Being a small business owner has its ups and downs. But if your downs are much more frequent than your ups, you may be facing the prospect of having to close your doors. There are few things that you can do before throwing in the towel, so if the worst does happen at least you know that you did everything you could.
1. Take your head out of the sand
When things aren’t going well, it can be very tempting to close your eyes and hope that things will fix themselves. They won’t. So that’s why it’s vital that if your business is going to get out of the hole, you know exactly how big that hole is.
Get all the information up to date – make sure your accounts books have the complete financial picture; and the more information you cat get about customer numbers, spending trends, and cost increases, the better.
2. Create a realistic plan
The reason you need as much information as you can get is it will enable you to build a realistic business plan to show how you’re going to get back on track. Again, this is not the time for wishful thinking – you can’t keep going the way you’ve been going. Your plan has to encompass the problem, how you plan to address it, and how much graft you’re willing and able to do. Is it worth sacrificing your health and happiness to save your business?
3. Be prepared to make some tough decisions
Small businesses often have a much more personal connection to their staff, their stores, and their products or services than large companies. So there’s really no surprise that to save a floundering enterprise there will need to be changes which affect you personally. Whether that’s laying off loyal staff, closing a store which has been part of a community for years, or discontinuing a product which you put a lot of time and effort into – you have to be ready to make those kinds of choices and not be held back by sentimentality or emotional attachment.
4. Make sure you know what your customers want
And you need to focus on giving them that – not what you think they want. Doing research and actually talking to customers and potential customers is an important step. You may find you have to refocus on your core business, or even make a different aspect of your services into your core business.
It’s much easier to keep customers than attract new ones, so ensuring that you know what your existing customer base is looking for is important. Focus first on keeping the business you have, then trying to attract new customers.
5. Be in it for the long haul
Getting your business back on its feet is not going to be a matter of a few months. The chances of an 11th hour overnight turnaround are vanishingly small. Make sure you know how long you can keep going at the current rate, and how much time you are prepared to sink into something which may not actually succeed. In the end it may be better to make a gut-wrenching decision early to limit your losses than to limp along until the last cent has been exhausted.