If you are a Business owner or if you are an entrepreneur and your business has been affected by the coronavirus, by the global crisis, comment below. What I am going to share with you today will have a profound impact on your business. In fact, I am going to share with you 12 ways to grow your business during this global crisis. There is no doubt these are very challenging times for any business owners or any entrepreneurs. What I am about to share with you is what I call the crisis triangle.
It is the exact triangle that I share with my high-level clients, my board members are seven and eight-figure entrepreneurs and I gave them some of these strategies. In fact, recently, we conducted a three-hour training session, so what I am going to do is to extract and take some of the key essence, some of the highlights from their three-hour training and condense it into, probably this article is to give you some tactics and some strategies that you could apply in your business.
It doesn't matter if you are running a small business or you are running a $100million organization, this crisis triangle will work for you if you implement it. First of all, does not matter whatever plan you have got, your 12-month growth, what you want to do is, you want to throw that out the window, forget about it. It's like, think about it like a Titanic.
The plan is to go from Ireland to New York, that was the original plan. That's your 12-month growth plan. But when you hit the iceberg, the coronavirus, things got to change. Now, you are not thinking about, I guess when I get to New York, I'm going to go to this party, I’m going to go meet this friend, I'm going to do all these things, no, you hit the iceberg. There's a crisis going on, we need to adapt.
Now we just think about survival. We have to survive in order to thrive.
So, there are many different components I am going to share with you, but first the most important thing is your mind-set. This is not the time to panic. This is not the time to get all nervous. And it's tough and it's very tough, I understand that, but this is the time you want to stay calm, cool, collected. Because you cannot make intelligent decision in your business if you're panicking. Your team demands leadership from you. This is a time where you step up as a leader, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur and say, okay, this is what's going on and we're going through this together. What do we need to do? What are some of the strategic moves that we need to make?
So, the first part that I want to teach you, that I want to share with you, those are three things that you could do right now. So, the first part that I want to share with you, the first three ways that you could grow your business during this global crisis is to suspend, shut down and sell off. Suspend, what do I mean by that? Suspend all non-essential spending. This is not the time to make those major investments. This is not the time to take risk, because in order to survive, in order to thrive, first we need to focus on stability. We need to stabilize what you have first.
| Content Marketing Strategy : Create and Execute in 2020 |
| Artificial intelligence And The Future |
| Why Social Media Is Important After Corona |
So, all those big plans that you have that maybe that requires a lot of Cash outlay, you want to suspend those. You want to look at every single line of expense that you've got and you got to think about what are some of the things that you could cut. It's very, very critical. You want to suspend all non-essential spendings including your personal spending. Work as much as you could, forget it. You want to buy that car, forget it. You want to take a vacation, forget it. It's not the time to that that. It is absolutely essential that you put your business ahead of your personal needs. Your business needs to survive. Your business needs as much cash as possible. Then you want to shut down all cash-heavy projects.
Any projects, let's say you are looking at a group of projects that you have to do, you want to execute, you want to implement. Take a look at them, which one sucks the most amount of cash, cause crisis sucks cash. There are a lot of emergency things, there are a lot fires you need to put out. You need to look at 80/20. These projects, they may be good three months, six months ago, not so good today. These projects, they might have potential, but there's a lot of uncertainty. It requires a lot of capital and cash. Those you want to put away.
The third thing you want to do is to sell off any non-producing assets. Unfortunately, not all businesses could be saved, could be rescued, things would change, some businesses could not be rescued. If you are looking at it with no emotion, you know in some case you got to turn the key. You got to walk away, because you don't know when this thing would bounce back and you don't know if it does bounce back, even the economy bounces back, your business would never look the same.
And most business will require quite drastic change in terms of business model, in terms of how they serve customers and how they deliver value. So, in some case, you need to make the tough decision and I know it's tough to walk away. Sell it off, give it away, whatever it is, because you don't want to waste time trying to revive a dead horse. A dead horse is a dead horse. So, those are the first three ways, that's first part of the triangle. Something that you can implement right now.
The next part of the triangle, the next three ways to grow your business is to digitize, systematize and virtualize your products and services. Let me explain. So, let's take a look at the first one, what could you digitize in your business, your delivery, your products and services? So, let's say right now, you are selling something that is a physical product, that's fine, but is there a possibility you could digitize this and actually deliver the same kind of products or similar through technology? Through the internet, something that people could download versus shipping something physical to them. It makes a huge difference. Not only it reduces your delivery cost, but now possibly, you can expand your marketplace, you can reach a more global market.
Next, systemize, can you systemize your processes and procedures so it's less people dependent and more technology dependent? You want to increase your efficiency, what are some of the things that you could put systems in place, maybe perhaps you want to hire a remote team to execute. Once you have a system in place, it's easier to do that. In a crisis, you don't want your business to be so people-heavy. Ideally, you want to reduce the human elements, because if you can use codes, if you could use technology, you can use software to automate some of these things. Maybe not the whole thing, but ask yourself the question, are there aspects of your business that you could systemize and automate that would make a huge difference, that increases your odds, your chances of survival?
Third, virtualize, I have a few friends of mine. Before the crisis, a big part of their businesses, a big part of revenue come from doing events, doing live events. But now they take the same experience and actually make them better and they virtualize it. Now they're conducting virtual events, virtual seminars, virtual trade shows, in fact and they're experimenting a new way to deliver value, a new way to connect. So, ask yourself, can you virtualize your event, can you virtualize your experience and actually create something even better and yes, at the same time reach more people? Now, the third part of the crisis triangle is to count, collect and conserve your cash.
What do I mean by counting your cash? Literally, you want to be looking at your cash balance every single day, you want to be looking at your cash flow statement at least every single week, why? Because in order to survive, we need staying power. What gives you staying power? Cash, in a crisis, cash is king. Cash is what is going to help you get through this period of time, so you want to be very, very cautious how your cash flow is flowing. And the best way to stay on top of it, you look at your cash balance every single day. Where is the cash coming in, where is the cash flowing out? The only way you would die financially, the only way you have to shut down your business is because you run out of cash. So, count your cash every single day. Then at the same time you want to collect as much cash as possible. Meaning looking at your accounts receivable, who is owing you money? You want to collect, you want to minimize accounts receivable. You want to collect all that money.
You collect all that money. And at the same time, you want to go back and negotiate with all your vendors, anyone that you're buying from, you want to negotiate your accounts payable. So, it's very simple, you want to have as little accounts receivable as possible. You don't want anyone owing you any money. At the same time, accounts payable, you want to renegotiate the terms. Can you extend the terms? Can you spread the payments into multiple payment? Can you pay them a little bit later? Let's say right now you're paying them in 30 days, can you go back and negotiate 45 days, 60 days? You want to conserve that cash for a rainy day, forget rainy day, this is a perfect storm. You want to conserve that cash as much as possible, because we don't know, no one knows how long this will last. No one knows where we're going next and no one knows when we are going to bounce back.
It doesn't matter, as long as you have cash, you are okay. So, conserve that cash. Do you everything you possibly could. Use every mean necessary to conserve cash, cash is the lifeblood of your business. And the last part of the crisis triangle is to re-energize, reactivate and retain your clients. Now, how do you re-energize your existing client base? Can you add additional value to them. Keep in mind, chances are your customers are experiencing the same thing that you and I are going through. They're going through the same experience.
They have challenges, there's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of uncertainties, so what could you provide that will help them, that will comfort them? Maybe you could offer them some additional help. Maybe you could just reach out to them and say, hey, how are things? What help do you need from me? What can we do to help you solve some of these problems? So, you want to re-energize and communicate with your existing customers. Here's a very powerful question that you could ask yourself and comment below with your answer. What if, in the next 12 months, let's say you cannot get another customer coming in, what would you do differently? How would you conduct your business?
Think about it. Wouldn't you focus more on the existing customers that you do have? So, do that, how could you add value to your existing customers? And then you want to reactivate. What are some of the old customers, people who bought from you, but they no longer buy from you, they haven't done business with you for a few years? Who are some of those people? Can you go back to them and reactivate that relationship and say, hey, how are things going? Do you need any help? Is there anything that I can help you with? That makes a huge difference.
You want to reactivate some of those older customer base, because it doesn't cost you anything. They have done business with you at some point, but somehow you lose contact, somehow you lose touch, now is the time to reach out. Pick up the phone, this is how you apply your closing skill, pick up the phone and talk with people. Now it's time to connect, to reactivate that relationship. Then, at last, you want to retain. How could you retain the clients that you have? Because now it causes a lotto get a new customer in. Maybe you don't have the resources, maybe you don't have the cash to go out there and advertise to get new customers in, well, let's retain the customers that you have.
