Recession blues #4: What’s to be done?
You can find numerous profit improvement checklists to ‘survive’ the recession. But, I have to ask, “So What?”
In reality, there are some tough questions you need to ask yourself. You need to answer the questions honestly and take massive action. That is the only way to make sure that you don’t become another statistic.
Do not wallow in the mess of trying to make sense of it all but make some clear decisions based on some simple criteria. Do not get over-emotional and do not get over-complicated. All you are trying to do is run a business, ie buy stuff that people want at one price and sell it for another and make a profit in the meantime.
How difficult can it be? Well, this may be the time to get in some expert help to make sure that you are being realistic and objective about your business. So ask yourself the following tough questions.
For each question there should be an action point answering the question. Actions can be generated by asking “What are we going to do about it…? What are we going to stop doing… start doing… continue doing… do more of… do less of…?”
Some Crunch Questions
Where do you make the money?
How can you get and keep more cash?
Where are the Quick Wins, the low-hanging fruit?
What are the Long Shots?
What are your Top Five Products/Services?
How can you sell more of them? How can you getter better prices?
What are the current ‘opportunities’?
If you could only focus on three of them then what would they be?
Where are you currently wasting time and money?
Which suppliers/customers/staff/products are unprofitable? Which ones should you fire? When will you do it?
And to answer the question ‘When should you do all this?’, the answer is ‘NOW!’
