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On Developing Winning Strategies
-
Be a leader
- Identify and strengthen your business shortcomings
- Get everyone on board
- Salespeople have to
sell
-
Protect your margins
- Focus on the core business
- Don’t wait too long to
cut costs
- Don’t let
anyone treat you like a bank
- Know which
marketing tactics are most
effective for your market
- If you do have to lay people off – again, be a
leader
- Monroe Porter, “Winning Strategies in a Challenging Economy”,
Leaders in Landscape 2009, pp. 8-9
- Stay curious: A recession is no time to shut down your own thinking.
In fact, it is time to open it up.
- Invite your savviest outsiders inside:
At a minimum, you will build empathy and loyalty with your customers and
other key stakeholders (major investors, community leaders and the like).
- No “one” knows enough: engage the organization: need to engage others within
the organization in developing your strategy.
- Create Strategic Traction
Within the Organization.
Strategic leadership also requires embedding
strategic capability throughout the organization.
- Kate Sweetman,
“Leadership Code: In Recession, Strategy Even More Important”, Fast Company,
November 14, 2008
On Selling to Clients
Ask questions. Find out how they are changing their business model in the
face of a recession. Are they eliminating products, adding a lower cost
product line, extending credit lines, offering different buying terms like
month-to-month or pay-as-you-go programs, or do they have any special offers
this month? Find out, and then build an ad proposal against that.
- Josh
Gordon, president of SmarterMediaSales.com, ,
"Do You Have a Recession Sales
Strategy? You'd better ..."
Publishing Executive magazine
On Managing your Financials
- Really monitor non-payroll spending
- Establish and enforce budgets
- Curb non-essential spending
- Get rid of the supply closet, or start
managing inventory
- Negotiate supplier concessions
- Ask your suppliers
for advice
- Look for alternatives to capital spending
- Streamline your
processes
- Innovate and use your savings to fuel growth
- Implement a
cost-cutting tool such as e-procurement
-
10 Secret Strategies to Recession
Proof Your Business, Executive Whitepaper, Coupa.com
On Fostering Customer Loyalty
"Allocating budget dollars toward existing customers is even more critical
during an economic slowdown. In a down economy, loyal customers are your No.
1 asset because they provide the highest marketing ROI. … Uncertainty has
led to increasing cost consciousness. Lower prices, discounts or temporary
incentives from competitors look increasingly attractive to price-sensitive
consumers. That is why it is critical to reach out to your best customers
and reinforce your value proposition. You can provide tailored products,
services, messages and offers. The goal is to redirect the mindset from “who
has the lowest price” to “who provides the best value.”
- Tom Shirkey,
Founder and President, Loyalty Advantage, DM News, Jan. 26, 2009, page 6
On Succeeding in the Retail Business
- Improve merchandise efficiencies with regards to inventory knowledge
- identifying items that are not moving and liquidating them rapidly and
investing those dollars into styles that are moving
- Adopt planned pricing method to unload stock through scheduled
markdowns
- Cultivate customer loyalty to improve the odds of getting repeat sales.
Service your customers as never before, by knowing who they are and what
they want, again by utilizing your technology.
- Improve employee productivity
- Install tighter loss prevention systems
- Increase sales through channels of retailing. Expand into multiple
channels and different ways of selling your products.
- Be in-stock with the right merchandise for customers
- Get back to basics, back to your core products and go with your
strengths as retailers. Outsource specialized needs so you can focus on
your core strengths
- Make sure you are looking at the three ways to increase your sales:
getting new customers; getting current customers in the store buying more
often; and getting customers to increase their average purchase size.
- Make sure you know how to use the system that you have today to do
that and more. Invest in technology for the long term, knowing that it
will repay itself.
The foundation of every successful retailer is to have "the right product
at the right price at the right location at the right time."
-
Succeeding in the Retail Business During Economic Stress, by Kevin McAdam, Published by One Step Retail Solutions
On Developing Marketing Strategies
- Research the consumer:
- Focus on family values
- Maintain marketing
spending.
- Adjust product portfolios.
- Support distributors.
- Adjust
pricing tactics.
- Stress market share.
- Emphasize core values.
- John Quelch, Harvard Business School,
Marketing Your Way Through a Recession
"When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village. Look
for cozy hearth-and-home family scenes in advertising to replace images of
extreme sports, adventure, and rugged individualism. Zany humor and appeals
on the basis of fear are out. Greeting card sales, telephone use, and
discretionary spending on home furnishings and home entertainment will hold
up well, as uncertainty prompts us to stay at home but also stay connected
with family and friends."
- John Quelch, Harvard Business School,
Marketing Your Way Through a Recession
On Planning for Economic Recovery
“Even in the midst of a downturn, make sure you prepare for the rebound.
Start planning as soon as possible for how you are going to gain share and
differentiate from your peers. And while you are at it, use the slowdown to
build even stronger relationships and differentiation with your customers.”
- John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco (Inc. Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009, p.
77)
Article compiled by PowerHomeBiz.com. Read the
PowerHomeBiz Small and
Home Business Blog
February 2009
