Everywhere I turn there is negative news or comments. The news media is selling the bad things that are happening in our economy. Consequently, I find my intensity rising at work. On Sunday, I ran into a business acquaintance who inquired as to how my business in going. I expressed a few challenges that we are facing with the changing times. I left the conversation feeling that I should have put my salesman face on and told him that everything is GREAT! That is just not me.
I’m Not Scared; I Am Challenged!
So how do I feel and how do I portrait my feelings? I have decided to be honest. Are things GREAT? No! But they aren’t bad either. They are changing. Consequently I am challenged to meet the changing environment. I have been in business for 30 years and have been through several recessions. I will survive. In fact, I will prosper! But not with a “business as usual” attitude.
So we are implementing three goals for 2009. First, we are going to improve the quality of the service we deliver. People will buy goods and services in a recession. They just are more discriminating in how they spend money. They want value for their dollars. Consequently, we are going to increase the value of what we deliver by improving our procedures and training our consultants on how to deliver those procedures.
Second, we are holding the consultants accountable for implementing the systems we have developed and the value given. We are going to design checklists and customer feedback forms to measure the effectiveness of each consultant.
Finally, we are going to increase communication both internally and externally. We are going to improve the feedback of service being performed by obtaining customer feedback. We are then going to improve our feedback internally so we can improve our service sooner rather than later. Last, we are going to increase our communication to the marketplace by increasing our marketing budget and networking activities.
Surviving a slow economy is not impossible, it’s just challenging! For the most part we will all get out of it alive. Just some people will survive and others will prosper! Our goal for 2009 is to use this challenge to improve ourselves and our company.
