The Positive ‘R’ Words

The current and unavoidable recession that is impacting the United States, slowly affecting Canada and Mexico and spreading its wings toward the farthest corners of the world, is nothing to be either afraid of or surprised by.

It is just one of those cycles that appears every decade or so. Some will land soft, some will land hard, yet still there are some very positive things in that “R” word.

Previous recessions have clearly taught us some very valuable lessons, and this time around, applying the right game plan may offer you a winning streak. This is how.

Recharge Innovation

What better time is there to innovate than when things are slow and quiet?

Normally in boom days, corporations and their senior teams get so convinced of success that they forget all about real innovation.

The best ideas of innovation come during depressive, recessionary cycles. What better times to re-engineer, redesign and rethink your business processes, overall strategies and — most importantly — the prime business model itself?

Many successful corporations are badly behind in innovations already, and often too complacent with existing technology, only to be jolted when attacked overnight by a new innovative wave. Simply put, start innovating today.

Realign Marketing

Then, while everyone is in shock about how all this happened, the customers and clients both scratch their heads — and that’s possibly the best time to nurture innovative marketing to determine the sharpest and fastest means to get the new marketing message across.

Fill the vacuum with new ideas and new efforts. Ask that innovative team you just organized to help you.

Reposition Image

When customers want new solutions, they are looking for the best image and a powerful identity. Today, it’s all about professionally branded identities and corporate image. No other issue is as important as this one.

Not to be confused with logos and mass advertising, promotional strategies tend to diminish during a recession. While the old branded guards dwindle, this also can present opportunities for newcomers to emerge in their place.

Hold the logo promotion; fix the brand identity and its image fast while pushing hard as a new warrior on the block.

Rename Brands

When recession is at that boiling point, where old things get flushed out, old name brands die, and any association with the old identity reminds the customers of failure, seize the chance.

Discover the fine art of global scale name branding, and only accept the world-class and Five Star Standard name brands, anything less will simply hurt your sales.

This time allows your team to walk away quietly from lingering and damaged name brands. This renaming process can be very rewarding if played under a master strategy, resulting in a hassle-free global name identity.

Find the best professional answer to achieve hyper-visibility and proper image positioning to avoid ending up in the eye of the storm.

Retrain Staff

When your people are exhausted, fatigued and disenchanted, train them. After all, at the end of the day, a business is all about people and when the recessionary cycles hit, they hurt everyone.

The human resource should always be protected, and what is left of it must be properly nurtured and retained so that it is ready for the new boom time, all set to burst through the gates with brand new winning strategies.

No matter how difficult and how long the process, the fact is, smart businesses must embrace this as a moment to re-evaluate and rebuild. This way, this bad cycle will not only become a passable transition but also you will discover the great charm in the “R” words.