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Change Your Ways or Go Out of Business

Written by: Michael O'Grady

Article Overview: Small business like delis, pizza shops, thrift stores and other shops will close their doors in this kind of economy. Large businesses aren't doing any better. Business owners that were previously making a good living off their great reputation and quality product must change their ways. The old saying, "If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” doesn’t have much practical application during a recession. You won’t get what you’ve always got because you’ll go out of business! Read on for practical tips on changing your ways and staying in business.

Change Your Ways or Go Out of Business

I recently stopped into the local pizza place for a quick slice. I seemed to be the only person in the place during lunch hour on a typical work day. When I asked the owner where everyone was, he grunted and said “Nobody comes in any more”. He added, “The last four months have gotten worse and worse”. When I asked him if he thought of any different ways to get customers back in the door, he just grunted again and looked defeated.

Small businesses like delis, pizza shops, thrift stores, and other shops will close their doors in a down economy. Business owners that were previously making a good living off their great reputation and quality product will have to change their ways. The old saying “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got” doesn’t have much practical application during a recession. You won’t get what you’ve always got because you’ll go out of business!

Let’s look closer at what the pizza shop owner should do to get people back to his store. He could bring free pies to the local high school during some after school activities, club meetings or sporting events. While there, he could hand out flyers for pizza specials (buy a slice get one free) to all students and teachers. He might consider offering some of the local offices a free pizza lunch or arrange a special to all company employees that come into the pizza store for lunch on specific days of the week (for example, buy two or more pizzas this Tuesday and get 1 free pizza the following Tuesday).

No matter the type of product or service, if you don’t take action on something that gets you off your butt and making proactive changes to your business or the way you sell your product, things will change in spite of you and for the worst.

Take a day, a couple of days, even a week to brainstorm new ways to bring your product or services to your customers. Run it by a few people. Tweak your ideas and run with them. You must get your business name out “there”, even if you’ve been a staple in the community for years. The rules of the game are different during a recession. You must step out of your comfort zone, change the way you think about your business or product and adopt new sales techniques, promotions and systems.

By taking new actions, you will have an immediate effect on your business, allowing for growth and innovation. Remember, movement is the force of creation. In the great words of Albert Einstein, “Nothing Happens Until Something Moves”.

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Article Tags: club meetings, days of the week, down economy, economy business, free pizza, great reputation, local high school, lunch hour, new ways, pizza lunch, pizza place, pizza shop owner, pizza shops, pizza specials, pizza store, practical application, quality product, recession, thrift stores, typical work



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Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
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