Four Ways to Spend Your Time During Tough Times!

Susan Clements

Executive Director, E-Myth Benchmark

"Opportunities are never lost. Someone else will take the ones you miss.”
              – Catherine Pulsifer

The unrecognized gift of a recession is the unexpected opportunities that arise.  Before you groan, roll your eyes and begin thinking this is going to be just another “when you have lemons - learn to make lemonade” article, get prepared – this article can make the difference between having a business that stands the test of a recession or becomes a bloated carcass on the banks of the river to business success.

The gift I’m providing you going into the New Year is the skeletal insight to leverage the very forces of uncertainty and disruption in the marketplace that are wreaking havoc in your business and life. My gift, the four ways to spend your time during tough times will help you develop the strategic skill sets to take advantage of opportunities that others miss.

The Four L’s:  Listen, Look, Learn, Leverage

Listen to your clients! Clients that used to have total trust and confidence, because of the good results they experienced with their financial advisors are suddenly having trust issues. They are dealing with emotions that drive their decision-making in a way you may never have experienced. You need to shift the way you listen to and support your clients if you don’t want to lose them.

Your expanded job duties of Chief of Client Hand Holding and Broad Shoulder to Cry On may feel overwhelming to you. However, these expanded duties are presenting you with a unique opportunity––one that has not existed before––to learn how your clients really relate to their money. And guess what?  Even your clients don’t know how they really relate to their money until its being eaten away at by something unexpected and misunderstood.

If you learn to ask the right questions and listen closely, what their raw emotions will tell you at this intersection of despair and fear will enable you to redesign the way you forever relate to clients and prospective clients. If you listen, you will hear words, phrases, fears, desires and dreams that you can weave into your marketing messages, your discovery meetings and your lead conversion conversations. These words, spoken by your clients will give you the gift of connecting with them on a level you have never achieved in the past. 

Look at Your Business! 

Businesses are swirling down the river of economic uncertainty––riding the dangerous and unknown rapids of tight times and volatile markets. If you’re going to survive the trip, your business boat needs to be flexible, maneuverable, sturdy and ready to take on new passengers. Look at and examine your business model to find the opportunities to be more flexible, more maneuverable and sturdy. You need to look at every inch of your business operations to understand what will keep you buoyant, or drag you down.  If you know what to look for, you will see opportunities to redesign and reenergize your business.

Start by taking a good look at your business numbers. Numbers aren’t only about money, and most business owners don’t pay attention to what their business numbers tell them. If numbers aren’t a big part of how you examine your business, now is the time to change that! Financial numbers, client numbers, attrition numbers, retention numbers, time spent with clients, time spent marketing, time spent expanding your expertise, where your employees spend their time, number of leads, number of responses to marketing campaigns, number of conversions from responses––know your numbers. Understand them and use them to ensure your business model works for you.

If you aren’t quantifying your business activities and operations, you need to––immediately. Taking a good look at objective, quantifiable information will lead you to see the opportunities that ensure your business is flexible, maneuverable and sturdy! 

Learn from everything!

Ok…maybe that’s a little too broad––yet you should be intentional about learning from what will happen over the next year. I challenge you to identify five ways that you will learn from being in business during a recession. Why? Because you may need to know how to do it again!  If you take the time to intentionally learn about what is happening, you will come out stronger, ahead of your competition and with a client base that feels cared for, listened to and well served considering the dynamics they are facing. 

Choose your five: read articles, review history (yes, similar circumstances have existed), select books that broaden your business understanding, work in peer groups to examine and understand the dynamics of what is happening (don’t gather to lament or gripe!), understand HOW this happened and what events led up to the recession, identify how your clients needs change, watch how big business does or doesn’t react, identify and track the strategies other businesses are using and explore how they can be applied to your situation.

Take the time to learn––then connect what you’re learning together in a way you can redefine your business model and expand your strategic skill sets.

Leverage!

It’s time to unpack the pry bar and leverage every possible opportunity that arises from a recession. Fortunately for you––unfortunately for many––the employment market will be flooded with experienced and capable individuals. This may be the perfect time to expand your business by bringing in an assistant that will free you up to focus on new clients. You may find this is the optimal opportunity to leverage a business expansion through merging or acquiring other practices. 

You may discover marketing avenues to vertical markets open up, allowing you access to more and better prospects because other businesses will be looking for ways to provide value added services to their clients. For example, an association management company looking for the opportunity to provide free financial planning seminars to association members may provide you with an opportunity to present to a group of architects. Clients who weren’t feeling well served before a recession will be looking for a confident, caring and effective financial advisor. 

Be on the lookout for opportunities to purchase goods and services for your business at lower prices. Leverage the dynamics that arise from recession by honing your ability to see opportunity, where others see disaster.

Make no mistake, the landscape of business opportunity is changing and where one door closes, many others will be opening if you Listen, Look, Learn and Leverage every opportunity available to ensure you are developing your strategic skill sets to grow your business and expand your ability to serve your clients.

Susan Clements is Executive Director and co-owner of E-Myth Benchmark, a business coaching company serving businesses in the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, and the UK.  As a business coach Susan has steered client businesses through growth initiatives, sales and marketing strategies, management restructuring, personnel issues, customer service challenges, and action plans for growth and change. Leveraging a personal and professional experience platform of business ownership and management of businesses in both the private and public sector, Susan has designed a revolutionary coach training and delivery system that tools E-Myth Benchmark coaches to actively engage in results based coaching with business owners, leaders and managers leading to greater freedom and flexibility.  E-Myth Benchmark provides E-Myth Mastery Impact™ business coaching, business management and leadership workshops, trainings and seminars.  Contact Susan at www.e-mythcoaching.com or sclements@e-mythcoaching.com.