Lot of Government has announced a raft of measures to aid businesses through the recession, including the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, ‘business health checks’ offered by Business Link and a variety of schemes to help with staff training. Whilst the Government is offering “real help for businesses now” in reality it’s taking time to feed through to individual businesses, as the banks are still deciding upon the best ways to use the funds made available to them.

Not all businesses have their own proffessional highly skilled  mangers to provide strategic financial support and guide them through the recession, but that doesn’t mean that sound financial guidance is impossible to find. As a business owner, there are many local initiatives available right now to help you through these tough times, along with business advisors that are dedicated to helping businesses like yours to thrive. There are even professional firms available,  which provide dedicated part-time finance management to businesses that do not employ a high-calibre managers full-time.

Starting a business during a recession

Whilst it may seem far too risky to start a business during a recession, anecdotal evidence suggests the contrary. If a business is able to weather an economic storm such as this one, it will be in great shape for the expected upturn. It also means that the business has a model that is likely to be less dependent on high risk lending strategies, and a product or service that is genuinely in demand. It can take time for a new business to find its feet, and having a chance to do that before the market picks up again may well benefit the business in the long term.

Whilst there is a lot of doom and gloom in the media, there are two major differences between this and the last major recession. One is that it is easier to start a business than ever before, and secondly, there has never been such a spirit of entrepreneurialism in our economy as there is now. The internet has opened up access to global markets for smaller businesses, as well as multinational corporations, so everybody has the opportunity to trade on a different scale than before.

Help for new and established businesses

Chambers of Commerce

Many local Chambers of Commerce are pulling the stops out to help businesses to not only survive, but thrive during the recession.  Some  are offering discounted training for members, whilst some are actually going the extra mile.

Some  provides a fully equipped office area with reception and secretarial support, along with access to business services and advice. They  gives the opportunity for new business owners to share ideas and get peer support from other local entrepreneurs.

Business Link

Another place to look for help is the local Business Link branch. Again, there is a huge amount of support for new businesses, but for those that are already established there is a free Business Health Check that begins with an interactive tool on the business link website. Business Link is an excellent resource for practical advice, and also networking opportunities.

Business advisors

Apat from the resources outlined above, there are many skilled business advisors out there who run courses and seminars designed to help businesses succeed.

They organise series of simple steps and tips which businesses can follow to improve business and financial performance. The programme can be carried out by companies using their own internal resources although there are major benefits in getting a fresh view from an outsider such as a non executive director or a flexible finance director.

The worst course of action is inaction

When times are tough it can be tempting to hide away, or just stick to old ways of doing business that once worked well. Businesses have to be creative and flexible in recession, otherwise they cannot adapt to the change in demand. The help is out there, if you want it, the businesses that thrive in this recession are going be the ones who seek advice and are then prepared to implement it.

We all know that when you’re bursting with confidence and enthusiasm you  have a far greater chance of making the sale.

It’s all about attitude. If you’re in the wrong frame of mind when you start talking to your potential customer then you will likely find it dificult to make any sale. After all, if you don’t sound passionate about your product or service then why on earth should your customer bother to give you an order?

Therefore it is absolutely crucial to give off the right vibes, and it is vital that you make the best impression and present yourself as a person with whom the customer will wants to do business with.

If you appear to have a negative attitude or be in a bad mood, then I am convinced that this can actually be quite scary for your customer. Their reaction to you will be poor, and your chances of making a sale are zero.

You should take the instinct further and develop a conscious mood meter to judge exactly how you feel before you meet a customer. You need to ask yourself how you feel on a scale of one to 10. If you can’t be bothered getting out of bed, then you’re scoring low at 1, and if you feel that nothing can stop you, then you’ve reached the zenith zone of 10.

So ideally you need to get to a 10 frame of mind every time you go out to make a sale? Well, surprisingly no. This is not the best place to be as you could come across as hyperactive, edgy or just downright annoying.

I actually believe that 8.5 to 9 are the perfect mood scores for successful sales people, and it is this level you need to achieve for maximum clinch-the-deal effectiveness.

If you judge yourself as being a 5-8.5 then don’t go out to sell unless you can boost yourself higher. If you’re rating lower than 4 then you have a serious problem and need to work much harder at getting to the right level.

So what do you do when it’s 9am on a Monday morning, you’ve had a row with your partner, your head aches and it’s raining? You’ve got a meeting booked for 10am with a potential client 20 minutes drive away, and you really can’t be bothered. You would far rather cancel the meeting, stay in your nice dry office with a cup of coffee and read the paper.

It may be tempting to give into this feeling, but of course it really isn’t the solution. You will feel a million times better if you can overcome your mood, perform well and win a new order.

You may be surprised to know that the average person has around 200 mood swings every day. It’s just not that difficult to switch from mood to mood, and we can all shift from joy to fear to depression within seconds. But it’s no good waiting for your mood to shift; it’s up to you to put in some control mechanisms to get yourself into the right frame of mind.

There’s one very simple way of increasing your positive feelings, and that is to smile. Look in a mirror, put a huge grin on your face and watch the difference. Go a step further, and start smiling at people - you’ll see that just about everyone starts smiling back. It’s contagious, happiness really does spread.

Next you need to actively conjure up images in your mind about what makes you feel happy, positive and content. It might be thinking about your children or pet, or perhaps remembering a time when you were relaxing on a warm beach with waves lapping gently in the background. Try to remember a time when you were perfectly happy and think about how you felt at that moment. Just doing this can change your mood at that moment for better.

There is another very easy way to lift a mood, and that is to listen to favourite upbeat music. Get lost into it for a few minutes, tap your toes and maybe even sing along. I guarantee you’ll feel better.

Changing mood is really all about being able to adopt the right attitude. We all have bad sales calls from time to time, and find ourselves up against difficult, awkward and unresponsive customers. If this happens to you, don’t dwell on it and sink into despondency. Instead just forget about it, move on and start all over again.

However gloomy the situation you are in appears to be, make a conscious decision to look for the positive side. For instance, you might be stuck on the M25 for two hours on your way to see a customer. Change your headset from frustration and annoyance, and instead tell yourself how lucky you are to be able to spend two solid hours on your own listening to your favourite music turned up loud.

I would also recommend that you stay clear of negative colleagues. We all know that sales people within a team tend to talk each other down. They might do this by moaning about the price of a new product or complaining about how their boss has treated them unfairly. Once these sort of conversations start they spiral into further negativity until everyone feels downright depressed. Successful people get detached from those groups and away from anyone who has the ability to make them feel negative or downhearted.

Also a simple but amazingly effective method to make your frame of mind more positive. You can have a photo album that captures moments in time that you have enjoyed.  keep mementos of all your best times which might be like a theatre ticket, photo of you looking terror struck on a theme park ride, a programme from a match your team won or a particularly nice letter of thanks from a customer. On the last Sunday of the month you can look through the collection and decide what to put into your special mood-enhancing album. If you are having a tough time all you will  need to do is start looking through the album, relive those good moments and you will instantly be at a better mood.  This is brilliant idea you can always put into practice.

It really is very easy to harness the powers within yourself to change your mood. In turn this improves your attitude and reaps huge benefits in terms of your personal success at selling. It works, so try it!

An important attribute of every successful business is that of cash flow management. Cash is the oxygen, or the life giving blood of every business. Without it, a business cannot survive. Unfortunately, a lot of network marketers don’t make money simply because they don’t understand the concept of cash flow management.

Let’s look at a very bad example of cash flow management. General Motors. General Motors has been very poorly managed for quite some time. Right now, as I write this, it is on the verge of bankruptcy, despite receiving about $20 billion in Federal assistance. Without going into too much detail, GM’s problems stem from its complacency and the continued payment of wages and benefits to people who are no longer employed.

This auto giant has been basking too long in its past successes, it has failed to embrace and adapt to change and failed to give buyers the cars they want. GM’s cars are simply not good enough. As a result, in the recent years, it has been literally hemorrhaging money. In November 2007, GM reported the second largest quarterly loss in US history of $39 billion, or roughly $427 million a day. When you’re losing money that fast, you are going out of business!

I’ve learned from reading Robert Kiyosaki’s books that when he purchases investments or businesses, he must make money from those investments from day one. In other words, he invests for cash flow, by his own definition of an asset and a liability. That is, assets feeds you (gives you money, whether you like it or not) and liabilities eat you (takes your money, whether you like it or not).

This has to be same philosophy that network marketers apply to their businesses. To get into profit as soon as possible. Afterall, you’re trying to build a cash flow asset that feeds you right?

As an entrepreneur you must evaluate every activity your are doing, the money you are spending and what returns they are producing on your business. This is called understanding your business metrics.

Let’s say you’re a traditional network marketer, building your business like most other network marketers. You’re on the monthly autoship program for your company’s products, which is costing you money. You’re on the monthly educational program, which includes motivational CDs and books. That’s costing you money. You diligently go to meetings every week, which cost you money. And you attend a major function every month, which costs you money.

Now let’s say that you’ve secured a one-on-one appointment with a prospect to show him your business plan. Now this prospect, like most MLM prospects is just a business opportunity seeker. In other words, he’s just kickin’ tyres. He’s not a serious entrepreneur.

So you meeting him for an appointment. You whip out your trusty MLM prospecting system, your business support materials which might include CDs, books and a DVD of people taking nice holidays. These materials have of course, cost you money. But nonetheless, they’ve worked. After reviewing the material, your prospect is excited and joins up.

In the first few weeks, he tries some of the products and likes them. He shares the business opportunity with his friends, using the same MLM prospecting system you did. None of them want to join him. Like the typical business opportunity seeker, when he gets no results for the first several months, he quits.

Now, think about the return on investment you’ve gotten from this prospect. Obviously you’ve lost money. What’s worse than that, think about all the time and energy you’ve spent recruiting this prospect. Time that you’ll never get back.

This is why it is so important show your business to the right people. Prospects who you have qualified. People who seriously want to make a change for a better life.

Now, I’m not saying that autoship, your monthly educational program, meetings, business support materials and the like are not important. They are. But you must objectively stand back and evaluate your returns on your expenditure.

Here’s where network marketers should take a leaf from the books of direct response marketing. Successful direct response marketers first find the right market for whatever they have to sell. That’s a big hint. Then track the costs of every bit of advertising they do and then evaluate how much they’ve spent on advertising per customer acquired.

They have also learned to evaluate the lifetime value of a customer. That is, the return on their advertising investment of each customer. They are always testing in order to try to reduce the cost to acquire a customer.

I’m not saying that you have to go to the nth degree in evaluating your costs, but doing some objective analysis into the costs of running your business can really provide you with some insights into the long-term profitability of your efforts.