Doing More With Less
Companies are shuffling, reshaping and restructuring. Every day more and more people are appearing on LinkedIn appealing to their followers that they are #OpenToWork. It’s a hard trend to ignore. The fact that it’s happening so frequently is also concerning. Are we in a recession? Depends on who you ask. Is it because it’s an election year? Maybe. With inflation high and interest rates high, consumers are holding onto their money longer and businesses aren’t borrowing to extend operations. I’m not an economist, but that’s easy math. This is very reminiscent of 2009 when businesses and consumers were spending smaller amounts and everyone was looking for more value on every dollar. I would say for the rest of this year and next, businesses will need to get used to doing more with less.
Here’s a quick checklist for how to optimize your current business and free up some budget to reallocate funds to where you need them the most.
Get out that old P&L and look at where all of your money is going. Your top expenses will be people, advertising/marketing and software/tools/products. Note anything that’s in the top five expenses and start to mentally prepare for cuts. This is hard, I know.
Evaluate your team first. Ask yourself, does this person provide long term value? Are they being utilized fully? Can they take on additional responsibilities if needed and produce? Is it possible to hire a contractor to do the same job for less? Are they ready to move on as well?
If you had to decrease your budget for advertising/marketing, how would you make up the difference? Are you or your team prepared to do more blogging, vlogging and social media? Can your sales team get out and do more door knocking or cold calling? Who on your team is ready to do some good ole fashioned networking.
Where are you spending the most for the software and tools that you are using for your business every day? First, you need to look at how much you are using that software/tool and ask yourself if it’s essential. If it is essential, are you using all the features of that software? Possibly there’s some additional features that you aren’t using that can bring you more value and time savings. Get a hold of customer support for the software/tool and ask them what features you aren’t using, but should be. If the tool is essential, but still costs too much, figure out if you can use tools you already have in a different way. For example, if you use Google or Microsoft for your email, you have access to a whole suite of tools. Can you use Docs, Spreadsheets or Forms to build only the features you need and save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars every month? They say, “Mother is the necessity of invention.” By creating your own internal solution you may end up building something better, saving money and making you money all at the same time!
If you are using products or selling products for your business, the first thing to do is ask yourself if you need these products considering the current economic situation. Could you just buy cheaper products that have high value and use those products for yourself or to sell and get a higher margin or at least sell more in volume? If you do need those products, contact those suppliers to see if you can negotiate the price for less. Most likely your suppliers are well aware of the economic situation and they are making arrangements to help out their retailers. They would rather sell product than not sell product. If you can’t get any movement working with your suppliers, come up with a new plan for selling/using products. Keep the business moving forward.
I’ve been through this process more times than I like to admit. It’s not fun, extremely disruptive and you are changing people’s lives. The question you need to keep asking yourself is, “Is our business better in this world or not in this world?” The reason you ask the question that way is because you want to visualize the impact that it would have if your business went away or stayed. How would it affect your relationships, customers, employees and owners?
Though these are tough questions and decisions, every time I have had to do this, the business has come out better on the other side. Every. Single. Time. You can handle this and if you need help, advice or just need someone to talk to, I can help. Book a Call With Me