Riding out the storm: How your business can survive the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic need not sound a deathknell for your business. Take the opportunity to regroup and rethink your strategies, and come out the other side more resilient and better equipped to deal with turmoil.

When you got back to work in your business following the first wave of the coronavirus, have you been doing the same as usual? Probably not. Perhaps you had already decided to ‘batten down the hatches’, cut budgets, furlough some of your employees, or even let people go. But are these really the only ways to ride out these difficult times and ensure your business, in some form or another, continues to be successful?

The truth of the matter is that no matter what the climate, people will still buy what they want and need. The real battleground will be the value people feel they are getting. And the winners will be businesses which take the opportunity to rethink their strategy and approach, and build a really strong organisation.

Thriving in the pandemic

While there’s still a demand for goods and services, there’s still a market. In an economic downturn,  complacent or badly-run companies will tend to go under, which will mean less competition for you and more real demand from potential customers. Take advantage of this and your business could well end up even more profitable. Some businesses thrive in every recession and come through stronger than ever. Make sure yours is one of them.

You will of course need to manage credit control and cash more tightly than ever. But don’t take action that may damage your business in the longer term. Cutting all external costs, such as marketing spend or development budgets, is a typical ‘knee-jerk’ response to hard times, but at best a ‘quick fix’. You’ll pay for it in the longer term when your customers have forgotten you and your best team members have left. Keep some healthy cash in the business and use it wisely.

Eight ways to deal with the downturn

1. Market yourself: Get out there, and make sure people know you are there. Find out what your competition is doing and better their offering. Offer support and advice to your existing clients – they’ll remember you when circumstances change.
   
   Find out what people do need at the moment – think laterally. If you run a restaurant, can you do take away food? If you make clothing, can you produce scrubs for the NHS or masks for the general public? If you normally conduct sales presentations face to face, can you offer them online? What aspects of your service can be offered online or over the phone? But don’t panic and immediately drop your prices – people will sense your lack of confidence. Your expertise and services still have a value– have confidence in it.

2. Communicate: Engage your team in the game of thriving in this more competitive period. Give them clear targets and goals. Work with them to build tight budgets and make them accountable for delivering them. Stay close to them: don’t micro-manage them, but talk to them – ask for their ideas and find out and provide what they need to be motivated.
3. Negotiate to maintain healthy finances: If times get tougher, you can do deals with your suppliers, the VAT man and your bank – as long as you talk to them in good time, and keep them well-informed. Take advantage of the various schemes and loans on offer right now so that you aren’t driven to make the wrong decisions by lack of ready cash.
4. Focus your resources on sales:  This is not the time to come up with complex and lengthy marketing plans which will take time to produce results. Adjust your marketing mix to respond to the new market conditions and your ‘new’ products and services.
5. Enhance key people’s skills: Provide coaching so your team are comfortable and credible discussing the current situation with customers. Train them to focus on your customers’ specific Covid-related challenges, not their own. Make sure they know how your products and services contribute to your customers’ bottom line and how to create specific value propositions that will compel purchasers to listen and then buy.
6. Build a strong, cohesive management team to provide direction: The most common reason successful people leave their organisations is poor leadership. Make sure you all communicate, communicate, communicate – see 2 above.
7. Measure and improve your effectiveness: Plan rigorously around your key metrics, and monitor and refocus regularly. Inspire your team with common goals, and reward the behaviour you seek. Employees who weren’t productive in a good economy are unlikely to be productive now, and those who need a lot of hand-holding will need too much management time and energy in difficult times. You know who they are; give them clear targets and focused training, but if they still don’t buy in to or work towards your goals, let them go.
8. Take extra care of your customers: Most important of all, provide exemplary customer service. Too many businesses forget that communication and care generally count for more with customers than perfect products or low prices – unless you are running a pound shop! If you can’t do anything else for a while, keep talking to them – it will never be so important to keep the customers you already have.

Protect your business

It’s not easy; it requires visionary leadership and a courageous attitude in a downturn to continue to support a healthy culture where your team can go the extra mile to deliver what your organisation and your customers need. Your temptation may well be to pull in your horns and wait it out, but this is a recipe for mere survival at best.

Your aim could be not just to survive but to thrive, and to come out the other side leaner, stronger and more adaptable than ever before. While there’s nothing very new in the advice above – it’s essentially what businesses should be doing all the time – the opportunity for you right now is that so many don’t!