How Does Your Business Recover from COVID-19

If you read part one on this topic, earlier in this issue, you will have seen, like others, I anticipate difficult times ahead. I should reiterate I don’t see the situation as dire for every flooring business; those that can learn and adapt will survive to take advantage of better times in the future.

If our business is quieter than usual right now, how can we best use our time?

…those that can learn and  adapt will survive to take advantage of better times in the future.

Many have used the lockdown period at home to learn new skills; how to play the guitar or the piano have been popular. What might be the corresponding activities for a business in a period of enforced inactivity?

The list could be endless, but it can be summed up as any activity that is going to put us in the best possible position to respond to opportunities when they start coming our way. If it’s quiet right now, and if the government is paying us to keep our staff on, then we are being paid to work on our business.

Now, more than ever, our staff are receptive to change, so we should take advantage of the opportunity. Forgive me for being frank; if we don’t recognise the need to make changes to accommodate the new reality, our business could be a casualty to COVID-19. As difficult as things might be initially, there will be opportunities, and we want to be around to take advantage of them.

If it’s quiet right now, and if the government is paying us to keep our staff on, then we are being paid to work on our business.

Most businesses have processes that have evolved over many years. We haven’t reviewed them because we haven’t had the time to do it. If we take the opportunity to revise our internal processes now, we have the time to think carefully about what changes need to be made. We can consult with the team, having meaningful meetings (perhaps remotely) to communicate the changes and the reasons for them, and then to document the changes so nobody can say they “didn’t know”.

What about training? If we have experienced some contraction in staff numbers, maybe staff have more roles to fulfil. Now is the opportunity to ensure everyone has the skills to perform any additional duties effectively.

An example might be in the area of sales. In my previous article, I said sales are where we will live or die. Salespeople might have enjoyed the luxury of dedicated measurers and quantifiers, but now we need salespeople to have these skills themselves.  We need them to have these additional skills without compromising service, and without creating errors that will lead to over-quantifying or, perhaps worse, under-quantifying. A good goal for the immediate future is to shorten the time it traditionally takes to measure, quantify, and quote accurately.

If you are not using an electronic quantifying solution, this might be something that you explore as you adapt to the new market conditions.

Electronic quantifying is one of the few things flooring retailers can do that has the potential to shorten the sales process and gain efficiencies.

In the circumstances, it feels opportunistic to recommend that people investigate electronic quantifying as a response to our difficult situation. Measure by RFMS is not the only EQ solution on the market, and EQ, regardless of the provider, is one of the few things flooring retailers can implement that has the potential to shorten the sales process and gain efficiencies.

As a supplier of a suite of EQ solutions, the environment has changed for us. New clients are not going to feel comfortable committing to an annual subscription, they might need the comfort of a free subscription period, and they will need a comprehensive training program to get Measure adopted in their business.

In past weeks we have addressed all three to make the implementation of Measure by RFMS effective as quickly as possible with no upfront cost. Electronic quantifying is a low-cost way to improve your business significantly. If you would like to explore Measure by RFMS, we have a risk-free way for you to do that, and we would love to work with you.

Whether it is by adopting electronic quantifying, or any other means we have to improve our business, we have a window of time to work on our business. We want to ensure we are in the best shape possible to meet the challenges we will face.