Things To Do When Business is Slow

“Slow business period is just another name for an opportunity”

We all do our best to start a new business, but what happens when business is slow. Everybody would be tensed if this happened. Everybody wants to know that what the reason is. Why your business is slow? And of course, what necessary action would take up to boost up our business again? As we all know that a business is an organization which produces and sells goods or which provides services.Reasons, why business is slow?

There are so many reasons that slow our business but the main reason why it is slow some of them are:-

1. Under-Developed Branding

This is a very common pitfall for new and growing businesses. Many business owners think that once they have come up with the perfect business name and an eye-catching logo, they are done with their branding. Hence one needs to invest in branding when business is slow.

2. Lack of Collaboration

Another block that business owners face is a fear of collaboration and hesitance to release control. It’s understandable that your business is your baby, and you feel as if you are the only one who can “do it right”. However, this mindset will lead to burnout and stalled numbers very quickly.

3. Inefficient or Impractical Business Processes

As your business grows, so does the complexity of your business operations and the data you need to track. In the beginning, it may have been okay to keep paper ledgers or handle your accounting with Excel spreadsheets, or to use Outlook for all customer communications, or to use a whiteboard or paper lists to keep track of inventory. But if you don’t routine and detailed tasks once business starts rolling in, you’ll limit your growth and profitability.

4. Lack of Realistic Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

Every new business is born on a grand mission and vision. All entrepreneurs start their companies with dreams of long-term success, but unfortunately, these dreams are not always enough to sustain positive growth. A common problem that new business owners run into is a lack of clear planning. In order to experience continued progress and expansion, you need short-term as well as long-term ideas about how to achieve the success you’re envisioning. And, we can say that a slow period is just another name for opportunity. There are times in business when things can slow down.

Now, what to do when it gets is slow?

When business is slow it can be boosted up by the following ways:-

1. Create a Social Media System

If you have a social media strategy in place, you’ll know that publishing new posts in a consistent and frequent manner is very important.

Example – Pinterest is the most popular platform for finding and shopping for products. The majority of people on Pinterest use it for discovering products and making purchases—all at a much higher rate than people on other platforms.

2. Describe Clearly What Your Business Does

This may sound like the most obvious of all statements, but investors are regularly presented with business plans where they have to decipher the purpose of the company.

Example – Coca-Cola is a manufacturer, retailer, and marketer of non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups.

3. Define Your Market

A successful business defines precisely who their target audience or customer is, recognizes their needs and understands their motivations for wanting to buy from their business. This should all be in the business plan, plus entrepreneurs should demonstrate a clear understanding of the potential size of the market. An investor will want to see that there is an opportunity to grow.

Example – if you are selling women’s clothing from a retail store, your target market is consumers; if you are selling office supplies, your target market is businesses

4. Business Research

In general, business slows down because of less competitive research, as they fail in researching the USP of their competitive business, how they growing and what are their strategies. These things have to be focused on the business as research is the important part and it is the cost to the company so effective research will always help in beating the competitor.

Example – Nokia mobile phones do not have effective research in demand for Android phones hence in a very short span of time they were out of the market.

5. Advertising Your Business

As marketing plays an important role in expanding the business, an organization should always promote, advertise their product so that people could know them and about their product. The technique or method of advertising could vary according to the policy and budget but it is a must for any organization especially when they are down in the market.

Example – Hilton hotels and resorts does not monitor much growth in the business after their establishment of 2 years as they realize afterwards that they are much behind in advertising themselves.

6. Come up with New Offers

When the organization slows down because of any reason they should always think of replacing the things, new offers to increase their sales. Offers attract customers always as most customers are very price conscious and always ready to purchase in bulk at a cheaper price

Example – Reliance Jio increases his customer by launching a new phone of Rs. 1500 with a Jio sim card free. Here customer gets a mobile phone and a sim at a cheaper rate and the call rate is free after a top-up recharge of Rs. 48 for a year.

7. Cut Down of Price

Cut down of price is another strategy used by many businesses to increase their sales or to boost up their sales. Price of the product plays an important factor in business as if you charge high price from the customer they will shift towards another brand of the same market. Hence to maintain the quantity of the customer business should ensure that they are not charging much from the customer.

Example – Nestle cut down the price of Maggi from Rs.12 to 11 and it is now available at Rs.10 in the market to boost the sale of the product after it went in controversy with the people and government of India.

8. Hearing of the Customers/ Customer Care Services

Hearing of the customer problem or issues is very important as a customer is always looking for after sale service or how important they are to the organization. The better the hearing will be the chances of brand shifting by the customer will be less, as a customer is always ready to pay for the better product and services.

Example – Aircel cellular company loses its customer 8 years ago because of less hearing to the complaints, an amount of Rs 2 or 3 was deducted from the balance and the reason is not specified by the customer care executive.

When business is the slow one always has a chance of improvement or boosting up, Hence a person or an entrepreneur should take it as a task or an opportunity to take business at its peak. They should focus on what should be done rather than focusing more on the gaps.

The motivation of the employees, Rewards and recognition, Team Building and Team performance should always be there at the time when business is slow as this will always help in boosting and confidence among employee will also be increased.

Submitted by- Samidha Lakhani, Viplove Tyagi, Anisha (PGDM 2018-20)