The best tools you can have in your arsenal to battle these frustrations are organization and proactivity. 

• Shortages/Supply Chain Delays
• Inflation
• Marketing and Sales

Instead of closing your ears to ignore the conditions, keep your ear to the ground about changes that will impact your business and plan proactively how to prepare your business. So let’s talk about potential strategies that you can use for the different economic situations that are affecting business owners.

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Shortages/ Supply Chain Delays

• Make forecasting a priority in your business. As we mentioned earlier, you must keep your ear to the ground about potential changes. Keep track of your current inventory and factors that affect your processes such as shipping times and price for materials.

“The earlier you can predict the shocks, the faster you can react and recover,”  says W.C. Benton, professor of operations and supply chain management at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. “But you can’t wait until someone is not delivering. You need to be proactive.”

• Look for other sources of your supplies. While you should always value and build relationships with other businesses, you can still cater to those relationships while building relationships with others when your primary relationships cannot deliver.

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Inflation

This article by American Express gives some great tips on battling inflation but I want to highlight one point that many business owners are afraid of: raising prices.

If you’ve ever attended our 6 Steps to a Better Business event, this may sound familiar to you but to fill everyone else in, you should absolutely be taking a price increase. Not only in cases dealing with the economy but every year.

Why? Don’t your prices increase every year?

But what if you lose customers due to the increase?

Here’s the thing, you will lose customers. Point blank. BUT we’ve done enough research at ActionCOACH that shows that in all the cases where businesses lose customers due to price increases the clients they lose are C and D clients. These are clients that give them the most headaches and require the most of their time and attention.

Additionally, once they lose these C and D clients, they free themselves up to take on even more A and B clients.

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How to Sell in Poor Economic Conditions

Marketing and sales strategies will also have to change. Businesses aren’t the only ones feeling the effects so your strategies have to ease their worries and concerns and highlight the benefits your product or service can still bring to them.

I implore you to consider these changes regarding the two.

Marketing Must Shift - Messaging, tone, and channels

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

• The message must be different
• Compassion for sure
• Urgency for sure
• Virtual and Viral
• Much more than before- Increase the volume and frequency
• Know Your Numbers better than ever

Sell with Compassion- Don’t feel guilty for trying to keep the doors open, sell with a new purpose. Add value, educate, and listen.

“The two main pillars of great salesmanship are being competitive and compassionate.” – Steli Efti

• Must change tone
• Serious Customer Focus
• Empathy and Helping
• It’s still Selling
• Sell on Purpose
• Relationships Matter

Lastly, the key to both of these is customer service. 

Focus on customer service for repeat business - This continues to be crucial for sustaining and increasing profits and revenue in the business.

“Every contact we have with a customer influences they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.” – Kevin Stirtz

• Go above and Beyond
• Aim to Build Loyalty
• Remember Virtual Must Make Visible
• This is where the Profit is

If you want to dive deeper into strategies specific to your business to defend against economic turmoil, business coaching is your next step. Schedule a complimentary business strategy session with us. This is a 2-hour deep dive into your business to uncover areas that you can market better to customers.   

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