Thriving during challenging economic conditions – is it really that bad?

I hope this blog entry finds you doing well, despite today’s uncertain and challenging times. If not, hopefully this note will give you some fresh ideas and concepts to consider that could help out…

It seems like every day the news says things are bad and predicts things to worsen… It seems clear there are numerous companies out there who have mismanaged themselves right into the ground, but I for one do not believe our entire economy or everyone’s business is fundamentally flawed or doomed – not for one minute.

In fact, the opposite is true. Most businesses serve real market needs that aren’t going away. And we conduct business with high integrity and ethical practices. We will all do just fine over the coming years.

However, there is a temporary “recession bubble” that we must navigate our way through successfully. Those who survive this temporary downturn will be well-positioned to thrive once the markets turn positive again (which I believe is likely to occur by summer 2009).

Most of us have been through such hard times before and realize they do not last forever. The last downturn I went through was while I was with Citrix, back in the 2001 – 2002 post-911 period.

Let me share a personal story with you that not many people have ever heard about…

Fortunately for Citrix, our products actually enabled companies to reduce their IT costs significantly, while at the same time improving productivity in a number of areas.

Once our customers realized this, and we recognized it and then figured out how to reposition our sales conversations to take full advantage of it, our growth rebounded sharply – even during the worst IT spending and cutback environment we’ve seen in decades…

For us, it was a matter of concentrating on the “jobs to be done” that had been reprioritized by our customers. By “jobs” I mean the tasks and associated end-results and outcomes that customers were suddenly seeking to achieve (instead of what used to be their top priorities prior to the downturn).

Cracking the code on what your customers have reprioritized as most important, and then figuring out where your company and its products and services can be best positioned to meet these revised customer needs is the key to not only surviving, but to actually thriving through tough times.

Of course, you have to pay close attention to your customers, and actively find out what’s happening to THEM in their world, then decide what you can do to adjust to better meet their needs and current constraints (easy to say, often hard to do in practice.)

For example, companies had their IT budgets slashed to the bone, and virtually all capital spending projects had been put on hold or cancelled indefinitely. That’s a tough environment to sell in, especially when your products require some capital investment.

However, there were certain non-discretionary things that had to be maintained. For example, workers still required a working PC to get their jobs done. Many companies had millions of dollars that was budgeted to replace older, outdated desktop PC’s, but suddenly needed a way to increase the life of those existing PC’s somehow, and to maintain them with fewer desktop PC technicians.

In case you don’t know about Citrix, it’s flagship product enables a company to move applications off of the desktop PC and place the application on servers. This enables many users to access the company’s applications on a shared server, enabling hundreds of employees to now use the applications on servers; e.g., Microsoft Office, SAP, and many other applications.

Moving the apps resulted in reducing the workload on those older desktop PC’s, and in effect, breathed new life into those existing desktop PCs.

Once customers solved that problem, they then realized they could also use those same Citrix servers to outsource certain work and to offshore some tasks at a lower cost.

So, companies were able to keep their existing desktop PC’s in service for several more years (through the downturn period), and actually experience an increase in productivity due to the applications running on fast, flexible servers.

The net result – companies avoided spending the millions of dollars on upgrading desktop PC’s for years, and were able to run their desktops with far fewer desktop PC technicians.

For me, the lessons learned were:

1) Challenging times call for creative solutions

2) Giving up is not an option – alternatives exist and must be
found, investigated and embraced

3) Finding ways to get existing jobs done at lower cost or via
creative, new methods isn’t optional – it’s the key to making
it through the downturn and thriving later on

4) Those who find and embrace these new methods during the
    challenging times will be well-positioned when the downturn
    passes, as their operating costs will be lower and they will
    be more efficient when the markets improve.

That’s why I’m so excited about Precision Marketing, and what it can enable companies to do:

1) It’s a creative solution that leverages those existing assets,
     in this case, your list assets and content assets, and enables
   you to re-purpose those assets to reduce marketing and
   advertising costs, while at the same time improving revenue

2) It’s a creative alternative that works, and should be carefully
investigated and, if appropriate, embraced and put into practice

3) It provides a better way to get numerous existing jobs done at
     a lower cost basis – for example, cross-selling to existing
     customers to recognize more value from your installed base
     (vs. trying to acquire lots more new customers during tough times)

4) It provides a foundation for realizing a major competitive
advantage once the downturn period passes and market growth
resumes and accelerates.

Our Precision Marketing System provides one of the tools that most companies can use to increase their sales results, even during this down economy period, while also significantly reducing marketing spending, and dealing with increasingly stressed human resources.

If you still have unanswered questions about Precision Marketing, why not give us a call to explore things further? What do you have to lose to learn more about how it can help you?

We’re here to help, whenever you’re ready to contact us to get started:

– Do-It-Yourself Precision Marketing

http://www.winningware.com/info/precision-marketing.html
– Custom Precison Marketing Consulting Solutions

http://winningware.com/consulting-services.php

We’re currently offering an unprecedented 2 hours of free Precision Marketing consulting to the first fifty (50) who get The Preicision Marketing System now while our special introductory pricing is in effect, so this is a great way to get going fast and inexpensively, start realizing all the benefits and have the experts standing by to assist you, should you have questions or want assistance.

Whatever your specific situation, I’d like to wish you the all the best and just leave you with this one thought…

They say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going.” It’s so true.

Well, times are a bit tough right now, but the fact that you are here with me, learning about all your options tells me something about you – you’re one of the tough ones who doesn’t give up, and who will somehow learn how to thrive, while everyone else just struggles to survive.

Good luck with it all (call us if we can help).

Rick
www.WinningWare.com