The BIGG Successs Show
3 Strategies Small Businesses Can Use to Gain an Advantage in Bad Times
Bad times for large companies can mean opportunity for small businesses. Find a written summary of today's show at BIGGSUCCESS.COM.
Welcome to The Big Success Show. Today we'll share three strategies small businesses can use to gain an advantage in bad times. The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. There's a recent study out by Intuit. Of course Intuit is the makers of QuickBooks, accounting software, as well as quick-in for your home, TurboTax, all kinds of good stuff. They've got all sorts of goodies, yeah. And they found recently in the study Mary Lynn that three-fourths of small business owners expect to grow in spite of the fact that we're hearing all this talk about a recession. And you think that's surprising because everybody's tightening their belts. We hear about layoffs and things like that. So why is this good news for small businesses? Well of course I think small business owners as a whole are probably a fairly optimistic group we'd have to say, right? Definitely. Mostly probably last half full. And I think part of the confidence comes from the fact that nearly two-thirds say they've actually survived a recession before. And what they've used, the strategies they've used is to put the customer first and focus on finances. Yeah and it's interesting I think that when I was really just getting in the business world and studying this whole subject of job creations and business cycles and my perception was, and I think I'm probably not that uncommon in this sense, that big businesses create the jobs, right? Exactly because they hire so many people. And our colleges train us all to work for big companies you know and so that's where we thought the jobs were. But interestingly enough over the course of the job cycle, big companies tend to create a lot of jobs during boom times as do small companies. But during tough economic times, big businesses cut back, small businesses tend to pretty much hold their own. That's true because if you are keeping an eye on the news, you see that a lot of big companies are cutting jobs, they're cutting marketing, they're cutting customer service, they're even cutting entire departments because they want to streamline and okay we don't need this department, we can have John Doe over here work some extra hours and take care of it. That's absolutely right. And the net effect of all of this is that over the course of a business cycle, almost all the jobs of study after study after study is shown comes from small businesses. So there's real opportunity for small businesses during bad times. And coming up, we're going to share three strategies that small businesses can use to gain an advantage in bad times. Today, we're talking about how big companies and small companies respond during a recession. And now we want to talk about a few things that a small business person could do to take advantage of what big companies are doing during bad times. Right. So the first thing you can do is turn big companies into your customers. That's absolutely right, Maryland. It's funny because you know as you said earlier, big companies tend to sometimes cut entire departments, particularly during a recession, they're reviewing their operations, they're looking at everything. Well, if if what they cut is something you do, if it's your service, you can market to them and take advantage of the fact that they now need that service. Another strategy, you know, they're laying people off. Good talented people. That's right. Recruit that talent, provide them with a nice place to fall. There you go. Because you think about it, you've got good talent here. And maybe because of this shakeup, they want something that's a little bit more stable or someplace where they can have more sense of ownership in where they are and more in control. Yes. So your business could be the answer to that. That's right. And as you said, you know, it's just amazing the people that sometimes lose their jobs during bad times working for a big company. And now you can put them into your small company and get people that you probably would never get otherwise. And that's going to help you grow. And then finally, go after the big company's smaller customers. Because, you know, with cuts, they have less resources to take care of their customers. That's right. And it's sort of the 80/20 rule, right? I mean, they look at it and say, okay, who's the 20% of our customers that are giving us 80% of our benefit? Right. And all the rest of them, we're going to probably just cut back on what we provide. Well, those are the people that you go after because you can serve them and they may be your biggest customers. You can find a written summary of today's show on our site at Big Success. That's big with 2G success.com. We also have a link to that Intuit Study we referenced earlier. Next time, we'll talk about a place that's hard to beat for cheap entertainment. You said cheap. I didn't say easy though, Mary Lynn. Until then, here's to your big success. The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G Success.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]