Doing Business in Tough Times Means Back to Basics

“Sometimes we do our best, sometimes we need to do what’s required” Winston Churchill.  Those choice words really apply today, doing what’s required. We have had a great economic run these last several years and for many people doing business was more about taking sales orders and making record profits year over year.

Today though we are back to how business was before the business boom, and that is working harder to keep our clients, working harder to get new clients, keeping a watch on the bottom line, and what we have in our cash flow reserves. What we know is that companies which have good leaders ie. Sergei Brylin (Google), Steve Jobs (Apple), Chip Wilson (Lululemon), have learned to take companies and ideas from past downturn times into the present day with great vision, but even more importantly, greater execution.

Leaders, come out of economic downturns better than anyone else. Why? 5 Qualities distinguish them

1. Have a clear vision
2. Reap what you sow, sow more and you will reap more.
3. Know the difference between a problem finder & a solution provider.
4. Who do you spend the most time with? The 5 people you spend the most time with have the most profound effect on you. Your income is the average of those 5 people.
5. Get good at whatever you practice.

10 Ideas to Lead:

1. Think of loss leaders, 20% of all your customers provide 80% of your revenue, therefore you can give away more freebies to help you get more revenue from your best clients.
2. Go beyond the call of duty: Example. You need to have your shoes shined before a early morning presentation but its late at night and the hotel doesn’t have a shoe shine station or anyone who can do it. What does the hotel manager do, he gets someone before the presentation starts to shine the presenter’s shoes from outside the hotel.
3. Look within your own organization to give away something for free that doesn’t cost you anything.
4. Think about joining hands with other groups to do business with to save costs.
5. Keep staff productive ie. Bob Rennie of Rennie Marketing gives his employees Friday afternoons off because he thinks they’ll be more productive and fresh thinking because he can’t pay the same amount of bonuses this year compared to last year.
6. Think of how important your value is to of consumers and communicate it with staff and customers.
7. Shopping centers provide a great opportunity for businesses to get good value for upcoming leases.
8. Try to be a FAD (Feelings, Attitudes, Distinction) should be taken into account in your decisions of your customers.
9. Goals written increase the likelihood by 1000 times of those goals being achieved. The top 3% write goals, the top 2% write goals as if they’ve already reached the goal.
10. Continue branding and marketing

Organizations are now required to going back to doing the basics and they can endure hard times by doing what’s necessary. A Booz Allen Hamilton study on how organizations endure over time led to their findings showing that:

1. Organizations changed and grew.
2. Organizations stayed true to its founding principles

The message today is work hard, be the best that you can be, don’t take yourself or your customers for granted, and be proactive to lead your organization into the future out of this economic downturn.  Be Bold and be a leader!

Check out this  video on being bold.  http://www.odpn.ca/demand/videos