BUSINESS MONITOR PASSED:Layout 1 17/03/2009 10:54 Page 22
BUSINESS MONITOR
continued from page 20
it’s another learning curve and they are not all actually, we did nothing, but we are interested
working to dispel the gloom so every nice. now”. You won’t hear that often, but it does
communication from us will feature a piece of Your second point is that you aim to keep the happen.
humour”. whole team in place for the upturn which will Every piece of expenditure should be
Do your staff understand the seriousness of the follow the downturn, but to achieve that you’re scrutinised. This is where the Scrooge bit really
situation? If they’re young – anyone under 30, or going to have to be Scrooge. You have to kicks in. Do you need flowers in the showroom?
35 for graduates – they have never worked in a demonstrate that the first person on whom that How often do you need a window cleaner? Why
recession. They will need a reality check. Assuming will land is you personally. Cancel the new car, are you buying expensive branded pens for the
that they’re not living in cloud cuckoo land, they don’t recruit that personal assistant, cut up your office? Don’t print out e-mails unless it’s essential.
will be aware that something very nasty is afoot. business credit card in front of them. Make it dead Get everybody to tidy their desk drawers and put
They are likely to be pretty worried – perhaps obvious that this is serious with a capital S. all the unused booty back in the stationery
more than they need to be, because fear of the Every sales opportunity must be grasped cupboard (you’ll be amazed!). Contact your utility
unknown is the deepest fear. instantly. I hear constantly of businesses which companies and threaten to move to their
The first point to make is a simple but important don’t follow through assiduously on every single competitors – there are big savings to be had.
one: this is going to be the toughest time of your lead they generate. This is commercial lunacy of The staff are going to have to work harder. You
working life, but it is possible to trade through a the highest order and if any of your team have might broach the subject of putting in extra
recession – millions of businesses have done it become used to picking off just the low-hanging unpaid hours. Staying until six pm for instance to
more than once. What’s more, until you’ve worked fruit, they’ve got to unlearn the habit, fast. Go send out a list of prospecting e-mails. This requires
through a recession, you’re not fully experienced – back into that database and give yourself the kid glove handling and it would be far better if the
hard, painful job of checking if any suggestion came from them (see below).
enquiries you didn’t sell to are still If they don’t like what you’re saying, they might
in the market. This is go down the road and find a new job. Really? They
embarrassing and a shouldn’t bet on it and, if they did, they could well
thankless task until find themselves out of that job if the new
someone says, employer hasn’t put in place recession defence.
“Well, Look hard at where extra sales can come from.
There are a number of routes, which may all look
like a statement of the obvious: sell more of the
same to the same people; sell something extra to
the same people; sell the same thing to more
people in your normal trading area; sell in a bigger
catchment area. There are implicit costs in each of
these, so you’ll need to do your sums.
An important point is to involve your team in
these activities and get them to throw in ideas.
You might be pleasantly surprised what self-
denying solutions they come up with and quite
possibly some clever ideas they hadn’t yet
mentioned. If you try to impose a new tougher
regime without selling the reasons and getting
their input it just won’t work.
Finally, plan how you’re going to tell customers
and suppliers about the new regime. Either group
might get jittery if they see cutbacks on visible
costs.
The message is that you’re in for the long haul
and you believe that doing this now will put you
far ahead of competitors who don’t – it’s a
positive move, not a negative one and both
suppliers and customers should be very happy
with that.
Paul Clapham is a marketing consultant with over
25 years’ experience covering a broad range of
business sectors and a full spread of marketing
disciplines. He works with small, medium and
large companies alike to increase their profitability
through marketing. Tel:01453 765432
| 22 | April 2009 www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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