Newer business owners, say less than 5 years ownership, don’t always have the experience of sustaining during economic cycles.

Seasoned business owners understand the long game. There are always “up” seasons and absolutely “down” seasons. It’s ignorant to believe there is an endless winning season.

I’ll share one major tip that has saved countless businesses from going under, allowing them to weather the storm.

Consider temporary pricing adjustments on your inventory, in order to drive sales. This inventory could be products, or available service hours not being utilized.

I’ve seen too many businesses fail due to ego of the owners. “I’m not lowering my price! I know what I’m worth!”

That sounds great in theory, but if nobody is buying… your price might as well be $0 dollars. Because that’s exactly what you’re earning.

Many business owners get this mindset wrong. They incorrectly believe that business solely exists to create profit. They somehow think the business takes priority over the customers.

Wise owners put the horse back in front of the cart. A business exists to serve customers, period. Without customers there is no income. Without income, there is no business.

During recessions or stagnant economic times, as a CEO your primary role becomes ensuring the survival of your business. This isn’t a growth period, and it doesn’t make sense to scale if the market size has shrunk.

If you have products on the shelf, or manhours sitting idle and on standby, you should consider lowering your prices to get some sales inbound. How much lower? The answer is whatever it takes to create sales.
Here’s the thing; You can sit idle on inventory, and suffer a BIG cost of doing nothing, earning $0 out of pride…

…or you can move products and service hours at a temporary discount, and experience a much smaller cost. Even if you take some small losses to push out inventory, it’s still generating cash and you then only have a small fraction of overhead costs left to cover.

Anything coming in beats zero. That’s how to survive the season. You can bet an upwards cycle will return again, and then you’ll be busy enough to readjust pricing later on.

Don’t fight the laws of economics. Learn to move with them.

-Tony