Converting Magazine

Mark Spaulding

How NOT to participate in the recession #2
October 3, 2008

Let's move on to the other four ideas you can apply at your company to avoid getting swallowed up by the credit crunch, current financial crisis and/or impending recession. Again, these thoughts come by way of NAPL and its Executive Brief, "Choosing Not to Participate in the Recession."

5. Control the Internal Message
Less than 4% of companies surveyed by NAPL will discuss the downturn with employees. They worry that admitting things are slowing will create panic, diminish morale and send key employees heading for the door. They perceive telling the hard truth as perhaps creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. But employees are hearing all kinds of things about the economy from all kinds of sources anyway, and frequently it’s incorrect news from family, friends, and less-than-reliable news sources. Candid discussion reassures staff that management knows what’s happening and with everyone’s help is prepared to do something about it.

6. Reinforce How You Can Help
During downturns clients have to justify every dollar they spend and so do their customers. It’s reality, but the proactive approach is to find out how you can help. How can you save the client time and money? There's no better way to lock clients in–and get a bigger share of them–for both the current downturn and future upturn. Can you help them by :
• Reducing run length, obsolescence, and/or inventory costs by target marketing more effectively?
• Redesigning their packaging to source-reduce materials and cut production costs?
It's especially during downturns that customer loyalty is most important. Positioning yourself as a partner rather than a vendor goes a long way to keeping an account or even growing an account during tough times.

7. Rally ‘round What’s Most Important
It takes focus and sustained attention to what’s most important to beat a downturn. Try:
A. Attention-to-detail meetings with all production employees.
B. Cross-training to build a more flexible labor force that can be where we need them when we need them.
C. Eliminating poor performing staff and assuring good staff that their positions are secure. Put another way, assuring that we “lay the weakest off and never spread out the pain.”

8. Form a “Find the Growth” Task Force
Even in the deepest recession, someone out there is growing. It could be you. Challenge your best players to be part of a task force to find the growth. It’s out there someplace. If the task force decides that the growth potential is weak in your classic markets, their goal becomes to uncover growth opportunities elsewhere. It’s a stretch, but this is the time to encourage stretching. Challenges for the task force: Learn enough about the business of current and prospective customers to so you can intelligently and persuasively position your company as partner who can help them be more success. You can show that their business is important to you and that you value them as a client.

It will take a deeply dedicated, concerted effort to apply all eight of these ideas. If not eight, try six or four. But do whatever's necessary to "not participate in the recession."

Posted by Mark Spaulding on October 3, 2008 | Comments (0)