for business. What action can you take now to give your business the best chance of survival, and for it to even thrive?
Most of the business worldwide is struggling, but this is a temporary situation, life will go on of course. But what your business will look like in the world post lock-down, could very much depend on how you choose to spend your time and energies during this period.
What strategy have you chosen?
- Stock up on food, drink, and snacks, put your feet up in the garden or binge watching anything on the TV? Or resorting to feeling scared and sorry for yourself, trusting your business future to the gods?
- Alternatively, you could roll up your sleeves, analyse your business as it stands, and use the time to reorganise, restructure, re-skill yourself, and get ready to fight back.
Supporting and communicating with your current client base, is singularly one of the most important things you should do. Investing in your clients during this challenging time will not be forgotten, and if you talk to them regularly, it will help increase loyalty for your brand. Taking an optimistic stance and spreading hope and positivity will help increase their confidence in your product while strengthening their relationship with you. It is widely understood, that to focus on retention strategies is a much cheaper option, than fighting to keep your client numbers up by working on gaining new clients.
If you ignore your clients now, it will push them easily into your competitors camp. But if you do the right thing now, the bond will be strengthened with you, and word of mouth will help spread the positive action you have taken.
So how do you capitalise on the current client base?
- Talk to them continuously, and listen to issues that they are having, show empathy to individual situations, showing them that you care. Right now, we all need to be showing our human side, we are nothing without our clients and our struggle is one we should be facing together.
- Share the pain with them, finances will invariably be causing the most stress for everyone. Offer discounts, add more value to what you offer. This may be free online training courses, to get the most out of your product or service or increased free trial periods for new business. We need to be realistic and flexible in our financial expectations, if someone cannot pay, its simple, you will lose them if you do not make concessions. Why cause another company more misery than they are already experiencing, along with any human cost this virus may be meting on their families and loved ones.
At the same time, we should be looking at our individual business pandemic exit strategies, albeit taking a more medium to long term view. The damage caused to our businesses will be recoverable, it will just take a bit of time, but is the time to identify new opportunities and is not the time for complacency.
While we have the time, we should be critically analysing all areas of our businesses. Cutting superfluous costs accordingly to preserve cash flow. Look at your current suppliers, can you find cheaper and better options? Take the time to do your research, getting new processes in place in time to kick start your business back into action.
Be brave, look at innovative ways to make your business stand out. Just because the business has always worked in a certain way, that does not necessarily mean it is the best or only way. This is the perfect time to innovate and reinvent, to find creative solutions to do your business better. Why not invest in business skills you may have avoided or neglected or put down to being ‘too busy’? Making changes in a business can be costly, and take time and effort, but we have the opportunity now to work towards a better tomorrow, inertia kills business, so move forward and hopefully put yourself ahead of the competition.
All is not lost, we will inevitably emerge from this period economically and emotionally bruised, but we need to dig in and fight, we owe it to our clients and employees. And do not just pay it lip service, actually put the effort in to put the strategies in place, we should be working harder than ever before, and if you aren’t your competitors will be. Above all, stay well, positive and prepare for a great future.
Let us become part of your business pandemic exit strategy. We will discuss how and if our software is better for your business without the hard sell. Call 0044 1786 611299.
