Unruly Sun

How to compete and survive in a recession

The seven point plan for economic survival

Recession is just part of economic life. British businesses have seen many crises come and go. But this downturn is different. What can companies in every sector – technology, manufacturing, services and many more – do to make sure they survive and emerge strong and competitive when growth returns?

If your business has grown up in the boom years, you may never have had to make the kinds of choices now confronting many managers and business owners.
Just to pile on the gloom for a moment, I have a feeling that this time it’s worse than ever. Having been in business for 35 years, it’s certainly the worst recession/downturn/crisis/call-it-what-you-will that I can remember.
I’ve reached that conclusion because I sense the language is different this time, in two ways:

• There is far less certainty about how the economic downturn will evolve
• There is far more talk about a major shift in strategy, with UK opinion leaders talking up engineering and manufacturing in ways that I have not heard for years

In times of uncertainty we do seem to fall back on the basics of survival. In business, smart management theories and glossy marketing wizardry tend to give way to the fundamentals:

• How do we make more sales?
• How can we make what we are selling more efficiently, thereby making our sales more profitable?

These, of course, are the timeless questions of business. Bigger brains than mine are continually coming up with new ways to answer them, but they have been answered quite successfully for centuries with the application of a little common sense and a bit of commercial flair.
So, here’s a seven point plan for competing and surviving in a recession:

1. Protect your customer base – make sure your customer records are up to date and that you are still regularly in touch with the key people
2. Review your costs from a customer’s perspective – you may have to make cuts, but don’t cut things that will compromise quality or service levels until you have cut anything else that can be spared
3. Communicate with your customers – make sure everyone knows everything you can do; it’s natural for people to label you as a supplier of one particular thing and they may be pleasantly surprised to find you have other things they need as well
4. Look for innovation – consult your team for ideas to make things better, inside the business and out, and not just in terms of cost savings and efficiency; someone in your business may have a quick and easy way to add something really valuable to an existing product or service that gives you a new story to tell customers and prospects
5. Celebrate success – new customers, or new sales to existing customers, give you strong stories to tell other customers, which may inspire them to come to you for more products or services
6. Embrace technology – if you can, invest in secure mobile communications technologies – smartphones, remote working, videoconferencing – that can drive down costs and allow you to improve service delivery; corporate social networking technologies and principles can help businesses of every size, not just big corporations; they can reduce time-to-market and increase competitiveness
7. Advertise and sell – dare we use those archaic, old-school terms? Yes, we dare, because good sales people have always been instinctive marketers and the principles of effective advertising apply just as much in the Search Engine Optimised, fragmented world as they did when mass media Mad Men ruled the world; the research on surviving a recession shows that companies who maintain investment in winning new customers and increasing sales have better survival rates and grow faster when things get better

Survival in tough times means protecting the things that matter most to your business: your customers. Everyone in the business has to focus on how their roles effect the customer relationship, whether it means closer quality control, more flexible financial terms, or faster times from order to delivery.

And always, it means communication, communication, communication: if customers and prospects don’t know what you have to offer, they can’t buy it.

I hope this helps. I for one am looking forward to seeing what the economic landscape looks like five years from now and I’m unapologetically optimistic. I think we’ll have a stronger base of innovation and manufacturing, underpinned by financial structures that reflect real added value.
We’ll see.

Share your thoughts