Reality Check
It’s summer in the heavily populated northern hemisphere. The bright optimistic days of summer are a good moment for a reality check about ways in which things have changed, how we have shifted to cope, and whether perhaps we can make better adaptations by putting more time and thought into them.
Ever since the start of 2020, we’ve all been in crisis mode. In the pressure of an emergency, sometimes we have to jump as best we can. What did we not get to consider fully? What did we overlook? What is not doing as much good as we want?
A reality check can save the day.
Especially in small to medium sized businesses.
Big companies have access to resources that small to medium businesses can’t have. Big companies can hold big cash reserves. They can afford to hire sophisticated financial people who know about and can arrange financial tools that smaller businesses cannot touch. I don’t just mean that banks are more willing to lend to them. They can sell shares in a public stock market if they “go public.” They can issue corporate bonds. They can hedge against swings in the price of the supplies they need. They can access tools most of us don’t even know about.
Small to medium sized businesses don’t have as many ways to defend themselves. Crazy market conditions hit them harder.
We’ve had a lot of crazy market conditions over the past few years.
If you’re running a small to medium sized organization, it’s time to look at where you stand after leaping from crisis to crisis in the turbulent early 2020s so far. Take a breath.
Is the kludge to get through that supply chain collapse performing well enough to keep it, or would you be better off rethinking it now that you have some breathing room?
Speaking of the supply chain, what are the weakest points in it? Have you done what you can to prepare in case any of those weak points falter?
Is there a potential single point of failure anywhere in your business? If so, what can you do to make it no longer a must-have single-source item?
Do your staff work effectively from home, or do they really need time together in the office? If they need to be in the office together, do they need that all week or just one or two days in the week?
If they need to be in the office, does it have the ventilation, filtration and maybe UV germ-killing to keep them from getting sick?
Does your marketing need to change?
Did the way you interact with customers change? Do some or all of those changes need to continue for the long term?
Those are a few examples. Let’s look a little more closely at a couple of them.
One small business I’ve worked with saw its marketing fall apart in 2020 to 2021. The business had always done well selling to affluent retirees with ads in print media, and not online. Starting in lockdown, potential customers were no longer looking where the ads were running. In a relatively short time frame, the stream of leads from print ads became a trickle. Everyone went online, including the retirees!
Then there are customer interactions.
I see clinically vulnerable people and people who live with or visit them exchanging tips online about which businesses are loose about face to face interactions and which are cautious. That’s a larger cohort than you might expect. It isn’t only Grandma and Grandpa. It includes their children, their grandchildren, friends, maybe home health care providers… It’s also people of prime working age with health conditions that make them more vulnerable. The list of those conditions is long, so that’s a lot of people too.
Such people tell each other online which dentists’ offices run HEPA filters and wear N95 face masks, which plumbers or electricians or appliance repair technicians put on a face mask before coming into the house, which doctors’ offices and hospitals still have a mask mandate, which restaurants or pubs have a nice outdoor seating area (and actually allow people to eat there), which grocery delivery services wear a face mask to bring in the delivery for someone who can’t tote it in from the door themselves.
I also see them warn each other away from businesses that don’t do such things. They do this in Twitter, Facebook, NextDoor, whatever is their favorite online platform. As more and more places decide to “live with” current conditions by dropping precautions, people who need precautions are building up more momentum for helping each other find businesses that are willing to carry on with protective measures.
You can see what I mean about reality checks. If you’ve been too busy firefighting to notice the market has shifted, a reality check can help you revamp your marketing to be where your customers have moved. Missing that would leave your business anemic. Similarly, whether or not you continue protective measures in customer interactions could bolster or erode your customer base… and unless you happen to be watching what people are saying about your business in social media, you wouldn’t know why you are gaining or losing customers.
Some people think of doing reality checks as a bother. I think reality checks are opportunities. I like helping businesses do them. And any lull in these wild times is a good opening for them.