Running a successful business is challenging, with the journey often taking you through periods of slow or tough times that can result in a high stress environment for yourself and your family.

However, with the correct advice and planning, you can implement measures to help improve the probability that your business will survive tough times.

Protect and grow your revenue

Meet regularly with high value clients to stay in touch with how they are going and to offer your support. By understanding their situation you will be better informed about what you can do to assist them and at the same time protect and potentially grow your business revenue.

Review your costs

A reduction in revenue or profit means you will need to examine your cost structure to maintain your profitability. While it is not always appropriate to simply reduce or cut costs, it is important to continually review your expenses to determine if there are areas that are unusually high, or steps that you can take to improve efficiency.

Your business advisor can also assist in reviewing your operations to determine if items appear high when compared with other business’ or industry benchmarks.

Collect your cash

Slowing debtor days (the time is takes to collect money owing to you) is one of the largest reasons that small & medium business falter. For this reason, it is appropriate to properly review and do the relevant checks prior to offering a line of credit and to follow up amounts owing early.

The easier you make it for your customers to pay, the more likely they are going to.

Minimise your risks

If you can see that things are starting to get tough, it is important that you move quickly to minimise your business risk.

The first step should be to re-examine your business plan or prepare a new one. Review and assess your current situation and plan for the future.

When preparing your business plan, it is a good idea to obtain independent and objective advice.

Seeking advice early will mean the difference between your business thriving or simply surviving.

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