When the economy is struggling, keeping a small business going can be difficult. Instinct says to cut advertising, travel, training, marketing, and discretionary expenses, but such an approach causes the pipeline to close, worsening the situation and making it more difficult to thrive when the market does recover. A few strategies will help your business stay afloat until the economy improves. First, broaden your perspective and redefine and reinvent yourself. Determine how you can create new demand for your products and services, build new alliances, and consider alternative distribution channels. Second, be nimble and innovative. Be ready to make quick decisions and act fast to create new uses for your products, or even create a new business model. Third, take care of your current customers to keep them. Fourth, prioritize wisely. The most important activity for any salesperson is to focus on the “closest catch,” be it following up on a prospect, writing a proposal, or closing a deal. Fifth, become an expert in your field. Companies hire experts because they cannot afford to make a mistake. Position your company as the expert on a specific product or in a market niche. Sixth, stay connected and network whenever possible. Attend a minimum of one event per week. Every person you meet is a potential customer or referral. Talk to people and find out how their business is doing and what you could do to help them. Seventh, instead of cutting prices, increase value. Cutting prices only cuts down profits. Instead, consider how to “get in and get started.” Offering high-value products and services will lead to more referrals and more sales, even in a slow economy. Divide products or services into smaller, more affordable pieces to get initial purchases that will lead to larger purchases. Eighth, commit to building your referral business. Referrals are extra important in a slow economy, because a customer referred to you will result in a sale 70 percent to 90 percent of the time.
Return to Headlines

Many small businesses are abandoning closed-circuit TV systems in favor of online video surveillance. Restaurant owner Ryan Elmore, for example, assumed that his employees continued to work hard after he left work, but after installing cameras and using an online service to monitor his restaurant, he discovered that the restaurant manager on duty left a few minutes after him, servers sat at tables, sent messages, and gave free meals to friends, and cooks took multiple cigarette breaks every hour and cut corners on his signature dish.

However, now employees at Elmore’s Pepper Jack’s Neighborhood Grill know that Elmore can log in online, view a receipt, and call up a video of that transaction. Elmore can remotely see whether employees cleaned the restaurant, if they are smiling at customers, if a customer’s order arrives at a table late, or if employees are helping themselves to meals.

Online surveillance companies will install cameras and provide monthly services in a variety of price ranges, and some even offer software that can be used to build a library of training videos, such as best practices for store openings and closings. Elmore started using his service accidentally when a pizza chain he bought had the service installed. Elmore installed the service at Pepper Jack’s and immediately started seeing results.

Elmore and his wife Janel noticed numerous times when the restaurant was over staffed, allowing them to adjust schedules and cut labor costs by 5 percent, and food costs dropped 3 percent because servers stopped giving free food to friends.

For an annual operating cost of $1,920, Elmore was able to cut operating costs by $100,000. Elmore says he felt guilty at first for not trusting employees, but the results eliminated any concerns. “As an operator, I want to know where every dollar is going,” he says. Read more

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 28th, 2008 at 6:30 am and is filed under Business ideas, Finance tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.