How do you sustain your business when clients have stopped making decisions or, worse, started to terminate projects? In this blog we look at how events can be opportunities in disguise, and explore some sensible precautions to take, to make sure you weather the storm. 

“Events dear boy, events” was the response of former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when asked what might blow a government off course. The world seems to have been throwing plenty of ‘events’ our way for the last couple of years and it looks like we can rely on the external environment to keep us well-supplied with surprises. What’s the best way to respond?

It’s not all downside 

Firstly, be optimistic. As one of Barack Obama’s advisors famously said: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that: it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” 

Unanticipated events are a great medium-to-long term sales opportunity to open up new market areas. Like you, your clients will be affected by what’s going on in the market and will be having their own headaches. Have you got (or can you create) a solution for them, or at least some intellectual ointment to help them cope better? For example, if you work in the public sector, the arrival of a new government often causes all work to stop whilst officials work out whether the new or returning minister will want to continue with existing initiatives. 

But there’s always almost a call for the best new eye-catching ideas for the new ministers to announce early on. Can you be the source of some of those ideas to help set up your own next projects? Maybe those ideas are for new infrastructure, new services, or new controls on existing behaviour, or maybe they’re ideas for more efficient ways of doing things. Would it be worth offering some pro-bono workshops to help others develop their ideas too? And let’s not forget the age-old consulting trick of making the client feel they have spontaneously had the ideas you just seeded there. 

The same ideas hold true in the private sector. Your clients will be worrying about what events are going to do to them. They'll be worried for the business, and for their own role. And some of them will see this as an opportunity. Your role is to be as useful as possible by deploying your ideas, skills and support.

Keep your bases covered 

Whilst you’re being all optimistic, it also makes sense to look at what you can do to prepare your business for turbulent times. We have a few suggestions. 

Benchmark yourself.

Are you as profitable as you should be? Is your utilisation high enough? Do you have 3 months’ operating cashflow on hand? If all the indicators are good, you can focus on the more creative ways set out below to help your business not just survive but thrive. If your key metrics are out of whack then we suggest you focus there first. If you’re not sure, drop us a line and we’ll give you our view. 

Be efficient.

Tighten up efficiency within your business. Are you creating and monitoring key forward-looking indicators like job profitability, revenue gap analysis and runway? We’ve also written about making your cost base flexible towards the end of our article on laying the foundations for future growth.

Don’t let the  crisis go to waste.

You may have difficult issues stored up in your team that you haven’t dealt with because it would create too much pain or have an impact on ongoing work. This is probably going to be a good time to deal with those things. An external crisis means that people will expect you to make changes and will provide a context for the question ‘why now?’. 

Steady the team.

Whether or not you have difficult changes to make, you need to keep your team close. Consulting teams are some of the smartest people you’ll meet and they can smell trouble and half-truths from a thousand paces. Your best bet is to be honest with the team and share with them your plan for dealing with the turbulence. You could be surprised at how well people react to being trusted with the truth. 

And bring them closer: if you don’t already have one, you might want to consider some sort of incentive scheme for the team. That could be as simple as a share of annual profit as a bonus, medium-term measures such as share options, or other longer-term incentives for senior team members. 

Build in cost management and flexibility.

Focus on building in cost management and flexibility to your consulting team and back office arrangements. This allows you to scale up and down as circumstances demand. It also helps you minimise the need for painful redundancies if things get especially tough. As I said earlier, this article summarises our advice on flexible hiring and reward models, as well as how to use your people when work is scarce. 

Use the right tools.

Make sure you’re using the right software (you knew we were going to say this, right?). Spreadsheets and timesheet systems are the equivalent of navigating by the wake. You could generate useful forward-looking information, but it’s so painful and expensive to gather all the data you need that nobody ever does. In a buoyant market, that probably doesn’t matter, because it’s relatively easy to succeed. In a difficult market it's like taking a inflatable water bed to a surfing championship. Or a family car to a Formula 1 race. Anyway, you get the picture. We can show you the Formula 1 of consultancy software - get a free one-to-one online demo. 

Sharpen up your branding.

Think about your branding. Does your website say that you are ‘unique’, ‘unparalleled’ or ‘have an unrivalled track record’? Sorry, but everyone says that because there are literally thousands of smaller consultancies covering a relatively small amount of territory. (And could you produce the evidence if a customer asked you to back up these claims?) 

Having a truly distinctive positioning based on what you do uniquely well will help you focus on the things that matter and get your message across in a crowded market. I think we only have to look at recent events in the political world to see how effective positioning like this can be. There are SME branding experts who can help you with this stuff and it doesn’t have to be too expensive. Drop us a line if you’d like a name or two. 

Sort your website out.

Is it modern, inviting, visual, dynamic? Does it convey your shiny new distinctive brand positioning? Does it comply with the Companies Act? If you have a quiet moment, take a critical look. An attractive website that’s highly relevant to your most desired customers, and scores well on SEO, could give you just the edge you need over your competitors. 

Get bigger.

Is this the time to think about merging, buying or being bought? There’s definitely strength in numbers, and creating a bigger business can increase your geographical reach, skill set and the scope of jobs you can take on. Consequently you can sell more to existing clients, prospective clients and associate networks. Plus being bigger in one market or spreading your risk across multiple markets can be a great defensive strategy. It’s a big step and not without risks, but could be transformative. 

If you have any other tips and ideas for dealing with turbulent times then we’d love to have your comments.