Sunday, October 12, 2008

How Can Your Business Survive an Economic Recession

Your business will surely be affected during an economic recession. If you don’t find ways to make it ride out the storm, chances are you will have to file for bankruptcy and close. Fortunately, there are things you can do to keep it afloat.

Remember that the heart of every business is customer service. If you give special treatment to your customers, these people will leave feeling satisfied and always come back. This is something that your employees must understand because if they don’t, these individuals will be the first one to go since you have to cut back on your expenses.

One way of doing that is to reeducate your employees. You can hold seminars on customer service or simply give them a refresher course of the products and services that you are offering because this will impress the customer the moment they walk in through the door.

You should also motivate them because good morale always achieves positive results. Being the owner of the business, you should lead by example by rendering longer hours at work. If they see you are doing whatever it takes to stay afloat, they will do the same because again, their jobs are on the line and they could be dismissed if things get worse.

Most businesses think that letting people go is always the first option. You don’t have to make the same mistake when these reductions can be made elsewhere as long as quality is not compromised. If you have to buy things, see if you can get longer credit periods or better rates so large expenses can become smaller ones making it easy to manage.

It is always nice to have customers pay in cash but during an economic recession, that is hard for the consumer so if you don’t use a credit card machine yet, now will be a good time to get one. Studies have shown that more people will be able to buy from you using a credit card especially during a time of financial downturn.

The objective of any business is to make money so part of surviving an economic recession will be also to lower your profit margins. By informing your customers of this move, they will be able to buy more at a very reasonable price. You can raise prices again when things get better since such a crisis is only temporary.

Instead of relying on people coming through your door, you can also look at other ways to promote your business. One of the most affordable ones to date is the internet so create your own website. If you can’t do this on your own, hire someone to do it and then make sure that is it both attractive and interactive.

Other businesses are also feeling the crunch and they are also doing their best to stay afloat. Ask around what they are doing and share the same information as well so you will have other ideas and options when the ones you have right now are not working.

We are not yet out of the woods in the recent economic recession. A lot of people are still losing their jobs and their homes, which is why it is important for you to take the steps mentioned rather than doing nothing and hoping for a miracle.

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