In The Nick Of Time: Methods To Save Your Business

For every entrepreneur, it’s their worst nightmare. Sometimes businesses find themselves struggling, and whether this is due to a lack of funds, a poor strategy, or just a string of bad luck, there is the temptation to sound the death knell and respectfully back away. But sometimes the best attitude to have to reinvigorate your business is to start all over again. Sometimes it’s all about changing your focus or just asking for help, so here is how you can plug the hole in the sinking ship.

Is A Cash Injection Needed?

Whether this has crossed your mind or not, the fact is that maybe you need to be more sensible with your funds and control cash flow management. There are methods for your business getting funds today, not just the long-winded approach to groveling at the bank, which may not even get you what you want. Indeed, when it comes to a quick cash injection, there are suitable methods, and even crowdfunding has been shown to revive a flagging business. But if you are going down this route make sure the campaign is as polished as possible and that you put the necessary effort to encourage backers to invest. Online short term cash injections, especially crowdfunding, are incredibly popular, so you need to work harder to entice people to give you the cash. If you can use a short term cash injection to buy you some time to give your business the makeover it requires, then it could be the one thing your business as needed all this time.

Make Changes Quickly (But Not Hastily)

To implement effective changes they need to be done fast. The temptation to be ruthless and to strike out over half your products or processes may have an immediate impact on your outgoings, but will this benefit you in the long term? This could be the equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face, and if you are making judgments purely for the here and now and compromising your good quality expensive product in place of a cheap, inferior one you will be doing a lot more damage to your business. Being hasty with your judgment is a sign of panic, and this is the last thing you want to be doing because you need to calm the nerves of everybody in the organization, not exacerbate them.

Be Truthful With Your Employees

The rumor mill will go into overdrive if you are secretive and evasive with your communications. If your business is struggling and people are in the dark, they are more likely to jump ship which throws you into further disarray. Rumors and whispers are just as threatening to the company, and if you manage to rescue the operation, it would mean that in the meantime you’ve lost some productivity so that it will be a little bit harder to get back on your feet. Being realistic about the problems your company is facing and giving yourself a timeline that is pragmatic will go some way to calm anxieties and to settle that rumor mill.

Focus On Your Staff

When trying to ascertain a reason why your business is struggling it can be very easy to look at the software or hardware rather than addressing the people behind the processes. By turning the spotlight to your staff, you may notice some fundamental flaws. You may notice issues with the procedure and if there are problem members of staff that may be skewing the figures. For example, if you have a member of a sales team that is deemed to be the superstar but is, in fact, stealing leads for their own gain, you may see that the numbers will increase by letting this one problem person go. A shoddy workman blames his tools, but this is the wrong place to focus your attention on. Look at your workers and if there are any specific problems with a procedure or any issues in terms of working relationships that are causing a detriment to your company.

Being Unwilling To Change

For all of the appropriate efforts that a business leader will put into trying to change, in fact underneath it all, they are unwilling to make the big changes. This doesn’t have to stem from a sense of stubbornness, it could actually come from a place of fear. With all the finger pointing that can go on in times of crisis, it can be the people at the top of the pecking order that are too proud to admit they are at fault. As a result, the whole company suffers. A lot of leaders find it easier to get rid of an item of equipment rather than hiring someone that is going to turn the company around and shows them up as a failure. The way to get over this is to own up and do what is best for your business, not for you.

Changing The Mindset

This applies to everybody in the pecking order. If you or another worker isn’t behaving under the corporate mindset, this will have a devastating impact on the business as a whole. The best way to help people to learn from this is to show them how their attitude has impacted the company and magnified the problem. It can be very difficult to get people to change their mindset when they are set in their own ways, and unfortunately, in these instances, the best solution is to let them go. Because if they are showing a complete resistance to changing with the tide, or aren’t operating with an ethical mindset, or even the fact that they are not a good business person, it means you have to be ruthless in this respect.

A sinking ship is a difficult scenario to operate a business in, because you will have stresses and anxieties coming from all angles. But if you take the time to focus on the fundamental aspects of changing your company for the better, whether this is by altering the mindset, making the right changes, or by asking for help, these will be the things that will stop your business being deemed a failure and sinking into further problems.