Well well well,
Happy new reopening for all of you small business owners and entrepreneurship guruS!
The pandemic has been quite the experience for much of not all of us. Since wearing a face mask and practicing social distancing has become a practice. Addressing the way we do business and how future business looks in the future had been a major topic on most entrepreneur focused social media platforms. As a business consultant that focuses on strategic planning, I have noticed that there is a gap between the former way of obtaining sound business opportunities and winning new clients today. For most of your word mouth and great product and service delivery has been the way to obtain and keep a loyal client base. This is ring true for hospitality, entertainment, healthcare, multilevel marketing, and a few more. The struggle has come in where you have limited space and time to connect with your client base and you have to choose between the quality of service you bring and the safety of the process that you deliver it.
Whether or not to reopen your business as soon as COVID-19 closures are lifted is a choice that only you can make. Take federal, state, and local health authority guidelines, as well as your business finances, into account when making your decision. Either way, Huy says it best in this educational blog post, "Regardless, the pandemic will fundamentally reshape how we do business from now on."
The industries that are not listed have the same challenges in different ways. After some thorough market research and listening to the small business concerns across the social media platforms for and national news; a customer loyalty program will do a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs justice as they seek to maintain a positive income flow moving into the reopening phase of their business. The following is a great resource for a list of things you might consider to prepare for your reopening:
https://www.score.org/resource/checklist-reopening-your-small-business-after-coronavirus-shutdown
As food for thought, the majority of people who work in corporate America are trying to decide if it's safe enough to go back to work on a standard work shift schedule. For those who don't, they are trying their hats at the numerous government benefits that have been made available specifically to address the workers and families across America that are being affected by the pandemic. The awesome thing about all of that is you get the opportunity to reap the benefits of being a small business employer. They have the Payroll Protection Payments to cover payroll expenses, they are working with loan recipients on their loan payments if they have been affected by the pandemic. You can learn more about governmental opportunities by clicking on the following link; https://www.sba.gov/page/coronavirus-covid-19-small-business-guidance-loan-resources.
I ran across another blog where it said, Banking is being hit hard by daily pivoting market conditions and deteriorating credit quality among others, marking unprecedented times for Chief Risk Officers (CRO), risk functions, and the business. Which leads me to another trick you might need in your bag of reopening tools moving forward. Since the federal government is going to be the new go-to place for finding reasonable and lucrative business opportunities until things reopen fully and we get back to some sense of normalizing consistency it would behoove of those of you who don't have a customer loyalty program or suffered losses because the pandemic hit right when you were choosing to open. A lot of entrepreneurs have taken this time to jump-start business ideas and strategies. Which seems to be a great thing for e-commerce, branding, marketing, and arts and crafts businesses. For those of you that are going to make seeking government funding a new thing, you need to think about how you want to present your business to the government. Doing business with the government is just like trying to work a 9 - 5 job. You should have a resume and cover letter for your business that is relevant and can explain why you would be the right company and/or organization for the job. Going back 5-10 years is a great rubric and your mission statement should serve as your objective to ensure that you can easily connect with the government entity that best aligns with your industry focus. You can reach out to your local PR firm to get a professional one made and there is a sample template your receive when you sign up as a member of the forum on the blog. This is also the best place to ask specific questions about finding opportunities for business with the government.
References:
Quy Huy, INSEAD Professor of Strategic Management | May 12, 2020
https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/four-strategic-priorities-for-the-post-covid-19-world-14086
Fabiano Gobbo | Author, 30 April 2020
https://home.kpmg/xx/en/blogs/home/posts/2020/05/implications-on-risk-management.html
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