The world is changing.  Coming out of this economic slump is challenging from every perspective.  But in that there is optimism: the playing field is level for the most part.  Businesses are all collectively focused on emerging from this ‘paused’ phase and catching things up to where they were earlier this year.

The following are four key areas we’ve found businesses tend to over-spend, and ways to quickly adjust that output to create greater impact and lessen cash burn:

Stop doing things you see your competitors doing

Whether you’re an eCommerce empire or a sales organization - now is not the time to invest in tactics you see your competitors doubling down on.  If your organization does not have a track record of success with a particular tactic - do not invest in it.  

We’re seeing a wave of organizations turning to webinars to generate leads.  It takes a lot of time to build and refine a lead funnel from content like this - and most businesses don’t have the in-house staff to get it up and running in 20-30 days.  Let alone refine it into a predictable investment. 

Your organization likely had built-in sales channels before the economic shut down - bet on those, and cut every dollar spent that you are not confident will yield a return.

Create unified, cross-organizational measures

‍
If your sales team and your marketing team have different measures of success, now is the time to change that.  Split-credit causes organizational pain, and inefficient use of resources every time it takes place: and organizational leaders are left trying to decide who did what.  

Instead, create clear assumptions around how each department can contribute to a single goal - and a way for the entire organization to focus on that goal (see it’s current status) every day. This is mostly what we do with Dash, but there are thousands of tools from Google Data Studio to Databox that cost next to nothing and can get your organization started.

Spend 10% more on each of your customers

Whether you are an eCommerce store adding a surprise gift to a purchased product, or a service organization overdelivering (or including an add on) now is the time to dramatically increase the perceived value of your business.  This is an increased expense, but it will save you money via a decreased cost per acquired customer.
‍

When business is tight, reputation and referrals are more critical than ever. Spend more time and a little more cash on the customers that are sticking with you through this period and you’ll see an attributable increase in net cash over the next 6 months that will magnify the cuts you are making elsewhere.

Turn to your ecosystem

You’re likely spending money on things you could produce for free through the relationships that power your business.  Suppliers, contractors, vendors, are all organizations trying their best to weather these difficult times.  Their strong relationships with you are assets that cost nothing to engage and can yield both savings and increased return.  Here are some things we’ve seen over the past few weeks:

• By working through referrals, an eCommerce conglomerate was able to renegotiate it’s merchant relationship saving thousands in weekly fees.
• Software consulting services we’re close to are creating micro-services to offer through their vendor channels to deepen relationships with prospective customers and significantly offset business development costs.
• Financial services organizations are teaming up with media partners (that they support as customers) to eliminate advertising costs and maintain their prospecting reach.
• Contractors are turning to their employees to source labor - decreasing HR cost by as much as 20%.
  

It’s always difficult to attribute progress to any channel or activity.  But where there was success before, there was certainly one or many contributing factors already within your organization that brought it to life.  The trick to operating lean is creating absolute clarity around the activities that are working, and accountability for the team members responsible for driving them home. 

We hope this guide has been helpful and look forward to your continued success!