When you own a small- or medium-sized business, times like these can certainly put you on edge, especially when the word “recession” is used with increasing frequency in business reports and forecasts.
These are tricky times for sure, but that doesn’t mean you should panic.
This is the time to meet with your management team, take stock of your business’s performance and review your goals.
There are a number of questions you can discuss with your team, among them:
1. Who is our target customer, and how will that change if we find ourselves in a recession?
2. How is our marketing strategy working now? How might we need to change it?
3. What indicators should we track to ensure that we are not blindsided by weakening demand?
4. If demand does drop, but we can remain in business, how can we use the ‘downtime’ to improve/grow/expand our business?
5. At what point will it be necessary to lay off staff, or scale down working/production hours?
6. Do we have/need an emergency plan? (A bit more on this later.)
7. Are there loans we can secure to help us through?
The first six questions are ones that you will need to answer yourself. But the seventh one we can help with. Our team has decades of experience helping businesses like yours survive and thrive. Most of us have lived and worked through one, and in some cases two, recessions. We know what you’re facing, and how frightening it can be, and we are here to talk you off the ledge, so to speak.
We’re here to answer your questions, and to help you plan for a future that is filled with promise. We can help you by reviewing your current loan situation to ensure that it best meets your needs while also not hampering your ability to grow and thrive.
Now about that emergency plan… Your plan should take into account how your business operates, and then brainstorm what-if scenarios and how you would respond to them. What if supply chain kinks continue to cause delays? What if the cost of your supplies continues to rise? If you don’t own the building your business operates in, what will you do if the landlord raises the rent?
So, start thinking and brainstorming, and be sure to check out the article we found in Market Business News with helpful tips for businesses like yours to weather the possibility of a recession.
If that day arrives, here’s to coming out stronger on the other side.