Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2020, during the first COVID-19 lockdowns, when customers were still confined at home. The advice is generic, but its framing is tied to that moment.
During a crisis, most companies start thinking about cutting jobs and putting strategic planning on hold until the storm passes. COVID-19 has brought even the best-prepared companies to their knees. If your company has been hit by the coronavirus, remember that it hasn’t just picked on you, but on your direct competitors too.
In this crisis, and in the unknown scenario that’s coming next, some companies will be forced to close while others will come out stronger. If, as a business owner, you want to rise from the ashes, you shouldn’t wait for the storm to die down. This is the moment to improve your company and adapt it to this new scenario. I’ll say it again: a confusing and unknown scenario.
What can companies do to come out of the coronavirus crisis stronger?
Let’s imagine a pessimistic scenario in which the pandemic lasts months longer than expected. Quarantine measures for your workers are extended, customers are still confined at home, or people’s purchasing power has fallen and they’re not flocking into your business ready to buy.
See also: 6 tips for the self-employed and freelance professionals
How can you use technology to your company’s advantage?
If customers don’t come looking for your product, your product will have to go looking for your customers. It’s time to adapt your company to the new world. Whether you have to offer digital services, online advice, or sell your product online and simply deliver it to your customer’s door, there’s an opportunity to keep growing. Every company has the chance to diversify what it offers, as well as diversifying its products.
In this way, while some companies will never recover, and may even be forced to close their doors, others will start to grow in difficult times, so they’ll be much bigger and better prepared when we say goodbye to this pandemic and to the crisis that’s coming.
In a situation that is already risky in itself, where the biggest risk is doing nothing to improve, it’s time to take risks on our own initiative. As a business owner, you have much more to gain than to lose.
Get ahead of your competitors in these days.
Make the most of video calls
If your company provides advice of some kind, or if you’re a freelance professional, you’ll have noticed that you were limited to clients in your local area, because clients like a personal touch. But this pandemic has changed that. People have been forced to do all sorts of tasks remotely.
That’s why right now you can offer your services to clients all over the country, because your client gets the same sense of “closeness” from a professional on the other side of the country as from a local one. So take advantage of this to reach places you hadn’t thought you could reach before.
An opportunity to prospect for new clients
If you’re confined at home, you have more free time. The same is happening to other business owners and professionals. They may now be more willing to pick up the phone and listen to those business proposals you never had the chance to make before.
Time to improve everything you never got round to improving for lack of time
Whether it’s improving your online presence, improving your website or learning certain digital marketing tools to adapt to the new times, the time has come. Perhaps this isn’t the moment to be frightened by the situation and keep your head down, but to devote hours to studying and learning how social networks and new technologies can help your business grow.
Brainstorm with your team about the opportunities your company can seize
Sometimes collective wisdom is more useful than specialised individual wisdom. The idea you need to improve may be right there: new revenue streams, new ways to save, new ideas for growing your company. If you’ve never held a brainstorming session in your company, now may be the time.
Prepare for the unknown
This isn’t the time to be optimistic or pessimistic, because we don’t know what the scenario coming our way will look like. But it is the time to sketch out every possible variable (always erring on the downside) and plan for each variable and scenario, so that even if we have to improvise, at least we’ll be improvising from plans drawn up in advance.
Uncertain times are coming, but it’s in adversity that we must anticipate change. It’s time to recall an old saying:
“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.”
See also: 12 business trends for 2021
Featured image: Paul Sableman from St. Louis, MO, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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