A few days ago, a small and medium-sized enterprise held a dealer meeting, and the business owner wanted me to send a message to dealers across the country. I said: live on! This statement is not new. Vanke said it a few years ago, and Huawei said it more than a month ago. But it’s the truth.
Today, we want to talk more about those small businesses, those with weak foundations, which are the smallest unit and barometer that constitutes the entire social economy. So how do small businesses survive?
1. Lying down is death. In the final analysis,
business is your own, and it is the foundation of your life. Excuse me, what can a small businessman do after giving up trading?
So, how should we treat our business? Lying flat is the posture and choice of most people. In the cruel market environment, progress may not be able to survive, and how can you survive the winter when you lie down? This is certainly a way of committing suicide, just slower.
2. Conservative with technical content
Conservative but not flat is a reasonable choice under the current economic situation. Please don’t believe the so-called “buy the dips” nonsense, and don’t have the illusion that “crisis is an opportunity”, which is blindly rash. Especially in an environment where many risks are not clear, today’s rash can be tomorrow’s trap.
The difference between being conservative and lying flat is how to make a reasonable choice, which is a reflection of business vision. For example, investing in advantageous links, slowing down the pace of expansion when the prospects are unclear, and choosing benefits that are better than scale…
Conservation with technical content, its essence is the art of selection that prioritizes risk aversion.
3. Efficiency is the first principle
Efficiency is more urgent than any era. The first characteristic of a slowdown in economic growth is the shrinking of scale, which is offset by the effect of efficiency. For example, there are two cores of store business operation efficiency: floor efficiency and human efficiency.
The determinant of efficiency is not cost, but the combination of products and services, which is reflected in the ability to pay a premium. Another determining factor is operational capability. It consists of two elements: human resources and models.
In the new era, the power of the model cannot be ignored, it is reflected in the new consumption behavior of consumers. Any business that does not respect customer consumption behavior will pay a heavy price.
4. Work hard on the deterministic factor
What is the deterministic factor? In this era of rapid change, we can hardly grasp any element of certainty, because the speed of iteration is too fast. But price/performance must be an element of certainty, that is, getting better products and services for less money.
In terms of products and services, the pursuit of cost-effectiveness can never be wrong. The competition in the future must be the competition of cost performance. Different from the past, the future cost-effectiveness is not at the expense of sacrificing quality, but at the expense of improving efficiency.
More refined management and higher operating standards are the inevitable means and ways to implement certainty factors.
5. Customers are the root. The smaller the
enterprise , the smaller the influence. The best resource a company can accumulate is limited customers. Customers are the foundation of a company’s survival. Small business, operating with customers as the root, contains two main points: one is to expand customers, that is, to increase traffic; the other is user operation, that is, to convert transaction customers into users and continue to operate. The second point is particularly important.
Especially in today’s community-oriented marketing and store community, users are neighbors. This allows customers to truly become the root of corporate resources.
6. Limited innovation
”Innovation” is a wonderful word that seems to be a prerequisite for business success. For small businesses, even small businesses and small businesses, I think careful innovation is needed.
Innovation costs are too high for small businesses to afford. The connotation of innovation is: technology + capital. Enterprises have technology and capital to have barriers, scale and speed. It’s a game of money and talent.
Small business innovation is limited. It is more about some new means for temporary competition needs, rather than subversion in nature. Using innovation to guide those small businesses every day is like fooling them to seek death.
It is the duty to put energy on a solid foundation and do solid work on the must-do items. Yes, the survival of small businesses is fundamentally to keep their duties, and innovation must be limited.
It is true that the environment is something we cannot choose, but ultimately we have to find our own way. Establish a concept: live first, live solidly. Development, wait for it to be really solid before proceeding with caution. This process may take 2-3 years.
