When business is slow, we have the tendency to panic and want to retreat, but the truth is this is where we need to strive more. It’s time to press in and stay consistent with the business practices that you developed when you first started your business. When business is slow, this is the time to make yourself busy, by reevaluating your prices, your policies, your website, and current advertisement. Let me give you the best possible solutions when business is slow.
1. Pray for God to Increase Revenue and Clientele
As a Christian, and lover of the One and True God, my first reaction to slow business weeks is to seek the Father in prayer and fasting. These 2 principles are the best practices alone that will bring increase in your business, and comfort and steadiness in an unsteady time. God rewards those who seek Him diligently. Absent of prayer and fasting in Communion with God through His son Jesus Christ, you have nothing, and will be able to accomplish nothing. With God for us, there is nothing and no one that can stand against us.
2. Follow up With Potential Customers
There may have been some customers that you have had connected with in the past couple of weeks, maybe through referral, or some other source. You may have had a simple conversation with them about business, or even issued an estimate proposal to them. When you follow up with them, be concerned that you haven’t heard from them, and sincerely care about their well being. Do not seem anxious or desperate, just simply do a follow up, but even with the slow times, do not compromise your business or your prices just for the sake of a customer. Operate with integrity and uprightness, and the business will continue to increase.
3. Saturate All Free Media Outlets
I know we all love our Social Media, and this is the time that we can truly engage with potential clients or fellow business owners to create a buzz for the business again. Make your time purposeful, your time is valuable, so don’t get caught up doing random meaningless things on social media. Be focused on the task at hand, and this is to get people thinking about your services.
4. Analyze Your Paid Advertisement
You might have some paid advertisement, such as a website, business cards, flyers, posters or whatever. If business is slow, even in hard times, it means that your advertisement is not really working like it’s supposed to. Think about certain things like QR codes that would start to bring traffic to your website again. If you think a certain advertisement is not working, scrap the whole plan, and start from scratch. The good thing about most advertisement, is that it’s fairly inexpensive, so be willing to analyze your paid advertisement, and shift some things around to get some recognition again.
5. Start Blogging or Continue Your Blogging
To be a faithful blogger, it takes commitment and dedication. When times get tough, one of the first things we tend to do is abandon our disciplines. If you are blogging when it’s busy, continue to blog when business is slow. This will help keep your mind fresh, and it may help redirect some thought processes, that will bring clarity in some future operations.
6. Post Your Services on Craigslist
Craigslist is a great resource. Many people are using Craigslist for many things, and you’ll be surprised how many job opportunities are on Craigslist. Utilizing this free service can put your services in front of hundreds and even thousands of potential customers.
7. Re-Evaluate Your Prices
Every week you should have a performance evaluation plan for your business, comparing the good against the bad. Think about your prices, if business is slow, and when business is slow, you have to worry about cash flow. If your cash flow is so depleted because of slow business, that means that you under analyzed your overhead, and that you didn’t plan for a rainy day through your pricing. Your prices should not only reflect your quality, but they should reflect your overall net worth. So if in lean times you are struggling to pay your bills, then reevaluating your prices is a good idea.
8. Connect With Your Networking Partners
Hopefully you read one of my most recent blogs, “Business Without Networking is Dead”. Well this is the truth, if you are in business for yourself, and you don’t have any networking partners, then you are doing yourself a disservice. Networking not only increases your indirect partners, but it also can have unlimited possibilities when it comes to referrals. *Reminder* If you are in a networking partnership with someone, be willing to return the favor, by sending referrals there way as well. This is the whole point of networking.
9. Think About Your Policies and Contracts
Prayerfully, you have some sturdy policies in place for your business. There’s never a wrong time to read over your policies and contracts, and look for loopholes, or wording that might not cover your basis in the future. When business is slow, this is the best time to reflect on the last couple business transactions, and think about how they could have been better, and document it in contract form.
10. Take A Day Off
This may sound counter-productive, but the truth is, if you have done all these things, then it’s just a matter of time before things pick up again. After you have accomplished all these task, choose a day, maybe a Friday, and just shut down shop. This will give you some well needed rest, and trust me, when Monday comes back around after a nice 3 day weekend, you will be ready to grind again.
Overall
There’s many things that you can do to help the business when business is slow, these are just a couple of things. These are some of the things that I do, when business is slow for me. I hope some of these things help you, and if you have some helpful suggestions as well, please leave them in the comment section.
