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There is Still Money to be Made
There is Still Money to be Made
When things get ugly most people run and hide. For us, the smart move is to become aggressively proactive. For the past several weeks I have written a lot about what I see as an unavoidable financial disaster, but now it is time to turn our sights on what to do about it and hopefully prosper. Even in a Depression, there is money to be made. It is just important to maintain perspective. The sun is going to rise every day, people will still need to carry on their day to day business, and we will all find a way. The key to making money therefore is to service those needs.
Now, in a bad time it goes without saying that people will try to spend less, save more, and conserve. If we understand this and serve the most basic of needs at the lowest cost possible we have our best chance to survive. But if survival was all that business was about then it wouldn’t be much fun. No, the goal is to not just survive but to prosper and to do that you need to get inventive.
Basically, all of us are motivated by four things: Fear, Greed, Sex, and Personal Empowerment. Recession if anything just sharpens those basic needs as less primal requirements go by the wayside. What I mean by this is that if you are making your business plans based upon anything but these four basic desires in you customers, you are heading for a disappointment. Let me be more specific.
Say that you are in the grocery business and you have in your produce section the regular stuff and the organic. When times are good the more expensive organic stuff might sell really well as when people are flush with cash they might buy it to “do the right thing”. But when fear takes over as it is now, you can kiss those sales goodbye. You would be wise to switch your whole produce section to the least expensive produce available. Get it?
So, if you are new in business you need to keep this basic advice in the forefront of your mind and if you are already there, you need to reaffirm it. For example, my son is a franchised tool distributor for a company called Cornwell Tools. Of the big tool companies including Snap On and Matco, they sell exactly the same thing with the same lifetime guarantee for about 30% less than the competition. When times are good, there might be a lot of loyal Snap On customers, but when times are tight, well, it is an opportunity for my son.
That said, he has to run a tighter ship than might otherwise be the case and he will have to be careful, but regardless of the economy his primary customers, auto mechanics, will still be fixing cars and needing tools. In fact, the argument could easily be made that their business may improve as people keep their cars longer. Of course, they will have to run a tighter ship as well, so the point is that business will survive if it is run lean and mean and with an eye on people’s basic needs. In this case, cheaper tools are a greed sale as the less the customer spends the more of his money he keeps. Plus it has a fear aspect in that he maintains his financial cushion. Get it?
Bottom line: Don’t get fancy, be tight, and appeal to the basics. You can prosper.
Posted by Herb Kay on Thursday, October 16, 2008
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