Business
Valuation Made Quick, Easy and Inexpensive!
Dealing With Business Slowdowns
By Vishal P. Rao
When times are slow for
your home-based business, chances are you won't
have the luxury of waiting and seeing if things
improve. You'll need to take steps quickly to
get back on track.
These suggestions will help
you get business back to normal:
1) Add Products And Services
During slow times, your
very instinct might be to cut corners, but in
the case of your catalog of products and services
this could spell disaster. Instead, you want to
select additions carefully based on the needs
and desires of your clients.
Think of it this way: let's
say you provide web design services. Your client
hires you for the design work, then goes elsewhere
to get a logo, hosting, and content. Having to
hire four different companies just to complete
one project is not cost-effective or time-efficient
for your client.
So what if you could offer
web design and hosting or web design and everything
else necessary as well? Chances are you'd have
a definite advantage over your competition.
Even if you don't have the
skills or ability to handle those aspects of the
project, you could team up with other companies
like yourself who also want to boost business
and give themselves a competitive edge.
No matter what product or
service you primarily provide, you could find
ways to provide additional necessities to your
clients.
2) Step Up Customer Service
Hopefully, you already provide
good service and support to your customers, and
you are probably already aware of how critical
this is to your business's success. But when times
get rough, customer service is even more crucial
and you need to go beyond the call of duty to
convince clients that their business is important
to you.
For example, you may want
to guarantee responses within a few hours, instead
of a few days. You may want to follow up with
thank you cards or phone calls. If a problem does
arise, act immediately to take care of it and
rectify the situation to the client's satisfaction.
Remember not only is that
customer's business at stake, but also the potential
business of every single person he or she is acquainted
with.
3) Market More
Business is slow; budgets
are tight. So what usually gets trimmed first?
Marketing. Do you know what the results are? Disaster!
When you conduct marketing,
you are not selling yourself to generate business
today or even tomorrow. Marketing is an investment
in your business's future. In fact, research has
shown that most marketing efforts don't pay off
for at least six months.
So think about that. Let's
say you cut back on marketing in June and you
weather the economic down cycle, what's going
to happen in December? Absolutely nothing! Because
all of your potential clients have been won over
by the marketing efforts of your competition which
were conducted during the summer.
Instead of cutting back,
a slow down is the time to boost marketing. Get
back in touch with past clients, attend seminars,
pass out fliers. After all, if work is slow, what
else are you going to be spending your time doing?
4) Keep A Positive Attitude
Times are hard. Your nerves
are on edge. You're feeling the pressure. When
a past client calls to ask how things are going,
do you tell them the truth and hope they take
pity on you? Do you wallow in a self-defeating
attitude? NO!
If you want to get through
the hard times, you have to keep in mind two things:
A) No one is going to do
business with a failing company and
B) Hard times are only temporary.
Let's think about this.
If you called up a company about business and
the representative says, "It will be great
to be finally getting some new clients" or
"Things have been horribly slow around here
lately" are you going to trust them with
your project? No.
The first thing you are
going to be wondering is why they haven't been
doing well. And that's what your potential clients
will wonder about you as well.
So how do you keep from
breaking down on the phone with your clients?
By remembering that business is a cycle and just
as things are bad now, they will turn around and
you will be doing well again. The only thing permanent
is giving up.
5) Branch Out
When things are slow with
your business, you can take the opportunity to
do all those things you always wanted to do but
never had the time for.
Why not write some articles
or an e-book related to your business, then sell
them or publish them to earn more money and to
further establish your credibility.
Or take a shot at teaching
a class on e-commerce, computers, or a topic related
to your business at a local college, vocational
school, or adult learning center. Even if you
don't get paid, the exposure could do great things
for your business.
You could also start giving
speeches, take some business or technology classes,
or take on some part-time work that will give
you more experiences that will help you compete
in the market when things go back to normal.
Although ups and downs
are simply an inevitable part of business, dealing
with them effectively can make the difference
between staying afloat or going under.
Vishal
P. Rao is the editor of Home Based
Business Opportunities
A website dedicated to opportunities, ideas and resources for
starting a home based business. He also runs the Work at Home
Forum - an online community of folks who work at home.
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