What is slow business?
Slow Business: When a business is “slow,” there isn’t much going on, and sales aren’t growing or staying the same. Every business has to deal with this problem, whether it’s a short-term problem, a long-term trend, or a yearly drop.
During times when business is slow, workers are overworked and don’t meet their performance goals. In business, this means lower employee confidence, less satisfied customers, and a loss of money.
For stores, product sellers, and makers, inventory may be too complete or outdated. When business is slow for SaaS companies, customers leave, renewal rates are low, leads come in less often, and finding new possibilities is hard.
The ability to keep going during slow times is usually seen as a sign of a lasting business.
Synonyms
- Business slow season
- Slow business growth
- Slow sales
What Makes a Business Grow Slowly
Many things can make business slow down. Sales and profits can go down for several reasons, such as changes in technology, economic cycles, market competition, shifting customer tastes and buying habits, and so on.
Sometimes, slow business is caused by changes in the competition or more people entering the market simultaneously. In others, it’s just a matter of the way the economy changes over time.
Line Not Filled
An empty sales channelh a sign of and a cause of slow business. The stream runs dry when a sales team can’t find new leads or close deals. This means you have fewer chances to turn potential customers into paid customers or keep customers you already have.
If business is moving slowly, an empty sales queue could be caused by: • Sales reps who aren’t adequately trained.
- Not enough work (like emails, cold calls, etc.)
- Poor planning when trying to make sales or find new leads
- Marketing efforts that don’t reach the right kinds of people
- An imperfect offering or one that doesn’t fit the market
- Prices that don’t match what people think they’re worth • Wrong contact information
When business is slow, it’s a good idea to find out where and why certain people are leaving the pipeline. For example, leads quitting after the proposal stage could mean a problem with optimizing prices.
Not enough money to work with
About one in three businesses has problems or fails because they don’t have enough working cash. Firms need to make money to pay their bills, hire workers, release new goods and services, and grow their market share.
Not having enough working capital makes it hard for businesses to grow because they can’t buy what they need to keep running and get more customers.
Less traffic to the website
A website that doesn’t get many visitors can hurt a business’s success. 89% of business-to-business buyers look up information about goods online before they buy them. Also, almost four out of five people shop online at least once a month.
Customers who want to buy something or sign up for a service can’t do either if they can’t find the business online. The company won’t be able to make as many sales as one that is visible on search engines and social media, even if they have a strong marketing team.
Changes in Consumer Trends
Usually, what the customers want is a big part of how well a business does. Slow business growth is often caused by changes in how customers act, what they like, and how they like it.
The move from in-store renting to streaming services was a big reason Blockbuster went out of business. They were even allowed to buy Netflix, but they turned it down.
Keep up with the needs of your current customers and the market’s needs as a whole if you don’t want your business to move slowly. Businesses must be able to predict changes in customer behavior and quickly adapt to them.
Bad reputation for the company
A lot of businesses have lost money because of bad PR. For example, Uber’s image was hurt by a series of scandals involving its CEO and other top executives.
- When the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged, Facebook got a lot of bad press and lost $134 billion in worth.
- In 2017, United Airlines lost $1.4 billion after a film showed a customer being dragged off an airplane against their will.
When people have bad feelings about a business, many customers may stop buying from that business. It can also get you bad news and make finding new customers, business partners, or investors hard.
Time of year
There are times when many businesses are usually slow. For example, the holiday season can either help or hurt sales revenue based on the industry.
Online stores should be busy and make money in October, November, and December. During that time, it will be hard for the sales team at a B2B SaaS company to close deals. Many people who could be leads are either busy with other things or tell salespeople, “Call me next year.”
Race to Win
Market competitors can appear in any field, and they do. Some of them cause significant changes in what customers want.
As an example:
- Taxi companies vs. Uber and Lyft; Airbnb vs. big hotel groups
- Netflix vs. cable firms
Most of them are less obvious, like a new company entering the market that makes a product that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) a little better.
A drop in the economy
Whether they’re regional changes or events that shake up the whole world, economic problems change how customers feel, what they want, and how much they spend.
- A massive lack of oil could mess up the supply chain on the other side. • A natural disaster could destroy the economy in a particular area. • A crash in the home market could make people spend less, lowering the demand for goods and services overall.
- When things like this happen, they affect more than just your business. Every business must get used to the fact that the market moves slowly.
How to Grow Your Business During a Slow Season
Small businesses have a hard time when business is slow because they don’t have the cash or economies of scale to keep up with their bigger competitors. The COVID-19 outbreak was a great example of this. More prominent companies could handle the situation (and, in some cases, make more money), but many small businesses had to shut down permanently.
But many great businesses started during a recession, worked on improving their processes, products, and ways of making money, and then rode the wave of growth. One company that started up right before the Great Depression was Disney. These days, Google and Salesforce came out a year before the dot-com bubble burst.
Someone once said, “Anyone can thrive in a good market.” The companies that stand out are the ones that can make things work even when things are slow, or the economy is terrible.
Take advantage of a slow business season in these ways:
Check the way your business works and make things better.
One of the most brilliant things for businesses to do when things are slow is to look at their present systems. There isn’t much time for new ideas or improving processes when business is going quickly.
The sales method is the first thing that B2B vendors should look at.
- Which parts of the system are taking the most time?
- How well do salespeople do on calls?
- Where do buyers usually stop being interested?
- What can you do to make them work better and close faster?
- Are there tasks that need to be done by hand that could be automated or offloaded?
Since slow business usually means that employees are overworked and understaffed, now might be the best time to get more sales training or develop a whole new way to sell.
Use the newest technology.
When business is slow, companies can make their operations more efficient by buying software that automates processes. Look at the tech stack you already have and consider how to improve it to help your business grow.
One type of technology that can help simplify and speed up the sales process is CPQ software. It takes over jobs that used to be done by hand, like quoting, setting up products, and managing contracts. It speeds up the time it takes to close a deal and eliminates many problems that slow down the sales process. This way, sales reps can make the most of their sales contacts.
Some other types of technology to think about are marketing automation, sales support, predictive lead scoring, AI chatbots, social media management tools, and customer data platforms (CDPs).
IIf business is slow, you should look at where the company wastes a lot of time. If employees spend a lot of time on one job, it’s likely that a machine can do it.
Find new ways to make money.
Please take a close look at what you can do to make more money, whether because your product is seasonal or you’re not selling enough to stay in business. You can get more customers or get ready for when things get better in many different ways, depending on how much money you have.
When business is slow, companies with a lot of cash on hand often find it best to put a lot of effort into market studies and product R&D. In the hopes of making a lot of noise when the market picks up; they also use this time to test out new goods and services with a small group of people.
A small business with few resources should use this time to try different ways to get customers or different groups of people. Since there’s not much to lose, now is the best time to change things, especially if the issue is a lack of sales leads or a sales process that isn’t working well.
Make your funnel better.
Funnel optimization is all about focusing on the strategies that have worked best in the past, getting rid of the ones that don’t work, and keeping in touch with leads and possible customers who aren’t ready to buy just yet.
If a business buys new software, improves its sales and marketing plan, and works on making its process lean and effective, it will almost certainly see an increase in the efficiency of its sales funnel. If your salespeople can get more leads with the same amount of work (and keep them interested), you can make the most of a slow business time.
Take care of the people you already have.
Getting a new customer costs a lot more money than keeping an old one. This is why keeping customers is so crucial for a business to stay open. This is especially true when business is slow because fewer people are likely to buy, and current customers are less likely to try new things or spend money on new goods.
Mostly, people will keep getting something they need, even when times are tough. The important thing is always to give a great experience and excellent goods. That way, they’ll always think that the value is higher than the cost of fixing that problem.
How to Get Back to Business After a Slow Period and Make More Sales
When business is slow, it’s essential to make intelligent choices and devise an excellent plan to get back on track. You need to closely examine your business plan and determine which strategies will work best for you and your team.
These simple steps will help you get where you want to go:
Look at what’s happening right now.
You should think about why your business is slow in the first place.
If it’s because of things outside your control, like a bad economy, you can’t do much to change it. While planning for the future, you should think about changing your business model to make it lean and effective.
You can change the outcome when slow business is caused by something inside the company, like a broken sales process, inadequate technology, or marketing efforts that don’t reach the right people. Take the time to figure out where your processes are weak and change them as needed.
Look at your money and the people who buy from you.
Making a business plan will be easier if you know how much money you need. As long as you have a lot of working cash and a steady, recurring income, you can try new things more easily. If you’re worried about spending too much, this is the step where you’ll figure out what to buy first.
Give rewards for loyalty.
Discounts and sales don’t always work. If they’re not done right, they could make your goods less valuable and lower your customers’ hopes for when the market starts to rise again.
Take a look at these general rules of thumb:
- Discounts are a good way for stores and online brands to eliminate extra stock after the selling season.
- Penetration price is an excellent way to get people to buy a new or less well-known product when most people aren’t looking for something new.
- To get a year’s worth of money up front, SaaS companies should give one month free to customers who pay yearly.
- Companies that make and sell goods should lower prices to get more of their stock off the shelves.
- Exclusive deals and programs for loyal customers are great ways to keep them interested.
Make the customer’s experience better.
When there is less desire for a product or use of it, downtime or a lack of supplies has less effect. Take this chance to strengthen your customer service team and promise to give your customers a great experience.
Some ways to make things better for the customer are:
- Spend money on great technology that makes things easier, like billing, shipping, and helping customers.
- Fix or change the business website to make it easier for people to use and more likely to lead to sales.
- Make the product better and try it with small groups of people.
- Look into your rivals and the people who buy from them to figure out how to make your business more appealing in the future.
- Use data analytics tools to see what your customers have to say and fix any problems before they get worse.
- Ensure your customer service reps know a lot about your goods and understand what the customers want.
- Make a way for customers to give you feedback so that you can make sure any problems are fixed quickly and correctly.
Build a new business in silence.
When business is slow, research and development, testing new products, building a social media following, and looking into new business possibilities (like partnerships) are all great things to do. People who run a business and see a downturn as a chance to grow will probably do better when things get better.
Take advantage of this time to look into new ways to attract customers. Try different marketing efforts and make an account on social media, while most businesses are on the defensive and keeping their heads down.
