Peaks and Troughs
Businesses are often described as seasonal, particularly when working on budgets for the following year. It’s easy to predict when the peaks and troughs may be, how high they peaked or how low they troughed was I suppose, up to us! However, alongside seasonal work comes challenges, cash flow, consistency in labour needs, etc. Is it possible for at least some businesses to work on our markets and smooth the trends? I certainly think in our case, as a business, it has been.
Although I do accept that there are some businesses that cannot get around seasonality, if you can, then perhaps you should try. Or if you can at least do something to gain some income consistency, it will help in the long run. Not least for the anxiety that quiet spells can bring, or the stress that super busy times can create. Here are some of my tips about how this may be possible for your organisation. Alongside some sound advice from my pal, I will tell you more about that shortly!
Seasonal
- Scrutinise your products, services, and markets, understand your position.
- Explore market needs, they will have changed.
- Aim for consistency in sales, it makes life a whole lot easier.
- Speaking to your markets all year around, you will learn things that are useful to you and them.
- Opportunity, own your market’s thoughts, imagine why would they need you and when.
- Navigate these opportunities, research.
- Analyse historical work, understand a timely contact.
- Loyalty from your clients is worth its weight in gold, continue to work on it.
Panic Sets In
Now time for some honesty, during one of our quiet spells, the pandemic, when perhaps panic was setting in, I was lucky enough to speak with a highly successful and well-respected businessperson in this region. This is a summary of that conversation.
Me – “Is this it then? We are an event driven company, there are no events, do we need to face reality and call it a day?” (It was a tough day!)
My Pal – “Absolutely not, no, you need to think differently. Your business has changed yes, but so has every other organisation. You need to understand what has changed, what is changing or what will change for your markets going forward. My bet is the importance of external and internal communication will swap places. All organisations will have a huge need to communicate effectively internally, think about it, this is your new opportunity!”
Wood for the Trees
Wow! Sometimes when you can’t see the wood for the trees you need someone to speak frankly and honestly to you. Obviously, this was a much bigger problem than just seasonality, the advice summarises my tips perfectly. This was the way our business conquered the never-ending challenge. We put ourselves in the minds of our markets and questioned how our products or services could help them, and it worked. A lot of our work is centred around client and employee engagement, the latter has never been as important as it is now. Whilst I have recognised new opportunities and continue to work on them, everything needs to be balanced. I spend a lot of my time in my marketing role, putting myself in other people’s shoes, others being our markets and it certainly reaps rewards. Seasonality can be worked on, give it a go!
Thanks to my pal, if he reads this, he will know who he is! 😊