The following is a guest blog from my MGBA colleague Peter Schofield of Four Pillars Consulting

Staying Positive in a Time of Turbulence: What’s the second most important thing you can do to protect your business during the current crisis?

As you will be only too aware your first priority at present is to take all reasonable steps to protect your business and your employees. This will mean different things for every business but will almost certainly include doing what you can to protect your business financially and making sure that your employees are safe.

What to do next can seem challenging, because for many SMEs there will so many issues arising from the current level of disruption that it can be difficult to know where to start.

My suggestion from a marketing perspective is to do everything you can to engage with your customers even more than you usually do. This is because this will help you find out how best to support them and because it is also the best way of ensuring that they will be still there when things eventually start to return to some form of normality. Again, this will mean a different set of actions depending on who your customers are, how many of them there are and what product or service you provide.

I recognise that some of the steps highlighted below might seem straightforward, but in the current environment it can be all to easy to become overwhelmed by the challenges within your business and to forget why the business exists, which is mainly to provide products and services to your customers which they value. Those business which are able to overcome this understandable temptation to look inward and instead are able to maintain a strong focus on their customers will be the ones who emerge strongest in their sector.

So here are my 6 suggested steps for maintaining or increasing your customer focus in these challenging times:

Step 1: Continuity

If you able, continue to provide your usual product and/or service to as many customers as possible. If you are not able to do this make sure that you let them know what the position is on a regular basis – in other words remind them that you care about them and their business.

Step 2: Listen

Find out how your customers (and prospects) are coping and what challenges they are facing and if possible what additional support would help them at the moment. How you do this will obviously depend on how many customers you have and who they are – but whether you use the telephone, video conference, e-mail, social media or even the post, rest assured they will appreciate the steps you take to maintain contact and keep them informed.

If you are not sure what will work best it might be worth thinking about the behaviour of your own suppliers, if you have them. Are there any examples of best (or possibly worst) practice that you can draw on to help you to develop your communications plan. It is also worth remembering that keeping things simple is often the best approach. Picking up the phone once a week to your top 20 customers might have more impact than devising and implementing a sophisticated email campaign.

Step 3: Add More Value

Ideally using the responses from step 2, look to develop new or improved solutions which will add value for your customers or made their lives a little bit easier. They don’t necessarily have to be big things, any help you can provide at present will make a big difference.

You may even find that the simple changes you have been able to make to your product or service to help your existing customers is also attractive to some of your prospects, including those you have trying to reach out to for some time.

A WORD OF CAUTION:

One initiative which will help many customers is some flexibility regarding payments or payment terms. This can be tempting and will no doubt be appreciated but please only agree to this if your company’s financial position is strong enough for you to do so. You do need to remember that your first priority is to protect your own business and your employees so that you can continue to support your customers in the months and years ahead.

Step 4: Communicate, communicate, communicate

Whatever you are able to do for your customers in the current circumstances, and for many businesses it will be a lot less than they would like, it is vitally important that you tell them what you are doing. It is best to do this through a variety of channels as this will increase the likelihood that they will see at least one version of your message. Let’s face many businesses are struggling to read every email or answer every call at the moment, let alone keep up with social media.

Step 5: Consider a Change of Tone

Clearly this will depend on how you normally communicate with your customers and what your tone would normally be so this message is particularly important for businesses which are either strongly sales driven, or perhaps those businesses which are just known for the their professionalism and ruthless efficiency and reliability. In the former case turning down the sales intensity a notch or two is certainly recommended and in the latter shifting the tone towards something with a stronger focus on listening and with a bit more empathy and understanding is likely to pay dividends.

So in summary, If you and your team are able to summon the time and energy to follow these simple but important steps you will doing a great service to your customers as well as protecting the future of your own business. I also hope that in doing so you will feel a sense of positivity and empowerment from looking beyond your own challenges to seeing what you can do to help your customers to overcome theirs.

If you have any questions about this message or have any experiences to share in this area please comment or send me a message. I would also be more than happy to help with any specific marketing challenge which you may be facing.

You can contact Peter by comment in the comment box on LinkedIn or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.