For those who have their own business, you might have felt the pinch of the recent economic downturn.

Here is what you can do to stay relevant during this economic turmoil:

- Innovation is key

Almost always, most companies will try to cut cost when they face a decrease in revenue. My advice is Don’t. By cutting cost, you are not nipping the problem at the bud. You should question what the problem behind the declining revenue is. Often times, innovation is the real solution to declining revenue. With better products, there will be more satisfied customers, leading to greater sales revenue.

- Value your workers

Do not cut manpower cost proportionately as it only benefits poor performers and penalize the real contributors.

When the economy recovers, you will not be able to adapt quickly or capture opportunities fast enough as you might have lost some of your efficient workers.

When you apply pay cuts to your workers, you should have higher percentage cuts for senior management rather than lower paid administrative staff. This will reduce cost effectively and maintain fairness.

- Cut cost efficiently

You should identify which features are costly but provide less value to customers and cut cost from there efficiently. For example, if your customers prefer to be served by humans, do not bother to buy expensive robots to serve them.

You should also identify loss making customers and loss making products/services and move on from there.

- Satisfy your customers and find new ones

Customers are always unconsciously looking at appearances, feeling, status and lifestyle to decide whether to buy a product or not.

As a businessman, you should target this emotional need and satisfy them so as to convert them to be your loyal customers.

On the other hand, potential customers are often obstructed by price, distance, ease of use and timing. You have to destroy those obstacles in order to win them over.

- Good business attitudes

As an entrepreneur, you should always be open to new ideas and always seek for a second opinion before deciding on business strategies and so on.

In a small business or partnership, a person’s attitude can make or break the company.

Thus, having the correct business attitude is always beneficial.

These 5 points are important to stay abreast in this gloomy economy. Whatever happens, have faith and you might be surprised that miracles do happen in one way or another.

All the best for your business!