Here are my seven suggestions on how to increase your chances:
- Take time out: There’s much firefighting to be done, but you need to find time to sit down in a quiet room, with your spreadsheets and calculator and work out what your revenues and costs are going to be over the next few months and where adjustments can be made to close the gaps.
- Check out how the government can help: The government is throwing a lot of money at this. Some of it will be aimed at you. Check out what’s on offer.
- Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water: With a lot of revenue streams hit hard, you will need to trim costs, but try to keep your flagship brands ticking over, even if in reduced or altered states.
- Keep communicating: Don’t go quiet! Talk to your staff, suppliers and commercial partners. Let them know you’re still in play and determined to stay that way. Share your concerns and explore ways in which you can help each other.
- Use the time productively: Use any suddenly available resource to make a start on all those things you’d been putting off.
- Take advantage of opportunities: As I wrote a couple of weeks back, crises throw up opportunities. Think creatively.
- Be ready to bounce back: Things will return to normal, and when they do, will you be ready? Start planning your post-crisis activity now and make sure your suppliers are properly briefed.
Good luck! Business survival is partly a state of mind. Where there’s a will, there’s often a way.
(Check out our coronavirus hub and we’d love to hear from you if you have any ‘dispatches from the publishing frontline’.)
