How To Succeed In Slow Times
Many are feeling the effect of a slow down in sales and it’s been really interesting talking with different friends with their own businesses and learning more about them by how they see this changing environment.
Some see it as all bad and are looking at ways to ‘protect’ their businesses (read family income source) and are feeling defensive.
While others are looking at the changes as opportunity with questions of “how am I going to make this successful and grow?”.
What’s interesting is the language and the types of questions people are asking themselves.
Time will only tell which businesses will grow, stagnate or close in the coming year or two but I think the ones with the people with the strong, positive view will out shine the rest.
It comes down to the questions you ask yourself, the answers you give yourself and the actions you choose to take.
A friend of mine who has PhotographArt has launched a new side of her business with doing Baby photos. Here work is beautiful and it is already off to a great start.
Part of the reason for the initial success is Jennifer has a great eye for photographing babies and their parents.
Her pricing and product is spot on as well with the photos also coming on disc.
It’s the marketing of this new endeavour that is really impressing me too. Jennifer has figured out a handful of really easy, fast and cheap methods for promoting it.
These include promoting through her newsletter, flyers on her stand and starting off with existing customers.
The green field marketing efforts are as simple as approaching Mother’s Groups with flyers and talking with them. Going directly to the mothers, showing samples, giving flyers with pricing and contact details and making herself known is such a simple and powerful thing.
Spending a fortune on expensive advertising when you are growing a business as well as being in challenging economic spending times often doesn’t make sense.
Using your resources wisely and going directly to your target market with a person touch brings in the sales, builds a happy customer base and grows the business – often through word of mouth.
I’m confident Jennifer will succeed with her plans, they are already working and her business will grow and grow during the coming year.
Jennifer is asking herself the right questions to be getting the right answers that bring about the right outcomes.
You know when you’re asking yourself the right questions when what you are after is happening. If you’re getting the wrong results then look at your questions to see what you can be asking yourself to get better results.
So what do you want to achieve this year with your business? Growth, stagnation, closure? What actions can you do today to bring about growth?
If you want to be a ‘gonna be’ then put the change off until tomorrow. If you are making it happen, start the change today. It doesn’t have to be a big 10 hour effort, it can be as simple as sending an email off to find out more information, doing an online search, writing out your goals, outlining a new marketing strategy, brainstorming ideas. What ever it takes for you to get started just do it. Others like Jennifer are and are succeeding!