The market has changed…
Customers aren’t buying. Your business model isn’t working. Expectations are unrealistic.
What do you do?
1. Do everything you can to grow the business
2. Make sure your are SEEN as doing as good a job
The main point I want to make is, really challenge yourself more than ever before on #1 AND don’t overlook the importance of #2.
Is the problem the business or you?
If you are in this situation, the last thing you need is people questioning whether the problem is the business or if the problem is you. You need people to recognize that the business is indeed tough, and you are doing as good a job (or better) than anyone could.
Don’t burn career capital just because you are in a struggling business.
Instead use this as an opportunity to build career capital. Stand out as the one making a positive difference when it gets really hard.
Driving Growth in Tough Times
Show that you have turned over every rock that has anything to do with revenue.
Where does your revenue come from? What has to be true for you to get the business? What are the 10 things that need to happen before a customer makes a purchase? What are the biggest levers that fill the funnel? What are the specific actions that move business through the funnel?
You need to evaluate your channel, your sales tools, your marketing, your product, your competition, your partner model, and your internal processes. For each one of those you need to know what is working and not working specifically with regard to enabling or accelerating revenue.
And where are the hold-ups, the conflicts, the issues, the weak-spots? What are the biggest obstacles that you put in your own way? How can you resolve them? This is a perfect opportunity to get support to drive internal change.
Show a plan with specific measures to drive revenue over short time periods.
If business is booming, you can get away with high level measures like quarterly revenue and cost, and leads in the pipeline. If all the numbers are right, the business is fine and you look good.
A colleague of mine recently put it well… “if the business is booming, it doesn’t matter what slides you show”!
But if the numbers are wrong, and business is declining, what you do, measure and communicate needs to be a lot more specific, and more frequent. You need to show yourself as driving the things that are indicators and enablers of revenue on a very tight leash.
If you have a 12 month sales cycle, what has to happen each month in months 1 through 11?
What specific things will you do now to drive business to close 12 months later? You need to be able to see, explain, and measure the leading incicators. Don’t wait 6-9 months and hope things improve.
What can you do to drive each one of them now? And next month?
Be the new guy
If you fail, they will put someone new in. So be the new guy.
Don’t get hung up on being an insider with personal investments and loyalties. Step back and think really clearly.
I use a thinking approach I refer to as the Parallel Universe.
Imagine that there is an exact duplicate of your business and the person in charge instead of you is smarter, faster, better connected, more experienced, and has better hair. What would they do?
What if it just doesn’t work?
What if your business actually is doomed? The Emperor has no clothes.
You need to SHOW yourself as proactively managing costs if the revenue is not coming in. Don’t wait to be asked.
You need to be tracking revenue and costs every day. Don’t just delay hires and minimize travel. Cancel magazine subscriptions and catering. Let people know you are serious.
Be the one to ask the tough basic question:
What do we need to believe must be true for us to continue our investment in this business? And do we believe it?
You need to show yourself as being willing and able to drive a restructuring and cost cutting agenda if that is what is necessary. Don’t get so hung up in your business that you don’t realize it is doomed.
Do everything you can to drive growth, but sometimes the most value you can add to the company is to be the one to raise your hand and re-structure.
Bad business doesn’t = bad job
Don’t check out because it is too hard.
You probably see a lot of leaders who are only used to managing growth and getting bonuses, who now appear hopeless and checked out. Don’t be one of them. Use this time to jump ahead in your career by being the one who digs in and makes a real difference.
Leading in tough times can make your career
Remember, anyone can succeed in a success. It’s not that impressive.
In a growing business in a growing market, it’s really hard to point to what you specifically did to drive success. The business was probably going to succeed with or without you.
In a struggling business it is much easier to stake out ground and do specific things that make a real difference. So then you can say, the market was down 30%, but I implemented [these two specific things] that drove our margins up and stabilized our revenue, so our profits actually grew at 7% while most of our competitors lost significant ground…That is genuinely impressive.
If you show that you can really lead and drive change and eek out growth in a downturn, you will gain real business skills, experience, and resume gold for the future.
You will be able to point to specifically what you did.
You will blow away the competition for your next big job if they have only succeed in growing businesses and have never personally driven real change in a downturn.
