In part 1 of the Becoming a Recession Ninja series, Know Your Economic Recession Enemies in Hard Times, I talked about identifying the challenges and opportunities that your business is facing when the economy is in a recession or otherwise facing hard times. If you've been having difficulty doing that, it may help to jot down notes that come to mind free form and then try to organize and make sense of them later.
As you went through that process, did you find areas where you didn't have enough information to reach any conclusions? If so, maybe keeping better records should be part of your plan of attack to help you through the next recession or whenever your business is facing hard times. Recession Ninjas must be able to see out on the horizon!
Reviewing Your Business Plan
Before you get started on your economic recovery plan, it's a good idea to look at your business plan if you've created one. Consider if it's time to revise your plan as a result of your efforts to get through recessionary hard times. If you don't have a business plan, use the information and ideas you're gathering now as a foundation to create at least an informal plan for your business. Recession Ninjas must have a battle plan!
Examine your budget and spending habits. Again, if you don't have a budget it is time to create one. You'll need to know how much you can spend to accomplish your objectives during the recession recovery planning process.
Staying Focused While Planning
To keep things as simple as possible, keep two things in mind while deciding how you will get your business through hard times:
- What's driving your business (sales) right now? - These are your opportunities.
- What's dragging your business down in this recession? - These are your challenges.
Maximize number 1, minimize number 2. Oh great warrior-to-be, surround yourself with opportunity and slay your enemies!
What to Avoid During Business Planning
There are two major obstacles you'll want to avoid as you develop your recovery plan and put it into action:
- Analysis paralysis - Think, but don't over think. Over thinking can get you into a situation where you end up not taking any of the steps you need to in order to survive a recession or hard times.
- Procrastination - If you wait too long, you'll miss your opportunities and your challenges could end up devouring you. If a task seems overwhelming, break it down into sub steps.
Recession Ninjas cannot afford to dally, lest their enemies overtake them!
Business Planning for your Recovery
Once you have a good idea of what's driving your business and what's holding it back, it's time to develop a plan of action so you can survive, or even thrive through this recession or other period of hard times.
Identify the top 3, 4 or 5 challenges and opportunities you feel you can realistically address in the near future. In a recession or other hard times, you need to be able to act quickly before it's too late to save the business. That's your small home business advantage - you don't have to peel through layers of red tape or bureaucracy, you can just do it.
At this point, overcoming each challenge and making the most of each opportunity you've identified becomes an objective. Make sure your objectives are:
- Clear and understandable
- Specific and measurable
- Attainable
Every great Recession Ninja must have clear, attainable goals!
Once you've got your objectives together, developing your plan involves just two more basic steps:
- Create a list of action items for each objective
- Rank your objectives in order of priority
An argument can be made that step two should be handled first. However, if you create your individual action items first, you may discover that one or more of your objectives is not achievable - perhaps due to a lack of funds, time, ability, etc. If you have to eliminate one or more objectives for this reason, think positive. Doing so will help you narrow your focus and may allow you to look at an alternate solution you wouldn't otherwise have had time for. Great Recession Ninjas have razor-sharp focus!
Listing Action Items to Get through a Recession
If you're stuck on what you need to do in order to achieve your objectives for economic recovery, consider some of these ideas that may help you unblock your mind:
Look for improved ways to reach your target market.
For example, if your prospects primarily arrive through your Website, here are some items you might want to consider:
- If your traffic is down, you might consider taking some search engine optimization (SEO) steps to improve your search rankings.
- If your Website traffic is stable or growing but your sales are still lagging due to the economy, consider implementing some conversion optimization techniques to improve the rate of visitors who become paying clients or customers.
- If you use Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC) to promote your Website, look at your click through rates and costs of your PPC campaigns to determine if they need a tune up.
- If you don't use Pay-Per-Click advertising, do your homework to consider if you might want to run some test ad campaigns to determine if PPC can bring more business to you. Unlike SEO, effective paid search advertising efforts can receive immediate rewards. Additionally, you can test different ads and different landing pages to see which are more effective.
- Consider if there are other Website promotion activities you might want to try to help you get through the hard times. There are a number of Website promotion techniques, including, but not limited to, article marketing, blog marketing and online press release distribution that are very low cost and have potential for a high return on investment (ROI).
- Examine no-cost and low-cost marketing methods or advertising sources you might be able to use to boost your sales.
- Look for ways you can save money and boost your profit margin.
- Consider updating your payment terms or deposit requirements.
- Don't overlook the SBA and SCORE. Both are great sources for good information at very little to no cost.
Recession Ninjas must make peace and foster strong relationships with their allies!
On the next page: Ranking your Recession Recovery Objectives
