5 Productive Ways to Spend Your Time When Business Slows
Owning a business, trying to hit quotas, or even just managing a sales team can be extremely stressful when the economy takes a turn for the worst. Assuming you don’t live on Mars, the chances are you're feeling the strain of the economy. Fortunately, when business slows, we all get a little more time and that’s a huge opportunity.
The way I see it, there are two ways to look at the current situation:
- Play the victim and let your company, team, and sales numbers deflate along with the economy.
- Tighten up the ship, patch a few holes, get the crew in order, and take advantage of the extra time at hand.
I think you'll agree that the latter is a more effective, not to mention positive, way to handle a downturn in the economy. So let’s cover what you can be doing with this extra time and how to maximize it so when things get back to normal you can hit the ground running.
5 Places to Focus Your Time
1. Focus on high ROI channels
In times of lower close rates, your ROI takes a hit. Assuming you have all of your revenue channels mapped out correctly, you should be aware of the low and high ROI sources.
It’s expected that the ROI will drop across the board, so start by guesstimating. Shifting your team’s focus away from lower-performing channels and keeping a close eye on all others is a great way to start.
If you don’t have a good grasp on your revenue channels, take a look here. We map out the 4 channels we stick to for generating new business. Since LeadLoft is relatively new, every channel we currently focus on is a high ROI channel.
2. Prospect Ideal Customers
It takes time to find a company that matches your ideal customer demographic. But fortunately, time is what you have! Prospecting can be exhausting if you spend all day doing it, so we recommend blocking off a part of your day dedicated solely to prospecting. Here at LeadLoft, we start every morning prospecting leads for cold email campaigns and trust me, the ROI is well worth 30 minutes of my time every morning.
3. Establishing Partnerships & Networking
It's not just you who has free time, many other companies are feeling the same way and this leaves open a huge opportunity. Companies that are generally overwhelmed with business may have new openings in their calendar.
This means you finally have time to develop strategic partnerships that will help slingshot your startup once the economy gets out of its rut.
4. Blogging
Writing articles to establish a brand is a common inbound marketing tactic. You can navigate to practically any website and you’ll find a blog linked in the navigation bar. This is because they’ve been made aware of the tremendous value a blog can have.
Blogs take particularly long to see a return. In general, blogs take 3 to 6 months to rank properly and might generate traffic over the course of years. The delay in results makes blogging a particularly valuable effort during times of slow business.
I recommend checking out ahrefs’ tutorial article if you want to learn how to write a blog that ranks on Google.
5. Social Posting
Whether you’re a BDR, director, or founder, developing your personal brand is worth 15 minutes of focus.
With time you’ll start developing a small following, maintain top of mind with your customers, and even establish yourself as an authority in your niche.
If you’re wondering how to get started, Kelly O’Bryan from Ellevate wrote a great article on how to get started with social posting on LinkedIn.
