Are you in business and looking for some help coping with the recession?

During the "good times" it's easy to forget that businesses can tolerate inefficient processes, sub-standard customer service, excess inventory levels and other costly practices. The little things like keeping a good eye on your stock, reviewing a particular process, watching the dollars you spend, or chasing slow paying customers for payment, are just not that important.

So these practices are largely invisible, unmeasured and ignored, with their resulting costs absorbed or passed onto the end customers, who rarely complain about it. However, all this changes when the “good times” are over and things get tougher.

Those same inefficient processes are never sustainable, and can lead to business failure if left to continue. At best, they can lead to your business bleeding cash you probably need. Luckily this does not happen overnight. There are signs that your business maybe being held back (or worse still, going backward) due to inefficient processes.

Are You At Risk?

The following questions can help highlight symptoms of problems that are, or could be, building which may lead to your business becoming a recession statistic. If you require help answering any of these questions, or addressing any particular issue identified, then give us a call. We’ll be only too happy to help you.

1. Are looking at your business results at least every month?
2. Do you have reporting systems that you use to provide meaningful results?
3. Do you know what your Key Performance Indicators are?
4. What are the critical success factors for your business?
5. Do you know what you would do if your sales fell 50% or more?
6. How are you performing compared to your budget?
7. Have your sales dropped or flat-lined recently?
8. Are you paying your bills on time (this includes the tax man)?
9. If you sell stock, do you know how long your stock sits around before it sells?
10. Do you know the profitability of each stock or service line you sell?
11. Are you holding onto slow/old stock?
12. Are your staff happy?
13. Are your customers paying you on time?
14. Is everything you do, sell, or buy contributing to more cash in your bank?
15. Do most of your sales come from only a few customers?
16. Have you been propping your business up with your own money recently?

How did you go? Did you find these questions easy to deal with or not? If you found them challenging then the chances are your business’s success is more dependent on luck than great management.

Can You Reduce Your Risk?

In most cases, we would suggest that at the very least you should be able to reduce your risk. In some cases you'll be able to do very well. Our attached "Business Success in Tough Times” handout summarises some ideas of things you can start doing, continue doing, stop doing, and assistance you could find to improve your business’s success. For the best results, you should focus on ideas that best address any issues you may have identified when working through the “Business risk” questions we posed above.

We have a more detailed version of "Business Success in Tough Times" which provides some specific examples of ideas you can use for each item in our above sumamrised handout. It's available to you FREE AS WELL, but you just have to ask us for it. You can do that by emailing us using or alternatively you can refer to our 'How can I contact you' web page for other ways to contact us.

Our Number One Recommendation

Do all you can to keep your customers laoyal because your competition will be doing everything they can to take them away from you. If you can make sure you're still selling while others are whining then you'll be better positioned to succeed in tight times.

Brydon DavidsonJuly 2009