- Beat the recession in your head first and your body will follow. If you are walking around thinking “woe is me”, guess what follows?
- Engage your team. The whole team. Give those responsible for customer service, clear sales and margin targets.
- Look at every line item of your costs to save money. Every cent you save helps you recover from lost sales. Do you really need to pay for extra storage off site, when you have empty offices?
- Meet regularly with your team, and give updates on progress. Everyone needs to step up their game and at this time you need to support each other and the team needs daily huddles and weekly pep talks.
- Remember to feed the company spirit. Potlucks are priceless and cost neutral.
- Jump in your car and go visit your key customers. One thing you don’t want is to lose key customers you already have.
- Add value to your customers. Value = Price minus Benefits. A cupcake? An article e-mailed that’s relevant? Go shop your customer and give them feedback on the experience.
- Review staffing to make sure that you have the right size team to service your customers and the right people on the bus.
- Discontinue unprofitable brands or parts of your business that your customers do not want.
- Recognise people’s efforts regularly and consistently. There is enough gloom, so celebrate small wins.
- Build your digital foot print through outbound marketing including blogging and embracing social media tools like Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Get your team involved.
- Make sure your are absolutely clear on your point of difference VS your competitors and make sure your whole team knows it too.
- Have a purpose. This is pepper’s purpose: Together and with passion, we help brands soar.
- Cultivate perpetual learning across your organisation. The internet has made it pretty easy. There is really no excuse.
- Be grateful for what you have. It could be worse. Walk around with a grateful attitude.
- Remember all things being equal; share of voice equals share of market. Aka make sure that you are in front of customers blocking them from your competition. (including: digital, media, public relations, events)
(Picture courtesy freedomsback.com)
