How to make sure your business survives coronavirus

We recently hosted a live webinar about ‘Survival Mode: How to make sure your business survives Coronavirus’ because as a business, we know how times are tough in this current climate.

We are all living in uncertain and unprecedented times. As businesses, we can’t predict the direction we will go throughout this pandemic and where we will be after it is over.

To ensure that your company does the most to ensure survival, we have repurposed the webinar into this blog post to provide more value to those who weren’t there to attend.

Here are 5 points to make sure your business survives Coronavirus.

Assessing & understanding the new climate

There are no two ways about it, the landscape has changed and, it can be hard to adjust and evaluate. Instead of focusing on what you hear from the media, social media and everybody else, it’s essential to conduct your own research to understand the reality and impact of what’s going on.

Majority of businesses are facing a lot of problems but with problems come solutions and it’s time to look at them. What solution is there to solve that problem and help you continue the best you can?

An example of a common problem would be staff retention. Due to cash flow challenges, many are struggling to pay their staff, especially if projects have ground to a halt. A solution for that is furloughing staff temporarily. This is where the government pay up to 80% of your employee’s wage until for a while, which ensures that your employee it still under your employment and you don’t have to resort to redundancy.

How to transition online seamlessly

With more businesses working remotely, it’s vital to transition as many business activities as possible online by embracing technology. There are three key areas to look at: Customers – Processes – Communication.

When it comes to your customers, do you have a cloud-based CRM in place that you can access on any device and in any location? If you do, then you are able to manage it when working remotely and all of your team can see the stages that all of your customers and contacts are at.

With the current operation of your business, how are you currently delivering the value to your clients like you would do if working from the office? To access your documents when working remotely, you could create a cloud-based solution by using OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc. There are a lot of solutions out there to help with internal processes.

You need to also think about how you connect with all of the stakeholders involved, which includes your employees, shareholders, vendors or suppliers and so on. When you combine these key areas together, you’re able to transition online with ease which means your operations can continue seamlessly.

We have the technology available to us to be able to transition online seamlessly to maintain business consistency.

Effective communication

Staying connected with all stakeholders is important for surviving the current climate. With many businesses now working remotely, that 1-to-1 contact you usually have every day has now gone. Which is why it’s equally important to stay connected through several ways, whether it be through regular team meetings, emails or phone calls.

When you’re able to maintain communication throughout your business, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page. Staying in touch with your clients is equally as important too.

You need to be the voice of positive communication. You can do this through emails, phone calls or even social media. You can be the go-to person for positive information and reassurance if people need it. They say 7% of communication is words only, so we need to make sure that we provide visual communication. You can do this through a video conferencing call such as Zoom.

Strengthening your marketing foundation

At times like this, having a solid marketing foundation is essential. You need to be able to identify what your main goal is, who your perfect customer is and the strategy you have in place to achieve that goal.

The reality is, things are now slower than what we’re accustomed to, and this could be a good thing because the spare time you have can be spent working on the business.

Your goals will change due to the current climate, but it’s essential that your business still has them. This could be getting one new lead every week or bringing in a specific turnover.

Once the goal is in place, you need to look at your customers. Who is your perfect customer? On average, there are 3-5 profiles which make the ideal customer for any organisation. This is where you need to understand the characteristics and demographics of your ideal customer and understanding who is it that you want to be targeting.

The next step is to identify your marketing strategy. How will you find the perfect customers so you can achieve your goal? This can be through posting on social media, an email marketing campaign or a consultative approach with a bottom of the funnel offer.

5 free important tools

Tools are important. From project management to a CRM and communicative channels, these tools are necessary to ensure the survival of your business.

The five free tools we recommend are:

- HubSpot CRM- With HubSpot CRM, you and your team can manage all of your customer's/client's information from one centralised database. We have been using HubSpot for some time now and can't recommend it enough.

- Zoom- Zoom is increasing in popularity now that we are working remotely. It’s a video conferencing software that makes it easier for you to connect and communicate with your team, clients or even for hosting webinars as we did with this topic.

- Asana- Project management is essential and Asana is a great place to keep on track with where you are at with certain things.

- WhatsApp/Slack- These are communication channels. You can create teams/groups where you can communicate with others with ease such as your employees or your different teams within the company e.g. marketing, sales

- Clockify- Clockify is a tool used for time management. You can track live time or input previous times to keep track of where you are spending the most time and what needs more attention.

If you have any questions or would like some help, you can book in for a free consultation today using the calendar below.