Top 5 Business Survival Tips for 2021

Jan 18, 2021

Unpredictable times mean unpredictable rules. Nevertheless, as a business owner, you must stand your ground and ensure your business survives the challenging months ahead.

Expect the unexpected. 2021 will bring with it new challenges, so here are five survival tips for your business:

 

1. Stay on your customers’ minds

In an online sea of businesses, now is NOT the time to be forgotten.

Marketing is crucial for any business so make sure you stay relevant, heard, and on your customers’ minds.

Marketing is how you understand your customers’ needs, educate them, attract new ones, and get them to keep doing business with you. All marketing strategies may not lead to outright sales, but sales will happen eventually if you’re consistent enough.

Your social media platforms should be your best friends in the coming years. Studies show that “nearly 50% of the world's population uses social media. That's over 3 billion users worldwide.”

Part of staying on your customers’ minds is being around where they can see you, and social media marketing is a marketing strategy that gives you that leverage.

 

2. Get the right team and keep growing

Get the best hands for the job. This goes beyond hiring the right people but also training and keeping your employees happy.

It's a difficult year for us all so try being understanding, create a healthy work environment, and give your team a purpose that contributes to their job fulfilment.

How do you create that positive work environment? Everyone likes to feel heard.

So, it’s your job as the business owner to create an environment that allows everyone to share their opinions and ideas about certain things. This can happen at weekly meetings. Implementing this can significantly increase their productivity, which in turn helps your business.

 

3. Monitor cashflow

Cashflow forecasts are an essential planning tool for businesses, especially in these uncertain times. We recommend a 12-16 week cashflow forecast, updated every two to four weeks.

The forecast will help you think about and identify potential cash crunch points ahead, so you can devise a plan and take early evasive action, instead of being caught unaware.

If you want to take the exercise a step further, use scenarios. For instance, initially prepare a base case (ie this is what we expect to happen) and then a worst-case scenario. The key number in each of these is your minimum cash figure.

 

4. Support your finance team

Budgeting is like a roadmap for your business; you put your business at risk when you don’t have a budget.

Budgeting decides whether your marketing, asset acquisition, employee remuneration, and other parts of your business can go smoothly. You should anticipate all your long and short term financial needs. This may require hiring an accountant who will keep records of all the money going in and out of business.

If your finance team needs support, requires more resource, or leadership so you concentrate on running your business, then consider financial outsourcing solutions: from book-keeping to part-time FD support.

Outsourcing avoids the red tape of hiring more staff and is a low risk, low commitment approach to manage these complex issues. A good outsourcing service can be flexed up or down, depending on the demands and challenges your business is currently facing.

 

5. Be ready to adapt to anything

It's no secret that the world has had to adapt to Zoom meetings, online education, and social distancing (to name a few changes!)

2021 is uncertain, but what is absolute should be your ability to adapt to anything. Whether it’s in your service/product delivery, marketing, or engaging with your customers, you have to be ready to dance to the tune of whatever the market throws at you and attack it creatively.

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