There’s no doubt that small businesses will be hit the hardest from the current COVID-19 pandemic, says Zanthé Agrela, new business manager at Arc Interactive. Agrela gives a 12-point guide for SMEs on how to get through the COVID-19 period.
However, this isn’t all doom and gloom for your SME. There are things you can do now to help weather the storm and prepare for the next few months to come, while still ensuring income and stability.
Here are 12 tips on how to get your SME through this period and to keep your productivity up:
1. Look to authorities
Tap into the resources provided by the government and financial institutions. Social responsibilities and initiatives have been put together and are updated daily to help take care of small and medium businesses during this time.
More than R500-million is available through the Debt Relief fund to help businesses affected by COVID-19. You can read more about this here.
2. Cut down on unnecessary costs
Have a closer look at your payment and billing cycle. This is a good time to cancel all those small payments that aren’t bringing your business any real value.
Perhaps you should even put your office rent or hot desk rent on hold for a month or two, while you work from home and save on travel costs.
Manage and conserve your cashflow by focusing your efforts on getting those signed contracts and ensuring you have measurements in place to help turn online interest into sales.
Also, re-look at your invoice terms and get your finance team on top of debt collecting all your monies due, no matter how small the amount.
3. Use your time wisely
As an entrepreneur, you and your staff are your companies’ biggest assets. If you can’t be operational right now, upskill with online courses, keep up to date with informative content via podcasts and read up. This can be motivational to both you and staff, and / or will improve your skillset and give you the upper edge when life goes back to normal.
4. Improve your website
Have a look at your website. What improvements can you make right now? Chances are, you will be receiving tons of new visitors to your website during this period and you want to put your best foot forward.
Working on website improvements or a complete overhaul during this time (only replacing the site with the improved version once complete) will ensure no downtime and be an efficient use of this period.
5. Invest in digital marketing
Invest heavily into digital marketing (if you can). So many companies are stopping all marketing efforts right now, which means that you can totally blow your competitors out the water with less spend or effort than you might have needed before. – Read more