Recession Survival Tactics – Products and Services

Part 3 of a 6 Part Recession Survival Series

Sometimes you are going to have to change more than marketing messages to survive great changes in the attitudes and priorities of your target market. Sometimes you have to change your very product and service line.

At its most obvious, it means offering lower cost options. That is sometimes possible by offering less. But sometimes “less” guts it of value. So to offer a lower price, you have to find a way to do it that is new – that preserves the value while lowering the price.

But it can also mean simply finding ways to change your product from a non-essential product to an essential one, or making your luxury a more affordable one, finding ways to enhance the value of the product or service, or changing the offering to make it more fitting to people who are struggling.

And sometimes you have to completely abandon a product line, and move to something else. Some product lines just won’t survive. If there is a high chance that your target market is going to dry up, don’t delay! Explore alternatives NOW, and get them lined up, ready to roll. Start selling them alongside, and have your fallback product or service line working as soon as possible.

When looking for ways to offer more, for less, start with office economies first. We’ll have an entire article on that, but basically, look for ways to save first.

Then look for ways to produce faster. This may mean starting with templates, creating package deals instead of custom deals, investing in intelligent automation for selective areas, or developing systems for speeding up your work.

If you can’t do that without removing some value, then look over your product or service carefully – what is the MOST ESSENTIAL value point? What are the least essential value points? Can you drop a few of the less essential ones, while keeping the most essential, and lower the price that way?

When you are looking at new product lines, consider things related to what you already offer if at all practical. Then you don’t have to completely change your business. The key is though, that you want to either pick up your existing target market as they drift (to a different pricepoint or value emphasis), or you want to pick a newly emerging target market early on. Look at where your customers are going when they leave you, or look at what they are retaining while they let go of your product or service. Go into that, because it is more likely to last through the crunch.

Self-sufficiency and affordability are on the rise – those markets are booming. But they are also becoming much more competitive. People are looking HARD for the best deal, and you’ll have to work harder to persuade people that YOU are the best deal, in more than just price.

For 90% of the businesses out there, change will be required. And some of it will be dramatic, painful change. But without it, you sink. With it, you grow in new ways, and become a better business person.