Building Your Business in the Recession by Zigging Not Zagging!

Since the economic downturn, or, recession turned our lives upside down we've heard a lot of talk about "working smarter" and "tightening your belt". Let's take a look at these two misleading pieces of advice:

Work Smarter. We should always be working smarter, finding new and better ways to do business. Just because we are in a "time of global economic uncertainty" shouldn't be our wake-up call to start being smart!

Tighten Your Belt. Firstly, we should always seek ways to keep our costs down. Secondly, your very survival as a company may depend on spending more.

These two pieces of advice should be heeded regardless of the kind of economy we're operating in. We've faced a fundamental change in the last year which has demanded the need to go beyond working smarter and tightening our belt. We need to look for the opportunity, become ziggers not zaggers, become possibility thinkers!

If you cut back on your advertising and promotional activities when the recession struck, how long will it take you to gain back the awareness and "eyeball share" that you previously enjoyed? What will it cost you? Can you achieve it?

When you put the brakes on did your competitors hit the gas pedal? Will you be able to play catch up, or overtake them? It's not too late for you to become a zigger, a possibility thinker, zig don't zag and turn the table on your competition.

Did you shift the positioning of your product or service, add value, and adopt other target markets? Were you innovative in terms of "repackaging" what you sell? Or did you start discounting?

If you started discounting to make sales then you're in as much trouble as most major retailers and others right now - except they've maybe got deeper pockets than you have.

Do you really think that effective the announcement by a politician, banker or news anchor that "the recession is officially over" that everything is going to go back to the way it was? Are your customers going to say "It's OK now to put your prices back up to where they were".

It's going to be a long haul before you get to that point - if at all. It's not too late for you to become a zigger, a possibility thinker, zig don't zag and get out of the discounting business and get into the business of innovation.

Did you take the time and make the effort to really understand what it was you customers wanted and needed?

Did you get into the minds of your target market and make sure that your marketing proposition, products or services were in alignment with their wants and needs?

Yesterdays thinking is about as effective as creating the ultimate horse and carriage just as the automobile hit the streets. Every customer and client was going through a mindshift - did you shift with them?

If you didn't then you weren't giving them a reason to buy from you. It's not too late for you to become a zigger, a possibility thinker, zig don't zag and find out what your customers really want and respond to those needs.

Tradition has it that it's not over till the fat lady sings? Well the big news is that the fat lady has fallen upon lean times over the past year, so there is no fat lady any more and if there was then she would certainly have nothing to sing about and therefore if there is no fat lady and nothing to sing about then it's got to be over. Or not.

Either way, embrace zigging and forget about zagging and when the fat lady puts that weight back on you'll be singing a different song from your competition.