Anyone in business can tell you that not every day is full of sunshine in the form of revenues, profits, or customer satisfaction. As I’ve stated in other articles, your business is either growing or dying or to put it more specifically, you are either gaining or losing market share; and while growing is risky, doing nothing or even playing it safe can be just as risky. When your core business is having a meltdown, it is clearly time to take action. As the song by Whitney Houston asks, “How will I know?” How do you know if your core business or customers are still viable?
Before moving in any direction, it is wise to assess where the company is currently. Here are some questions to ask,
- What do the numbers say? Are your profits on the wane? If they are, who is earning those profits instead of you?
- Are your core customers still providing a profit?
- Is your USP still a strong one or has it eroded over time?
- Is your organization’s culture strong enough to sustain change?
If the answers to these questions are less than desirable, what are the options for change? Must you toss your core customers or core business in the dumpster? The pages of business history are full of organizations who abandoned their core only to be burned. Some of these include Bausch & Lomb, K-Mart and Anheuser-Busch. Here are some ideas.
- Keep your core customers and ensure that you have the solutions they need and give them great customer service to along with those solutions.
- Ensure you remain relevant. Accomplishing this can come through participating in industry forums, training, certifications, reading high-level business journals and of course, keeping technology and other tools on the cutting edge.
- Maintain repeat business from your core customers by providing customer satisfaction and treasuring the relationship. Provide your customers with free information that is meaningful for them; cultivate the relationship at every opportunity and never take them or your employees for granted.
Once these metrics are met, there are many options for business growth. Here are a few,
- Diversification with related products, services, or new markets
- Partnerships
- Government contracting
- Joint ventures
- Mergers and acquisitions
Of course, evaluating each of these for fit, profitability and required resources is essential. For example, will additional staff be needed, will outsourcing make sense, what physical facilities might be necessary are just some considerations. If additional staff is required, hiring the best and brightest and then retaining them will be a major concern. What about training for this new staff and can you pay them a competitive wage or at least incentivize them enough to want to stay with your organization?
Larger companies may have hidden resources that have been neglected or timing may be right for them to come out of the closet. Smaller organizations may find that either you or your competitors are underserving your core customers. You may be able to realign strategies to take advantage of new markets or marketing tools. One way to uncover such elements is to canvass not only your customers but your employees as well. Employees are often a hidden asset for innovative ideas for customers, products and services.
These ideas will help to guard and grow your core business. Change today is more the norm than in previous years in terms of leadership, competition and business models. However, the ideas presented here, can help alleviate risk and better prepare you and your organization for those changes and prevent you from throwing your core customers out with the bath water.
