Being an entrepreneur, leading your business during tough times is crucial. Natural disasters, economic crises, pandemic outbursts, and others can be a stumbling block for the growth of your business.

Implementing the right strategies will be useful to lead your business during such unexpected situations. Employees and clients are like the two eyes that build the face of your business in the competitive market.

Preventing your current employees and existing clients from walking out of your business will help you lead your business during tough situations. In this blog, we have outlined a few tips for retaining your employees and clients at the time of uncertainties.

Effective Tips for Leading Your Business During Downturns

We have also included bonus tips about what you have to do from your side to grow your business during hard times.

Tips for Retaining Your Employees During Tough Times

Employees are the physical assets responsible for pushing your business forward. Retaining current employees will keep your head above the waters!

When the situation is hard, every worker gets stressed out. By properly handling your employees, you can prevent them from quitting their jobs. Here, we have curated effective tips for retaining your company’s greatest assets.

1. Develop Career Growth Skills in Employees

Learning keeps employees stay focused on developing new skills and prevents them from giving room to unwanted thoughts. Skill development is never a vain investment but will yield fruits till the doom day.

Some Ideas to Grow Your Employees’ Skills

• Communication development training
• E-learning courses related to core business
• Personality development courses

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2. Communicate Frequently

Communication bridges the gap between your organization and employees. Powerful tools like Slack, Skype, Zoom, and many more set communications at a simple level.

It is appreciable to stay connected with your team members during normal circumstances, but it is even more crucial to stay in touch with your employees during uncertain conditions.

Especially during downturns, you have to be more transparent to your employees and reveal the actual status of your business. As you convey all the challenges your business is facing and get back their suggestions, you can build credibility and confidence among your employees.

3. Appreciate Employees for their Efforts and Accomplishments

Appreciations can grab people at your side easily. Good leadership depends on the way you appreciate your team members for their efforts and accomplishments. During normal days, if your team reaches the expected goals, you could have gone for parties, dinners, trips, and more. Implement an employee recognition and rewards tool to allow peers and managers alike to showcase team members doing a good job.

These hangouts seem to be impossible at the time of uncertainties like COVID-19. It is where you have to keep appreciating your team members for all the small and bigger achievements. Appreciations at the right time will motivate employees to stay more concentrated on work..

4. Offer Work & Life Balance

Balancing work-life enhances the mental and physical well-being of the employees. It is inevitable to understand the risks of remote working and offer a healthy work-life environment to your team members.

Normally, employees with a smooth work-life space will stay engaged at work and show higher productivity. Studies prove that employees who have a healthy work-life balance will work 21% harder than those who do not have the work-life balance. Hence, by promoting these practices you can provide fruitful outcomes to your employees and the organization.

Few ideas to provide work-life balance during downtimes

• Offer online yoga and meditation classes
• Suggest medication tips now and then
• Post funny challenges on social media and tag your employees
• Encourage your team members to play indoor games
• Go for frequent video calls
• Give motivational talks during weekends

These effective ways will keep your employees’ performance better at work. Offering work-life balance to your employees will shape you as a reputed entrepreneur who can lead the business even at the time of uncertainties.

Tips for Retaining Your Clients During Tough Times

SignalMind reports that the probability of a sale from a new customer is only 5% to 20%, whereas the probability of sales from an existing customer is between 60% and 70%. Existing clients play a big role in your business enhancement.

Without clients, running your business during unexpected times will be impossible. Sales, products, and marketing are the three primary groups that play an integral role in customer retention management.

Statistics report that it is six times easier and less expensive to keep an existing client than to acquire a new client. Implementing smart strategies and keeping your current customers is the best way to lead your business during unexpected scenarios. Here, we are giving you certain useful tips to retain your clients so you can easily lead your business during downturns.

1. Interact with Your Clients Regularly

Reporting to your clients about the regular business operations will prevent clients from walking out of your business. Being at the reachable end and meeting the clients’ requirements will shape you as a good leader who can lead the business even during the hardest situations.

89% of customers have switched brand loyalties because of poor customer experience. Interacting with your clients at the right time will boost the customer experience.

Be available on all the communication platforms including phone, message, email, video conferencing, live chat, social media, and many other channels. Transparency, empathy, self-awareness, context, flexibility are the five pillars responsible for building an effective communication platform between you and your clients.

2. Provide Values to Your Clients at any Cost

Meeting the needs of your clients should be at the top of your mind, even at the time of downturns. When you provide values to your clients during unexpected times, you can eventually beat your competitors and grab your clients into your arms.

Few ideas to provide value to your clients during the economic crisis

• Put yourself in your clients’ shoes so you can understand the issues from the clients perspective and take instant actions accordingly
• Listen to your clients, analyze their challenges, and suggest ideas that best resolve the issues
• Collaborate with other team members. Working with multiple ideal brains will offer solutions instantly

Likewise, there are several ways to provide values to your clients during these tough times. By implementing these amazing tips, you can stay close to your clients and lead your business with no hard impediments.

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Bonus Tips

Till now, we have discussed the best tips for retaining your employees and clients to lead your business during hard times. Now, let us talk about productive measures you have to take from your end.

Instead of following the same old methodologies, take decisions from a fresh perspective for your business to survive.

1. Focus on Your Expenses

The best way to keep your company afloat in tough times is to pay attention to your expenses. With these financial reports, you can know the exact places where you can make some cuts in your expenses.

It is ideal to tighten the belt but should be extra careful to avoid only the unnecessary expenses. Try to eliminate expenses that are not contributing to your business growth.

In periods of crisis, maintain a minimum cash ratio in your locker that you can take advantage of. Apart from that, have insurance claims, bank savings, and liquidating stock holdings in a way to get funds for overcoming the tough times.

2. Be Mentally Strong

During hard times, if you stay idle, it will pull you towards the closure of your business. Be more active and keep on marching toward the positive things that will eventually thrive your confidence level.

Being the head of your business, it is crucial for you to stay energetic so you can spread positivity among your employees and clients. Although it is hard to stay hopeful during such situations, remember that every coin has two sides and pay heed to the positive side of uncertain times.

Attending seminars, taking online motivational courses, reading inspiring stories, conversing with experts who have gone through such times can build your positive attitude and bring amazing results to your business.

3. Upgrade Your Business

Due to a busy work schedule, you wouldn’t have got enough time to upgrade your business. The best way to lead your business during uncertain times is to come out of your comfort zone. Change your sales approaches, marketing strategies, and others so it will help you stand ahead of the competition at the time of downturns.

You should be flexible in adopting the changes. Staying constant will help you only at a particular time, but changes depending on the external factors will keep your business lasting ever in the market.

For instance, if your business does not have strong visibility in the online world, then embark on establishing a powerful online presence. You can take help from professional digital marketing service providers like ColorWhistle. We will support you to make a tremendous mark in the online space.

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Over to You

According to the proverb, prevention is better than cure, take proactive measures to lead your business during unexpected situations. Also, it is vital to have alternative plans to adopt changes at any time.

If you find it difficult to lead your business during tough times, then we stretch out our hands to you. At ColorWhistle, our expert marketers and skilled strategists provide services that are tailored to meet your business needs at the time of uncertainties. Get in touch with us via message or call +1 (210) 787-3600 at any time. We can help you to stay calm in the storm.

Do you like to include any tips on this list? Leave your suggestions in the comments section so that our readers can also be benefited from your tip.