Keeping a Healthy Business Checklist
In these crazy economic times, don’t lose focus of some business basics that can help keep your organization on track:
1. Update your plans.
Now’s a good time to take a look at your goals for the rest of 2008 and refresh your business planning. Take a look at your sales funnel, and closely examine whether or not it needs adjustment. Have customers put off purchasing until next year? Have any of your prospects indicated a significant shift in their business? What’s the current buyer behavior and has it changed? Are your sales, management and operations plans up to date?
2. Encourage a “We rise and fall together” culture.
It’s often true that there’s safety in numbers, so encourage your team and the rest of the organization to look at positive, thoughtful ways to get handle the current economic climate. Engage the organization to work together with a team challenge, for example, to come up with five new ways to improve productivity.
3. Reach out and touch someone.
Shifts in global economic and business markets are often a great conversation starter. Over the past several weeks, I’ve received calls from vendors and suppliers who were “just checking in” to see how my business was running. It’s always wise to keep communications open with prospects and clients, in good times and in challenging ones.
4. One person’s trash is another’s treasure.
I’ve often heard this saying applied to garage sales, and it can also apply to your business. Look for competitors who may abandon market segments where you can fill a need; take another look at customers that may be underserved. Can you reposition your products or services in a new or different way to appeal to this audience?
5. Leading change = Lead by example
In an interview with Fred Hassan, CEO of Shering-Plough, The Harvard Business Review assesses the work that’s been done to transform that organization. The primary focus has been on regaining the “top line” - the sales organization - as a key value driver. Since 2003, the focus has been on salesforce performance, relationship building with physicians and leveraging the sales management team to extend the company’s vision to its selling organization. Within your organization, now is a good time to lead change that can have longlasting impact.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Pam,
From a consultant’s perspective, what advice can you give technology managers faced with staff downsizing as a result of the economic downturn? How can you manage a brand and go-to-market project for a new product with fewer resources in these uncertain times?
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
Mike,
This is a great question - especially at year end as organizations struggle to plan to do more with less in 2009. Here are a few tips that I’ve been passing along to clients:
- Group similar activities across the organization for efficiencies. For example, combine multiple products in an advertising campaign or marketing program instead of separate activities. The costs can be shared across product lines/LOBs.
- Take a close look at the real value of certain activities. How does each program/activity really affect the bottom line?
- Now is the time to invest in your organization. I encourage clients to scrutinize investments in most areas. For some, this has always been standard practice. For others, they are becoming accustomed to a “new way of doing business”.
December 29th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hi Pam
Now that we survived 2009 do you see any difference in 2010 in how we will handle our plans for sales and marketing? Since most held off the bigger decisions to determine how 2009 would end, is there anything we can do to reach out to these companies or possibly our current clients? Should we be thinking about how we are messaging in this new climate?
January 7th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
When I look at the 2009 “Healthy Business Checklist” compared to 2010, the one item that stands out is “Reach out and touch someone”…Any plans in 2010 for sales and marketing should - must - include an element of social marketing.