Economic Conditions Are Ripe For Small Business Failure: How to Keep Your Business Afloat

A look at the current economic trends is downright frightening these days. Consider these statistics:

* According to The U.S. Small Business Administration, the U.S. economy experienced weaknesses in the third quarter, as real gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent

* Consumers, who helped lift the GDP in the second quarter with their economic stimulus checks, reduced their spending by an annualized 3.1 percent in the third quarter

* Real gross private domestic investment continued to fall, with an annualized 1.9 percent decline.

As a small business owner, you’re probably scared you could lose it all at any moment now, and honestly – you should be worried. But how you deal with that fear could determine whether your business survives or fails. You can either sit back and bite your nails or sharpen your claws and prepare to fight for your business’ survival. The choice is yours.

There are many things you should do to help get your business through a tough economy. First of all you need to change your approach.

Assess Your Top 20 Clients

Look at your top 20 clients. What have those sales been lately? If they’re down, find out why and then re-approach them. If you can identify why your biggest clients aren’t buying, chances are you’ll also find out why others aren’t bringing you their business. The key is to react quickly to declining sales so you can make adjustments faster – before you deplete your sales pipeline and your sales cycle is so long that it puts you out of business.

Rethink Your Business Hours

I like to say that you should think of your business as being open 24/7, but that doesn’t mean you have to actually leave the light on all day and night. Track when your customers are inquiring about your services or are creating traffic for your business. When are you in demand? Once you know that, you can figure out appropriate hours and staffing.

Optimize Your Website

If your Website is simply informational you’re missing out on an opportunity to market and sell. Investigate marketing opportunities via the Web and what it would take for you to maintain, update and expand the site on a regular basis to keep it relative and timely.

Reduce Your Mailing Costs

It may not seem like a major priority, but why spend more for mailings than you have to? In a good economy or bad, it just makes sense to cut unnecessary costs. How many overnight packages do you ship? Could you send them 2 or 3 day instead? If you mail out a lot, do you have a bulk mail account? Can you combine mailings to clients into weekly instead of daily groupings? Can you scan, email or fax information instead?

When Sales are Slow, Get Busy!

If you or your employees are finding yourselves with extra time on your hands because things have slowed, use that time wisely. Study your business’ efficiency, make those reports you’ve been meaning to do, meet with employees and customers to strategize and share idea. Organize, clean, research etc. There’s always something to do that can help make your business better.