There’s no playbook for solving the constant challenges businesses face. However, there is a game plan for how the business leaders who take strategic action and are dynamic in how they face adversity, can successfully mitigate threats and seize opportunities. In many cases, it will be the difference between diving, surviving or thriving. These strategies will help you and your team respond in good and tough times with excellence and action:
Revamp your strategic plan.
Proactive leadership starts with creating a strategic plan, a disciplined execution of your plans and monitoring progress along the way. Your plan should hit fast forward to where your company should go. Look at new product and services opportunities and how your company can leverage disruption that is impacting other markets and industries. Where and how can you better serve them? Where is there a need for fractional outsourcing of your product or service? There’s a wealth of innovation that can be created. Your strategic plan needs to guide you to follow that path.
Create aggressive goals that promote action, focus, and growth.
These might include ambitious goals of 3X growth, and winning market share in a never-touched market. Choose strategic goals that are outside of your comfort zone. How can you lead your company, your teams, your supply chains with excellence and innovation? How can you improve relationships with your key customers or avoid cash flow issues?
Conduct strategy discussions and performance assessments.
What are your strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats as you enter a new quarter? How will you respond to these immediate threats? Assess what you need to do for the business right now to serve your customers and employees. Secondly, assess what should the company invest in and focus on to create growth. What initiatives did you put on the back burner that need to be put in place right away to generate additional revenue?
Think lean and evaluate variable costs.
Evaluate expenses of non-essential operations. Put a system in place of how to satisfy the customer better, faster, and at a lower cost. What non-value-added processes can be cut? What competitive advantage or new marketing possibilities would open if you cut your customer delivery times in half? Cutting expenses during bad times is crucial, but cutting expenses the wrong way can be devastating for growth and survival. Where specifically can you begin to remove limitations or interruptions to the continuous flow of work through your company? The ideal state for any business system includes organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, and customer relations in a manner that requires less human effort, less floor space, less capital, and less time.
Rely on data analytics to assess all areas of the business.
Managing business risks and threats is essential to navigating future uncertainty. Data analytics lets you take an in-depth look at a company’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities with data-backed insights. With data analytics, companies can identify those areas quickly and with great accuracy to create more effective plans for averting and responding to disasters. Your data will help clear the fog, so you have realistic, financial and data-driven analyses that removes the guesswork from taking immediate action.
Create a culture of realistic optimism.
Resilient and transparent leadership is paramount in an economy. Create a workplace culture that lives by your company mission, vision and values, and that prides itself on winning and thriving during even tough times. A business culture that surrounds your organization’s transition to remote working is also critical to thrive during this pivotal time. Ultimately, what holds a distributed and virtual workplace together is the trust, patience and support employees receive from leadership and from one another.
Be observant to fraud.
It can be daunting to keep up with all the forms of fraud that can impact your business. Be vigilant in your training and communication. Ramp up your internal controls to deter fraud. Segment accounting duties, set up rigorous internal controls, audit the books regularly, train employees on how to spot and mitigate fraud, and seek experts that can help you establish policies and procedures to reduce your exposure to fraud.
Encourage quick payment.
If you got paid for sales the instant you made them, you would never have a cash flow problem. Slow payments can impact your business and its ability to pay bills and meet payroll, therefore make sure you’re implementing tactics to encourage quick payment times. Specify the due date on your invoices, as well as payment terms. An important part of a professional invoice is a clear, polite statement about your payment period and what will happen if the customer doesn’t pay on time. Make it easy for your customers to pay you online. Have a professional way to follow up on all invoices that are 30+ days past due. Offer discounts to customers who pay their bills rapidly. Ask customers to make deposit payments at the time orders are taken.
Become a safe haven for your employees and customers.
As the leader, you set the entire tone for the company. Employees need the right direction and information from their leaders and service providers. Communicate often. Anticipate and address their needs and potential risks and disruptions they may face and respond with data-driven solutions. Motivate, encourage, and constantly inspire your teams to be resilient as well in tough times.
Learn from experience and rely on experts.
Most business owners are really good at beating themselves up for things that go wrong, but economic forces, skyrocketing inflation, and supply chain headaches are out of our control. Business owners need strategy, fiscal discipline, innovative ideas, a sounding board, and proactive steps to weather storms. An expert like B2B CFO® can provide tactical steps to help with financing, cash flow needs and other financial safeguards. Someone who has been through other crises and came out thriving on the other side will be an invaluable asset to you and your business.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTING NOW
Not all companies excel during tough times, but yours can with proactive strategies, laser focus and actions plans. The stakes are too high to punt!