IN THE SHADOW OF THE WAVE - WILLIAM EASTMAN

PROFIT RADIO..."Grow With Us"

Introduction
Today I am wearing only the E hat - Executive. I started providing economic advice to large corporations  many decades ago consulting to the C Suite. As much as it was of value with them, since I started working with business owners it has become an obvious imperative. You and I do not control the business cycle and poor government policy, we can only respond to it. Our series on 'Riding The Wave' provides to the entrepreneur a method of responding to events of our control.

Look at IBGR as your CGO - your fractional Chief Growth Officer. In that mode we have built a platform that will move beyond the one-way conversation of radio and podcasts to real relationships; our Community of Commerce.

A thought before we start, I want to invite you to my new group on the Community - Living the Life . If you are a serial entrepreneur and looking to discuss how to build a business that runs itself so you can start running multiple businesses - this is the right spot.
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Objectives - The WHY
Here is the situation confronting you as the owner. The economy has bottomed out. You and your business managed to survive a natural or man made recession (pandemic) and are still here. 

Your estimation of the economy is it will not get any worse, in fact you are beginning to see an expansion on the horizon - a view not shared by many. Lets take stock of what happened to understand the upcoming opportunities. 

The pandemic, which was a government intervention in the market, shut down the demand for your products & services through isolation mandates. When people could no longer buy your products and services your revenue disappeared and the value of your inventory (things and time) lost most of its value.

This means we are in a period of imbalance between supply and demand - there is more supply than demand which drives the price down to the point where the worth of your business has been seriously devalued.

Your signal the situation is starting to recover is an increase in demand.

Key Issues - Owner Perspective:

1. How do I know when we bottom out - can go no lower?
2. How will I know when the situation is about to improve - what are the signals?
3. How much risk can I afford to take?
4. What are the right moves now?

What You Need to Know - The WHAT
At The Bottom – True Value > Market Price
Given the impact of the pandemic I choose to start this model at the bottom – a situation where Supply Exceeds Demand Suppressing Inventories and Price.

This location is the absolute market bottom where demand has reached its lowest point. Since the market uses price for information, the demand for most of products and services makes reasonable prices unsustainable. 

• Step 1 New Opportunities. The market downturn has cleaned out poorly run businesses and their excess inventories – including yours and your customers. It is time to begin aggressively marketing to your existing customers and similar accounts. You might have to continue price concessions, but selling solely on price is about to end.

What You Need to Do​​ - The HOW
YOUR MOVE -  Anticipate Demand and Expand into Current Markets with Current Offer. 
​Existing Customers

1. Share of Wallet with the current mix of products and services?
2. Can we increase share of wallet with our current offer?
3. Do we have to upgrade our current offer (product & service improvements) to increase share of wallet?
4. Do we have to introduce new products and services to increase share of wallet?

New Customers (within Existing Markets)

1. What new customers (like our best customers) should we pursue with our current offer?
2. What new customers should we pursue with an upgraded offer?
3. ​What new customers should we pursue with a new offer?

The purpose of this show was to present a method of understanding what is happening in the economy and series of steps to ensure survival over the next 9 weeks. We are your single, one stop source for business success, period, end of story.

1. ​Listen to this Econ Series on Riding The Wave
2. JOIN the Community of Commerce
3. Show Up Next week

Make sure you leave some thoughts in the comment section below. I am interested in continuing the conversation.

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