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How to Handle Slow Times in Your Business
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How to Handle Slow Times in Your Business
In this episode of the Technibble Computer Business Podcast (with transcript below), I’m going to talk about what to do when your business is experiencing a slow period.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:24 — 6.1MB)
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Discussion:
00:17 – Look at your accounting software to determine slow times
00:48 – When does slow times in business occurs?
02:40 – Slow period might be due to internal issues
03:20 – Not advertising when you are busy
04:08 – Consider Managed Services
04:39 – Doing cold calls
05:39 – Summary on what to do during slow times
Tweetables:
“Slow day at your computer repair shop? No calls or sales? Here’s how to handle it.” [Click To Tweet]
“How to handle slow periods in your computer repair business” [Click To Tweet]
“Slow times of year in the Computer Repair Business” [Click To Tweet]
Transcription:
In this podcast, I’m going to talk about what to do when your business is experiencing a slow period. We often freak out thinking something big has changed. It’s pretty stressful, we may be thinking, is it the end of our business, have we done something wrong, whatever but before you freak out, take a look at your accounting software. Is it like this at this time every year? I mean even here at Technibble we have our slow times and our peak times. It’s pretty much always been this pattern since we started in 2006 so I don’t freak out about the slump and I make sure I’m prepared when I have peak periods.
Of course everyone’s situation is different. There are different holidays, different weather, different tax times between countries but even computer businesses in the same area have different type of clients so there’s no hard rules on when you’re likely to see slow points. However, some of the common ones that can cause changes during tax times when you can see rises before and after tax time and lower amounts of work during tax time as people can either be expecting a tax bill or waiting for their tax return. Before tax time, businesses tend to buy out before the tax year ends so they can claim for it quickly.
Residentials however often have tax returns to spend. You’re more likely to see residential clients want to spend money with you after they get the returns. Also, depending on who your clients are, in late December and early January, it can sometimes be a bit dead. Lower-income clients generally blast their cash on Christmas and usually don’t have much to spend on the New Year. However, higher-income clients may have new machines and new set ups and want their data transferred so you might see some more business from them. If you are handling decent size business clients, you may see a rise with various corporate departments as their new budgets come into effect in January. Also, something that can affect slow times is really bad weather.
When it is miserable, people are just less likely to go out. On the other hand, if it’s violent weather, you may actually see some surged computers and water damage so you actually may see more work. If your area has frequently bad weather like the United Kingdom for example then a nice day may actually slow things down as people get out and about on the one good day there is. Of course, the slow period may have no external cause whatsoever and may actually be entirely internal so you might want to check the ways to contact you. Call your own phone, can you get through? Does your voicemail work?
Is your voicemail inbox full? Check your phone for any diversions. Check your existing advertising that’s out and about. Use your phone number out for example. Check your Google Places details, are they up to date? Have your Google Rankings fallen? Are you even still ranked at all? Search for the keywords that you generally show up for. Does the form in your website work? So you might want to send yourself a test message through there. Did you stop advertising when you were busy? This is a huge trap that I say a lot.
You need to advertise for this week for the work that you get next week. A lot of people come busy this week and think I don’t need to advertise but they don’t realize they’re hurting themselves for the next week. When you do know what your downtimes are, the solution to that is you can do things like do promotions specific to that time. If school is coming back then you could do a back-to-school sale or if it’s tax time then you can push new computers after people are getting their tax returns. You can push out some advertising during early January and say that you can help people set up those new computers and gizmos that they’ve got for Christmas.
To also level things out, you might also want to consider manage services. Since you’re being paid monthly, it levels out the potential of feast and famine. Of course, most of these need to happen before you are seeing a slow time right now. If you are feeling a slow time right now then reselling your services to your existing client base is always the smartest and cheapest option. They already trust you and the cost is very little to market to them.
I hope you’ve been collecting the email addresses of every client. It’s just such a valuable resource but if you haven’t yet, you can also cold call. Now, I know most people find cold calling scary and some don’t want to really come off like a used-car salesman but it doesn’t have to be that way. Call your existing clients and tell them something like: “Hello, Mr. Jones. This is, your name, from your business.” “I’m just following up to make sure everything went okay in regards to the work we did last month.” “Ah, that’s great to hear.” “While you have me on the phone, are there any other issues I can help you with? An application you don’t know how to use, a little nagging error message, advice for your next technology purchase, and so on?”
Then stop and listen. People tend to switch off when you impose your spill on them. I mean I sure do when I get cold calls. This way, the balance of power is in the other direction where you are there to listen to them and it works great. You don’t feel sleazy and it shows that you care.
So, moving forward:
- Pay attention to your accounting software to predict future ups and downs and do some marketing before it happens and don’t freak out.
- Make sure the ways for clients to get in contact with you are working.
- Make sure that you’re clicking email addresses so you can just send a mail-out to our special or something next time you are slow.
- If you are experiencing a slow time right now, follow up with your clients, ask them how your last job went and if there is anything you can do for them.
That’s it for this podcast. This is Bryce Whitty from the Technibble Computer Business Podcast.
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Another great and informative post.