Sunday 30 November 2008

How Your Business Can Survive a Recession

A recession affects everyone and it does not matter if you are employed or you are running your own business. If you don’t take the appropriate steps, you will have to file for bankruptcy and close.

No matter if your business is small or large, marketing is the best way to get your message across to the people. During a recession, you have to make cuts in the budget and instead of spending more on advertising, it is best to use this money in retraining your staff because customer service is key when you want to set yourself apart from the competition.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to prevent it from happening.

Focus on customer service. In any business, you have to entertain the customer so he or she will be able to buy from you. If you do this well, that person will come back and buy from you even if times are tough.

How do you focus on customer service? By retraining your staff and making sure they understand that this is the only way for your business to survive. Believe it or not, these people who you hire are the front line and if they don’t do well, the customer will just go in and walk out without buying anything.

You can train them 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.

What is at stake for them? Their jobs because you can either keep them or put them out in the street making them one of the 9 million who are now unemployed in the US.

But this is not enough. Since you are the boss, lead by example. Work longer hours because your staff will see the amount of effort you put in and with that, nobody will have the right to complain.

If you had to borrow money to start your business, see if you can pay these loans in full. If there are other things you need to buy, see if you can get longer credit periods or better rates so large expenses can become smaller ones making it easy to manage.

Cash is hard to have during a recession. If your business does not use credit cards, now is the best time to get one because most people carry less than $500 in their wallet and have two or three pieces of plastic.

One of the hardest things to do during a recession is to cut down your profit margins. By doing this, people will be able to buy more. When things are improving, you can return these back to their normal settings.

During a recession, you must still be able to promote your business. You can do this by finding other ways to advertise like creating your own website or distributing flyers instead of paying for ads in the newspaper or billboard.

There are other ways to stay afloat during a recession and you may not have the answers so talk to other business owners and see what they are doing. Some of the steps they have taken may be applicable to your situation and you won’t know that until you try.

The current recession is not only a problem in our shores but also around the world. As you are reading this, companies are continuing to cut jobs and those who are having a hard time paying for mortgage are losing their homes. You could lose your business if you don’t take drastic measures because this is the only way for you adapt with the situation and survive.


Copyright © Anne-Marie Ronsen

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

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