The immediate economic impact of COVID 19 is likely to fade within the year, according to a US Economic Forecast presented by Deloitte. However, for small and medium businesses in America, a year may seem like an incredible long term. Many companies measure their ability to stay open on a month to month or quarter by quarter, and in the case of small businesses, their cash flow is measured week by week. Assuming that you have decided to go forward through this dark tunnel because you believe, despite not knowing how long or how dark the tunnel will get, that there will be light at the other side. These are some recommendations on how to re-think your business while we are still in shut down mode.
Analyze your business from a financial, customer, and competitive point of view:
Depending on your industry, these questions or similar ones can help you take a quick inventory of where your business is today from a financial, CX, and competitive perspective. If your data is not readily available, that is the first thing you should do to pilot a plane you need a few gauges, similarly to manage a business you need a few KPI‘s.
Be honest with yourself and don’t tell me that you have no competition because your product is superior to anybody else’s and customers send you love letters every day.
As I mentioned before, what is the story behind the numbers? Are your margins growing or declining, are some products better sellers than others? Analyze the data and pick up the nuggets of information so you can make adjustments to your business model while we are on this quarantine. For example, if you own a restaurant and 80% of your sales are coming from 20% of the product, maybe there is an opportunity to pair-down those menu items that are not performing or, at a minimum, replace them with new menu items.
If your business provides services, do you know that is the cost of performing such services by customer segment? Maybe there is an opportunity to increase prices in some areas while offering discounts on others?
If your business provides services, do you know that is the cost of performing such services by customer segment? Maybe there is an opportunity to increase prices in some areas while offering discounts on others?
I believe that there will be a significant number of opportunities for those business owners that are ready to capitalize on them. For instance, most likely, there will be many businesses for sale once COVID 19 is behind us, and if the supply is greater than demand, the prices may be lower.
New customer behaviors may arise. For example, this pandemic has forced many of us to rely on e-commerce more than ever. For example, if you are in the food business, do you believe that more customers will buy online than to go out to a restaurant? If you are a restaurant owner, do you adapt your model to this more significant behavior?
