For every one startup that succeeds valiantly in any given year, up to 15 will have floundered and gone under that same year. Success is all about rising and falling – meaning it is not about the destination, but the journey. Since it is a reality that personal plans fail, then it should be expected that businesses will fail – and that will not bring the heavens crashing down.
If you have recently suffered a business failure, it can be very painful considering your invested resources and high hopes; but you can rise again. Things fail because of the interfering activities of external forces, and things also fail because of internal forces that sabotage our efforts. Since failure is always part of the success story, no one must remain lying down after falling; we must shake our wings and learn to fly again – correctly and resolutely.
If you have experienced failure and business loss, here are some of the things you must do to get back on track again:
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Identify Factors That Triggered The Loss
There’s an African proverb that goes thus: when a child falls, he looks ahead of him; when an adult falls, he looks behind him. This means that it is in the nature of adults to search the ground around them to identify objects that tripped them to fall. In that context, you must identify and analyze internal and external factors that contributed to your business failure – these could be poor financial management, business lawsuits, new government policy, pandemics, bad products, etc.
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Cut Down Costs By Going Digital
You can cut down on business costs by going digital in most operations. This will warrant laying off some employees, but they will understand that this is necessitated given that the business is going under. You can save money by laying off some employees since you won’t have to pay salaries and benefits and allowances anymore – the jobs of these employees can be digitalized through cloud computing, digital accounting, remote outsourcing, and work-from-home options.
Do you know that most companies shut down physical offices and moved their businesses online to stave off losses incurred from the COVID-19 pandemic? This means you must embrace technology to save costs.
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Spread Your Risks And Investments
If you have suffered business losses – you cannot afford to get out of business entirely – you must stage a comeback but with the insight to spread your risks and diversify your investments. While insurance companies take on the life risks of individuals and businesses, do you know they also spread the risks among other insurance providers to prevent themselves from going under when a big claim hits? Hit up other investment opportunities to harness several streams of income – in order to offset the losses from a single income stream.
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Hire Debt Recovery Experts
If your business loss is caused by massive external debts, you can try to recover by hiring debt recovery experts to go after your debtors. And if you have overpaid your clients by any significant amount, set your debt recovery team after them to recover the losses. Hiring a debt recovery service to recover your external debts is often the best and only way to get back on your feet without sinking any further.
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Modify Your Sales Strategies
One of the major ways to recover from business loss is to review your sales strategies to determine what is working and what is not. This may require altering your overall marketing plan, modifying your sales techniques, and reassessing your advert campaigns. All things being equal, you may have to raise the price of your products to break even.
It becomes necessary to raise prices if most of your profits go to suppliers and market forces. If you have impressive customer service, an efficient social media presence as well as excellent product brands, your customers will understand if you raise the prices of your products. So far the quality of your products is guaranteed, raising prices may be one of the major remedies to your business losses.
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Improve On B2B Relationships
If you are solely engaged in business-to-customer (B2C) relationships, you may have to equally consider business-to-business (B2B) relationships to recover from your losses. Adding B2B to your B2C business model is the surest way to insure your enterprise from unfortunate circumstances since failure in one vertical will not mean failure in the other. With improved B2B relationships, you will generate most of your revenue from other businesses within and outside your sector, guaranteeing your business survival and steady growth.
Final Thoughts…
In addition to implementing the above strategies to recover from business losses, you may also have to consider –
- Getting mentorship from a business guru in your business sector
- Aligning yourself with positive-minded people and progressives
- Getting out of your comfort zones to take calculated risks
- Taking one step at a time and dealing with negativity
- Follow-up on marketing efforts and business employees
- Prioritize important tasks that add value to customers
With the above business recovery tips, it is certain that you will bounce back stronger from a business loss and move on to greater business wealth.