According to The Financial Times, most economists believe that an economic recession is on the way. The signs of an impending recession are everywhere. Rising inflation rates increase the probability of a recession as seen in economic forecasts. With inflation also comes layoffs, fewer jobs and jacked-up interest rates. According to a Bloomberg survey, the median probability of a recession in the next 12 months is 47.5%. Another sign of a looming recession is the decrease in spending from consumers. Wells Fargo predicts there will be declines in consumer spending in September 2022 and onwards, as costs of goods and services continue to increase. Having fewer consumers purchasing from your website can reduce your net profits and can be devastating for some businesses. In this blog post, we will discuss 5 strategies to prepare your business for a recession, and how our free CRM, Moment, can help you.

1. Improve Customer Relationships

The first way to make your business recession-proof is to improve your customer service, customer relationships and customer experience. Having personal and professional customer relationships with your customers and clients ensures they will stay with your business, even during difficult financial times. CRM software is a must-have for any business that takes customer relationships seriously. Moment is a free CRM that comes with live chat and session recording which is great for improving customer service. Having a live chat allows you to quickly respond to customer questions, and even potential customer enquiries. Having a live support assistant or salesperson responding to prospective customers is important before or during a recession.

People are more careful with their purchases and will require answers to their questions before making a purchase. Session recording allows you to see how your visitors and customers are interacting with your website. By finding and fixing design or backend issues on your website, you can improve the overall customer experience on your website. This makes your website easier to use and navigate, which is always important regardless of an economic downturn.

2. Deliver More Value

It’s always important to deliver value to your customers, even when the economy is prospering. Delivering more value than your competitors ensures you will retain customers and reduce churn, and also convert more website traffic into paying customers. Providing too many discounts can be seen as an act of desperation, and can lower your perceived brand value. The better option is to deliver more than promised. This can be an extra sample or product, an add-on service at no extra cost, or even additional support.

Although it might sound counterintuitive to spend more on a customer and reduce your profit margin, it’s important to deliver as much value as possible, especially when nearing a recession. The key to becoming recession-proof is keeping as many customers as possible and converting more leads, which can be done by over-delivering on value.

3. Use Automation

It’s no secret that companies are shifting towards the use of artificial intelligence and automation. There are many tasks you can take off the plate of your current employees, allowing them to focus more on more important tasks, such as sales, marketing and customer support. Some examples of these tasks include appointment scheduling, follow-ups, custom proposals, lead nurturing and much more. Obtaining leads can be automated using a free web scraper, such as ParseHub. Using a web scraper you will have up-to-date leads and their information, without needing to manually find them and reach out, on LinkedIn for example.

Automation can be done via Moment’s email marketing, which can nurture your leads and progress them through your sales funnel, and even improve your customer retention. Automating tasks is an awesome way to make your business recession-proof, however, make sure not to make your business too unnatural. In an economic downturn, it’s important to provide human customer service and follow-ups, unlike websites that rely on chatbots alone.

4. Add New Sales Strategies

Having new and creative sales strategies and ideas is crucial, especially when nearing a recession. If your current business model is not giving you the results you need, or your sales are dipping as inflation rises, it may be time to change your sales approach. Perhaps you could reach out to more website visitors using Moment’s live chat, or send out additional offers to your email subscribers, using Moment’s email marketing. Whichever method you choose, it’s important to A/B test different strategies to see what works and what increases profitability.

Another sales strategy is to use email marketing and reach out to current customers to offer additional products or services. This ties into our earlier point of providing more value, the more value you can provide to your current customer, the better your bottom line will be in a shifting economy.

5. Spend More on Marketing

Once again, you might think it’s crazy to spend more during a recession, but it’s a great advantage you can have over your competitors. All the money you save by reducing costs and automating your tasks should be invested back into your marketing. Doubling down on marketing allows for a stronger flow of prospects and leads to your business. Since conversion rates may be lower during a recession, it’s vital to get more traffic to your business to hit sales targets.

Using a free CRM such as Moment is a great way to save money, especially since CRM software can cost your business a lot of money. Using Moment’s live chat and other tools is a great way of nurturing customer relationships and increasing conversion rates, which maintains if not increases your profits. These savings and profits should go back into your business, making your business more recession-proof.

Concluding Thoughts

In the end, the most important way to prepare your business for a recession is to take the time to optimize your business. As discussed earlier, you must improve and maintain customer relationships, which can be streamlined using Moment, our free CRM. You should deliver more value to your customers, during a time when many businesses reduce their quality or offerings. Another method is to use automation without losing the human touch of your business. Finally, doubling down on your sales and marketing while most businesses are trying to save and keep profits is a great way to become recession-proof and surpass your competitors.

We hope you enjoyed this blog post, sign up to Moment today and enjoy the free live chat, session recording, user timelines, email marketing and so much more!

Happy Chatting! 💬