Small Business Recession Survival Tips: Treat Your Business Like Your Most Important Client for Long
While speaking about our challenging economy with another small business colleague, a common entrepreneurial complaint came up. She was frustrated about how much time she was spending working in her business rather than on it. While I reminded her about the blessing of paying customers, I empathized with her frustration. As entrepreneurs, we are often so focused on pleasing our clients that we ignore our most important client of all: our own business!
Most conscientious small business owners are familiar with evening and weekend hours spent catching up on the books or completing client proposals and projects. Noble and necessary tasks, of course, but these tend to be obligatory, reactive, keep-up tasks rather than proactive, business-nurturing activities like planning, idea creation, goal setting and marketing. So, given the constraints of time and wanting to have a life outside of their business, what is an entrepreneur to do?
One of the best strategies is to treat your business like your most important client. During our conversation, I posed a few questions to my colleague:
- While with a paying client, do you ever answer emails from other clients?
- When in an appointment with a valued customer, do you field phone calls from others?
- When face-to-face with a client, do you ever stop the meeting to attend to another client's crisis?
- When working on a client's project, do you consistently meet their goals and deadlines?
- Do you generally meet with your clients late at night or on weekends when your energy is sapped?
- When a client calls with a demand you can't attend to right away, can it usually wait a little while?
In answering these questions, my friend already knew where I was headed. I told her that unless she started treating her own business as if it were one of her client's, she would neither be able to survive current economic challenges nor grow her business like she wanted to.
Treating your small business like a client means:
1. Committing time to it several times each week - Set off sections of time in your weekly calendar and treat them like sacred appointments with customers.
2. Commit these hours to business nurturing activities, not bookkeeping, paying bills, client phone calls or catching up on projects. That stuff can wait.
3. Don't allow interruptions. That may mean silencing your cell phone, shutting down your email and closing your door. It may also mean escaping to a different environment where these interruptions are less likely.
4. Set goals and deadlines for your business nurturing activities and work them into your regular work flow, just like you would for your paying clients.
To survive and thrive in this or any economy, small business owners must place a higher priority on their own business. Understanding that your business is your most important client and then treating it so will produce the growth rewards you seek as an entrepreneur.
Most conscientious small business owners are familiar with evening and weekend hours spent catching up on the books or completing client proposals and projects. Noble and necessary tasks, of course, but these tend to be obligatory, reactive, keep-up tasks rather than proactive, business-nurturing activities like planning, idea creation, goal setting and marketing. So, given the constraints of time and wanting to have a life outside of their business, what is an entrepreneur to do?
One of the best strategies is to treat your business like your most important client. During our conversation, I posed a few questions to my colleague:
- While with a paying client, do you ever answer emails from other clients?
- When in an appointment with a valued customer, do you field phone calls from others?
- When face-to-face with a client, do you ever stop the meeting to attend to another client's crisis?
- When working on a client's project, do you consistently meet their goals and deadlines?
- Do you generally meet with your clients late at night or on weekends when your energy is sapped?
- When a client calls with a demand you can't attend to right away, can it usually wait a little while?
In answering these questions, my friend already knew where I was headed. I told her that unless she started treating her own business as if it were one of her client's, she would neither be able to survive current economic challenges nor grow her business like she wanted to.
Treating your small business like a client means:
1. Committing time to it several times each week - Set off sections of time in your weekly calendar and treat them like sacred appointments with customers.
2. Commit these hours to business nurturing activities, not bookkeeping, paying bills, client phone calls or catching up on projects. That stuff can wait.
3. Don't allow interruptions. That may mean silencing your cell phone, shutting down your email and closing your door. It may also mean escaping to a different environment where these interruptions are less likely.
4. Set goals and deadlines for your business nurturing activities and work them into your regular work flow, just like you would for your paying clients.
To survive and thrive in this or any economy, small business owners must place a higher priority on their own business. Understanding that your business is your most important client and then treating it so will produce the growth rewards you seek as an entrepreneur.