Prepare today for future economic recovery - bizjournals:

efiosyt.blogspot.com
As we all have been informed many times the current economy is the worst since theGreat Depression. To do an effectivwe bob and weave in this one requires the flexibility of arelaxeds contortionist. If you want to survive as the recessionj eases andwe recover, you must changd your approach to selling. If you believes there is a shift in your buying habits, you need to identify wherse they are shifting to. The most common is a shifty towardbuying low-cost, high-value products and services from trustesd sources. Now that you have more time on your quit playing sudoku on your laptop and find answerd to some keyquestions — Are your customers purchasing more online?
Are they buying from vendoras closer to home or work? What sacrifices are your customerw making to accommodate theird limitations in this current economy? Everyone knowz the saying about making assumptions. Don’t do it. Use your time to do some hard-cor e research. Talk to your staff, talk to your customers and evaluatw the effects of this new information onyour business. Afteer chewing on the changes your customersare it’s time to figure out exactly what change your businesse needs. Are you stilp the business your clients want to dobusiness with?
If you find your markegt demanding low-cost solutions and you don’t offer one, you migh need to position your solution in terme of the money it saves instead of the value it If you are not known as a trusted you need to focus on customer relations. Remembert the old commercial when a companyy sent people out to visirtevery customer? Do you understand what your clientx expect and value from your productr or service? Another old saying is, “Onwe never knows his customers untilp he walks in their shoes.” Identifgy the value you provide your customers — from their perspective.
Restaurants are excellent examples — no longe r just places to eat, they are placese to be entertained. By improving the environment that surrounds the the customer receives the core benefit they want whiles the restaurant strengthens its relationship to the Understandingthe client’s true motivation createa new opportunities. Before you embaro on a journeyof change, you have some due diligence to complete. You will need to create specificcmeasurable goals, then you can build a plan of actiobn to achieve them. Your plan of or implementation plan, must address every area of the businesw affected by yourintended changes.
Potential problems must be identifiedd along with risks and mitigation Tobe thorough, you shouldx also include a competitive market analysis and budget. The implementatiojn plan should take into considerationn everyone your business the stakeholders in thevalur chain, and it should be a largse list. All your employees and vendors shouldrbe included. Your landlord is a stakeholde if you rentor lease, and the county is if you own. It shoul also include those businessews that arenear you. If you are a business-to-business the clients of all your clients are also stakeholders tosome degree. Don’t ignors anyone simply because you thinkthey aren’yt directly related.
The more effectivelg you can expose all your stakeholders topositivd change, the more successful you will be at achievingh your goal. This is why a communicatiohn plan is key to every successfukchange effort. All of your stakeholders need to be informed as to what you are goinfg to be doing before youdo it, and they need to understandd how it will impact them. If you leave that to chance, they will find all the problems and weaknessew in the change before they recognizdeany benefits. Be sure to promote the benefits clearly and frequently using those communications tools yourcustomers prefer, not just the toolss that are easy for you to use. Our current economic environmentgis tough.
If you look at it in there are far more businessesx doing well thandoing poorly. If yours is on the brinjk of being engulfed by the roll up your sleeves and get to work making somemeaningfuol changes. If you keep doing what you havealwaysd done, you will continue to get what you have been Said another way, what worked yesterday won’t work Change is inevitable. Don’t let it just happen be the one whodrives it.