HOW TO REVIVE ANY DYING BUSINESS (2)

This article was originally titled “7 Turnaround Strategies to Revive a Dying Business” by Tito Philips Jnr. 

Read along, benefit and contribute via the comment section.

Having started analysizing Strategy 1, 2 and 3 of the strategies to revive any dying business in the previous article, read the others and get to work with them. 
Remember :

Strategy 1:          Re-Evaluate: situation

Strategy 2:          Re-Define: strategy

Strategy 3:          Re-Employ: people

Strategy 4:          Re-Innovate: product

Lack of innovation is one of the warning signs of a dying business. It is impossible for a business to remain relevant in the market if it fails to introduce new products/services. People change, market change, technology change and so must your business. If you refuse to change, by constantly innovating your products/services, you are doomed. To bring your dying business back to life, do something new!

Strategy 5:          Re-Brand: marketing

One of the consequences of a dying business is the negative impact it has on the brand. Your customers begin to lose trust in the brand as their satisfaction level declines. Negative word of mouth marketing starts to spread and the brand is no longer known, liked or trusted in the market. To correct this negative association with the brand, you have to kill the old brand and create a new one!

This doesn’t necessarily require a total change in the brand name; only do this as a last resort. What rebranding means is to give your business a new meaning, a face-lift and a new brand identity. This is why in almost every turnaround situation; the company comes up with new marketing campaigns, new logos, new brand colors, and new slogans to let the market know that things are not the same as before.

Strategy 6:          Re-Finance: money

As much as I would like to tell you that you don’t need money to resurrect your dying business, we both know that would only be a lie. One of the most obvious signs of a dying business is lack of money. You are almost out of business because you are running out of cash. So to get your business back to life, you need to pay close attention to finance.

The easiest option would be to seek external funding, but this can be a very daunting task especially if the money in question is much. So what do you do? Start sourcing for funds from within the business by doing the following;

• Take from your personal savings.

• Sell off some of your fixed assets to raise immediate cash.

• Cut costs by reducing your operational expenses. Look for every unnecessary expenses and cut them off. Lay off every redundant staff. Stop every extra incentive or benefits for a while.

• Don’t try to solve all your financial needs at once; it will only further put you in more financial mess. Break down your business financial needs into sizeable chunks tied to specific needs and begin to fill them with the excess funds gathered.

• Seek for strategic alliance from your partners like your suppliers, they can offer you trade credits.

Only after you have exhausted these internal funding options should you seek external sources like; borrowing from family and friends, angel investors, bank loans, factoring, hire purchase, equipment leasing etc.

Strategy 7:           Re-Work: execution

After all is said and done, there is no way to bring your dying business back to life by mere words; you need to do the work. And not just as you have always done before, you need to re-work the way you used to work. You’ve probably been engaged in random work rather than focusing on performance-driven work or goal-oriented work.

It is one thing to work and it is another to align your work with the strategic goals of the organization. Only by doing so can the business be saved from dying. Every work must be broken down into processes, must have a owner and must have a goal or key indicators to track performance.

Over to you

What new thing or things did you learn from reading this unusual article? Have your business ever experienced a near death situation and how did you recover from it? Was it in the same fashion as these strategies? Please, share with all let us learn from you. Leave your extra strategies in the comment section. Thanks.

Also read: Profit and Loss Analysis, The Lagos Molue Lessons, Business Productivity, Opportunities in Difficulty and Thinking Outside the Box

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