Hurry Up and Wait:
Four Rules for the Next Six Months
With a monumental
election looming, businesses need to get prepared for whatever's next. Now is
no time to take big risks.
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
MAY 14, 2024
We all know that entrepreneurs just can't wait. Patience is
not generally regarded as a virtue in the new business building business.
Anything is better than doing nothing. A bias for action doesn’t begin to
describe the desire to keep moving -- hopefully forward -- and any motion
sometimes fills the bill, action which effectively overcomes anxiety, especially after
long periods of inactivity and stasis. It’s
an occupational disease (we used to joke: let our sickness work for you) which
frankly has always been a mixed blessing because, if most of the people setting
out on the journey to create and grow something entirely new knew just how long
and hard the process was going to be, they’d never take the ride. As Nelson
Mandela said, it always seems impossible until it’s done.
Unfortunately, the next few months-- until the
upcoming election is hopefully resolved and the Orange Monster is sent packing,
ideally to jail-- are going to be perilous and fraught with risk. That’s
especially true for startups and younger businesses, because in addition to
aggressive and constant change, we’ll be facing new levels of government and
judicial involvement, regulation and interference. Not to mention all the
vagaries of an election. The smartest and most prudent strategy under the
circumstances may well be to batten down the hatches rather than trying to
charge out of the gates and get over the next hill before the competition does.
Hunker down like a rabbit in a storm and wait it out. If you have to grow, go
slow. Those who can’t wait, never win.
And, aside from a lot of painful patience and anxious
nail-biting, what is really going to be required is a plan for what to do with
your team while you’re treading water so that you’re ready to move when the
time is right, and they’re all prepared to move with you. It’s always a good
idea to have a Plan B while you’re waiting to be wonderful.
Here are four critical areas that you can profitably spend
your time working with your team to polish and perfect over the next
six months.
(1) Deepen your connections with your
current customers, clients, and vendors.
Check in to see how their businesses are doing, pay them a visit and don’t ask for an order or anything else, make
sure their supplies and materials are current and that their inventory is
accurate or do some overdue maintenance for their ERP systems so they’re
up-to-date. There rarely seems to be enough time in the regular day-to-day
crunch to touch base and take care of the little things that will matter in a
pinch. This is the kind of extra effort and the gestures that will be
appreciated and remembered the next time a renewal, reorder, price increase, or
new order is on the line.
(2) Train and retrain your newest employees and
pair them with an older buddy for real-time support.
Every owner and manager thinks that all this kind of stuff
- training, testing, teaching - is getting done on a regular basis, but it’s
another of those areas where there’s never enough time, the materials are
missing or ancient, or it’s someone else’s job to do and no one knows who that
might be. And it never hurts to also make sure that those more experienced and
longer-term employees still understand the rules and regulations, are current
on the latest legal and technical requirements, and haven’t developed shortcuts
or other bad habits that can eventually bite you in the butt. Gray hair is a
sign of age, but not necessarily wisdom.
(3) Tighten and streamline your inbound systems
-- reception, website, voicemail, and internet -- to make sure your “front
doors” aren’t obstacles instead of attractive access points.
This is another area that seems obvious and essential, but
millions of businesses haven’t looked at, tested, updated or streamlined their
home pages or other aspects of their websites since the beginning of the web in
1990. Voicemail trees are probably in even worse shape and apparently no one
(other than the home delivery newspaper guys) has figured out that phone
numbers can be linked to your CRM and this is likely to provide a huge hint as
to who might be calling and what their name and address is, so that your
callers don’t have to re-enter the same information every single time they
call. A good start to see where you stand on the “customer effort” scale is to
call your own shop or visit your website and see for yourself how drawn-out,
time-wasting and painful the process of reaching a human
being can be.
(4) Build a calendar and an attack plan for the
eight weeks after the election.
Your team needs a calendar and a tickler system to make sure they
know before critical decisions are being made by
their clients and customers. While the whole world will be watching the
election results, businesses will also be planning, budgeting, and staffing up
for the next year; the eight weeks following the election will be a critical
time for two key reasons.
First, out of sight means out of mind. You need to have
your people as present as possible and actively in the conversations when the
discussions about contract renewals are taking place. Also, it’s the time to
give your corporate champions the ammunition and documentary support that they
will need to justify your next payment, the “second sale”, and especially those hoped-for pricing increases.
Second, every business unit, government agency or other
institution knows that it’s a cardinal sin not to spend every dollar in their
allocated budget before the year end. It’s hard to ask for more if you still
have money left over. This encourages all kinds of urgent and last-minute
plans, commitments, and expenditures by procurement people and you want to be
sure that your company is a recipient of the year-end Xmas largesse.
The bottom line is that just because it’s not the precise
time to move ahead doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be planning, preparing and
positioning your business to strike as soon as the right time and opportunity
presents itself. The future isn’t going to take care of itself. All the hopes,
dreams, good intentions, and idealism won’t get the job done without a thorough
and well-thought-out plan of action.