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Recession Survival Tactics – Are You Essential, or a Luxury?
Part 1 of a 6 Part Recession Survival Series
As belts tighten and budgets squeak, people are drawing new lines to define what they think of as essential, and what they classify as a luxury. They’ll hang onto essentials, they’ll either let the luxuries go, or they’ll find lower cost alternatives to them.
Right now, that line is being redrawn almost constantly. As people realize that it isn’t just a blip. That it isn’t going to go away, that it is going to be long, ugly, and bad. This means their idea of what you are, is going to be in a state of almost constant flex. It means you have to think ahead, not just about what they think today or tomorrow, but how they will think if worst comes to worst, and life gets very hard.
So who decides whether you are essential, or a luxury?
You do. But you can’t just TELL your customers or clients that you are essential and BE essential.
You have to listen. You have to HEAR what they think essential is. Then you have to BECOME what they define as essential.
It means being creative. Maybe soap is essential. But maybe the good soap becomes a luxury because now they can only afford $1 per bar for soap instead of $5 per bar. How will you become essential again when they decide like that? Can you?
If you insist that the $5 bar is better for their skin and preserves their health, reducing the cost of lotion, or allows them to wear less expensive fabrics and be comfortable, or that since they use less of the expensive stuff to get clean that it is actually a better deal that it appears, then maybe you can be moved into the essential classification again.
Half of this is going to be marketing. How you describe the benefits. What was a benefit yesterday may not rate as an important benefit today. “Indulge yourself” as a slogan may become completely irrelevant. Cease to exist as an effective message. “Affordable Indulgence” may be a message that was scorned yesterday, but embraced today. People may want you to tell them what a good deal it is today, when yesterday they were only concerned with how good it was. Mincsets and thought processes, priorities, and values, are GOING to change.
The other half is the actual product or service. Can you change it, make the effort to contain costs, through creative strategies, while still keeping the price the same (while your expenses rise), or even drop the price, offer a lower cost option, etc? I’ll address specific ideas in a later article, but this question is the one that defines the successes in a tough economy. If you can do this, you can survive. If you cannot, you probably won’t.
So go look at your business – examine your products and services with a critical eye. Look at your marketing messages and figure out whether they are going to meet the changing needs. Be creative, and come up with a way to change what you do, so you can be essential. Because if you are a luxury, you are going under.
It’s Time to Leave the Harbor
A ship in the harbor is safe. Most of the time. During a storm though, the ship is safer at sea. In the harbor, the confines that make it safe at other times, becomes a trap, and the ship is in greater danger. Out at sea, navigation away from the worst of the storm is still possible, and fewer obstacles are present to dash the ship to pieces.
Our economy is heading into a storm. It is likely to be a bad one. How can you get your business out of the trap of a harbor, and out to sea away from the fury of the storm? How can you find calm seas, or at least, less turbulent waves and winds?
In a volatile economy, sitting where you are, hoping that things won’t change, may kill your business. Smart sailors watch the weather signs, listen to the reports, and steer clear of the troubled seas. If they cannot avoid them, they batten down the hatches and try to ride it out. But they try to avoid it first, and only settle to ride it out if there is no other option. And even then, their choice is backed up by changes in their actions, to give their choice the best possible chance of a favorable outcome.
It isn’t time to pull back into the false security of a harbor. It is time to move out, and take smart actions to preserve your business. To adjust for the winds and waves so they don’t swamp you.
- Assess your current business health, and make smart corrections for current problems or deficiencies.
- Develop a contingency plan, based on what your customers are most likely to do as things get hard.
- Watch your stats, and be ready to act if you see declines of more than 1-2 months.
- Implement your contingency plan, and be ready to move into different ways of doing business if necessary.
We’ve seen a lot of businesses go under recently. Big ones. It didn’t happen suddenly. The signs of an impending storm were there for a long time before the company declared bankruptcy, or sold out, or laid off workers. They either failed to adjust out of ignorance, or decided that they’d try to ride it out in the hopes that it would not get too bad (in spite of clear signs to the contrary), or in hopes that something would rescue them if they just waited. Don’t wait when you should be taking actions to adjust your business! Failure never happens suddenly, it always happens slowly, and there is plenty of time to react if you just do it in a timely manner.
Smart sailors know when to act. And they know to watch the signs. Don’t let the rut of familiarity trap you when wise action can keep your business going strong in spite of what happens around you.
Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism in Economic Change
Hints of change bring them all out. First the pessimists who want to see it as all bad. Then the optimists who want to ignore all negativity. And last, the realists who balance the facts and determine what is best to do no matter what.
Pessimists come in two types:
- Those who delight in the bad. They rub their hands in glee, exaggerate the negative, and find delight in the misery and hardship of others. These are the ambulance chasers, and the gossips.
- Those who want to wallow in despair. They believe themselves incapable of happiness, and each negative thing around them serves to increase their conviction that life sucks. Good things are ignored, or not even recognized. Every hope is an illusion, every light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train, and if events prove otherwise, they are certain there is some trick to it, or that it will not last.
Either type of pessimist poisons the world around them, drip by drip of acid from their negativity.
Optimists also come in two types:
- The unrealistic people who state over and over that if you just believe that nothing bad will happen, then nothing bad will happen. Problem is, bad things DO happen whether you think they will or not.
- Those who tell themselves over and over that nothing bad is going to happen, because deep down inside, they fear that if it did, they could not handle it. Blocking out potential negatives is the only way they can cope, because they do not have the self confidence to believe they can succeed in spite of challenge.
Optimism can be just another form of pessimism. It just wears a different mask, but it is really just hiding the same face of low self confidence.
Realism is the balance between the extremes. Yet realists are accused of pessimism by those who call themselves optimists. Rather silly, because realists are, at heart, optimists – the difference is, they DO have the self esteem to believe that they can succeed in spite of opposition. If the worst happens, they know they can handle it.
The realist looks at the facts. They consider whether there is validity in all the circumstances. When faced with potential challenges, they do not stand around wringing their hands about it, and they do not gossip and blow things up to be worse than they are. Nor do they minimize or dismiss legitimate concerns.
Rather, they weigh the evidence, and act accordingly. If it is likely that challenges are coming, they develop a plan of what they will do if it happens. They don’t lose a lot of sleep over it, and they are not scared of negative things, because they have considered the potentials and they have prepared.
Realists are willing to face potential negative situations, because they know they are capable of surviving, and thriving, no matter what. They see both the good and the bad. The good is acknowledged with gratitude, the bad is faced and dealt with heat on.
Change IS happening. Much of it is not good. It is not likely to get better any time soon. But that is ok, because I am prepared, and I am confident that I can succeed even in the face of economic hardship. I have a plan for my business that will allow it to go forward regardless. I have a plan for my life that will make me better situated to cope with it. I am not afraid to face challenge head on, because I know I can cope, even if bad things do happen.
I can be happy even if I don’t get what I want.
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