The year 2020 did not start on a very good note. Therefore COVID-19 pandemic has weakened our economy very badly but most small businesses. As per the research of National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in the earlier period of crisis, 92% of small scale businesses were badly affected by the pandemic and only 5% of small business says that they are not affected by the pandemic at all. Once the economy starts to get back on its track you will need an exit plan after COVID-19 that will help you to restart and rebuild small business.
Assess the Financial Damage
First step to rebuild small business, you must determine how badly your business has been affected by the pandemic. Next, upgrade your financial statements such as profit and loss statement or cash flow statements which will help you to influence determine your previous records. Then compare your records with the last year’s cash flow and see how much you have fallen. Also consider other ways aside from sales, profits, and cash flow.
Take a second look at your business plan
Before COVID-19 your business must be running properly but post COVID-19 you will need a strategy to bring it back to track. It may happen that you have already made a plan but you must re-check and must discuss it with a strategic planner for proper guidance and resources. You must analyze your overall industry loss your business has suffered due to the coronavirus. Also, pay attention to the trends and try to produce new and attractive trends. Last make sure the strength and weaknesses of your business while making the plan revisit your business goals and make sure you do better for your competitors.
Consider Whether You will Need Funding to Recover
When it comes to financing the rebuilding of your small business during COVID-19 there are several options such as SBA for business loans, paycheck protection program to provide funding to small businesses during the COVID 19 pandemic, or the economic injury disaster loans for short term financing other than employ retention. Each option has its flaws such as these are for a short period and you may be able to take its benefits, you may give something to leverage such as outstanding invoices or credit card sale and if the sales are nonexistent or slow you might be disapproved. Alternative financing options can have higher effective annual percentage rates compare to other loans. Borrowing can also be competitive as your lenders must want some reassurances that you can repay the money.
Revamp your Budget to Account for New Spending
In the post-pandemic period, you may have to spent a lot of money in rebuilding your business such as hiring new employs, pay the salary of old employs that was left pending, by new machinery, revise your advertising budget for a fresh start, etc. so you should have a proper plan in which you only spend money on very important requirements and cut off what you do not require at present. Your goal must be to reduce unnecessary investment as much as possible. So that when you get a chance to invest money for the real growth of your business you do not miss the opportunity. The best step that you can take to reduce the money spent is by taking a paper or skipping out the paychecks in the near term that will help your business to get back on its track faster. It is very important to understand budgeting to rebuild small business.
Develop a Timeline for Rebuilding
You may have a lot of plans to do to recover following COVID-19 but doing all the things at once maybe not possible so you must design a timeline to prioritize your needs. First focus on the funding of your business then slowly-slowly take individual steps and keeps recording your progress. In the early stage of COVID-19 recovery, you must check your progress weekly and then later monthly.
Create a Contingency Plan for any crisis
COVID-19 pandemic may seem like a once in a lifetime event but it may happen that in future we may face another disaster like this. So we should take a lesson from this current pandemic and prepare ourselves for the next one in the future. The first step you should take is to secure some liquid cash savings kept aside, trimming non-essential spending to keep your budget in check and increase the efficiency of your workers to avoid spending money on machinery. Next, you can also have a plan B, C, D, and so on for the worst-case scenario that will increase the survival skills of your business during a tough time.
Take your Business Online
Having an online website is very important for your business nowadays. Especially in the post-COVID-19 period when people want to stay at home away from the dangerous virus a website will bring you a lot of online consumers. You just need to keep in mind that
● you obtain a good domain name
● make it easy to spell
● keep it as short as possible
● use the proper domain extension
● avoid numbers and hyphens
● make the address broad to facilitate future growth
● ensure that the name is memorable
● create an SEO-friendly URL
● display a clear description of your website
● choose a good e-commerce platform and regularly publish quality content
● optimize your small business website for search engines
● install webmaster tools
● introduce a maintenance plan
Click here to get a professional website for your business.
Use Social Media and Amplify your Brands Presence
This provides you a platform to share your content and with free and paid tools you can manage your social media presence and also enhance your content. People from different places will able to reach you and take benefit from your services. You just need to take care of some points: –
● populate your profile
● post quality content regularly
● train your employees
● respond in a formal manner and on time
Tapping the online business potential is the need of the decade to rebuild small business! Making a business website, and using social media to reach target customers is the key, as people are looking online for all of their requirements because of nationwide lockdown.