Over the past month it seems like I can’t turn on the radio or TV or turn a page in the newspaper without hearing the doom and gloom from economic and business news. It’s enough to make Average Joe build his own personal war bunker. (“Call me when it’s safe to come out.”) He’s off to stock up on canned food because he just doesn’t know when things are going to get better.
Rather than focusing on the gloom, however, business owners should take the opportunity to see what they can do in this climate to move forward.
These are some downturn opportunities that businesses of any size can focus on:
Sounds obvious, but when the incoming cash is not keeping up with outgoings, its time to make some big decisions. If you haven’t got weekly or monthly performance indicators you won’t see how you are going until it’s too late. Take the time to do a bit of housekeeping on your financial indicators. Use simple indicators that are relevant to cash flow both in an out, such as number of converted customers, units sold, employee hours or days stock held.
Get onto your debtors and make them pay now. Test your powers of persuasion. No point in giving them credit if you are going to go under.
And while you’re at it, get over the excuses you have for not contacting potential clients. Send them an email, a brochure or phone call. Find a good news story and send it around. Look out for competitions to nominate your business in, like the Telstra Business Awards or INNOVIC’s TheNextBigThingAwards.
Look for new opportunities to grow your existing business.
Focus on your core offering, but extend this in a way that is creative and meets a known gap for cross selling. MYOB is now offering domain names and websites. Recruitment companies are offering personal career assessments to help clients know what role they want to find next and training courses presenters are selling books at their courses.
Make sure that what you offer is easy to provide and doesn’t detract from your core service. Could you outsource it? You have the customers and the infrastructure in place and now is the time to start leveraging it.
Use your existing customer base to make referrals for complimentary services. Find someone up or down the supply chain that could benefit from a referral for business that doesn’t conflict with yours, and see if you can get a commission for doing next to nothing. Surely you know someone who needs services like you.
Have you thought about export? It isn’t necessarily that scary. For first time exporters there are a number of Federal, State and Local associations that are keen to help. Some provide cash up front for tradeshows and many businesses will be eligible for the 50% rebate under the EMDG grants (applies only after spending the first $15,000). At the very least you could offer an export product without leaving the country by bringing buyers here under these grant schemes.
Take the time to analyse and plan.
Good business managers spend more time planning and turning plans into reality than spending time in the business. If this is too hard then think about bringing someone in from outside to help plan. Too expensive? Think again.
At the Federal level, there is the Enterprise Connect program that offers to cover half the cost of consulting up to $20,000 for a wide range of services, such as supply-chain management, resource management, export strategy, lean manufacturing and strategic business planning.
At the state level, the Victorian Government offers funding under the Grow Your Business Program. To be eligible you need to demonstrate that your business is sustainable and with revenues around $1m or more.
Other opportunities can be found using services like AIC’s Techfast program, which is free and available nationally. AIC provides innovation and collaboration services that help organisations grow. Eligibility for this assistance you need to have revenues in the area of $1m or over.
It is definitely going to be a testing time over the next 12 months as the economy slowly pulls out of its steep dive, but for those who are proactive there is a good chance of coming out of this stronger and bigger than expected. The business cycle will turn eventually. So take this opportunity to spend time on your business, not buying cans of food.
Peter Nolle is director of Treadstone, a Melbourne-based consulting firm that offers assistance with grant applications, business plans and business coaching. Treadstone works with early-stage, growing and export-ready businesses.
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