After the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic, many companies and organizations all around the world found themselves evaluating their financial picture. The increasing debt, less income, and the pressure of stock market losses took a toll and many are wondering how and if, they will ever recover.
This is not the first time that businesses suffering financial hardships, many individual occurrences have encountered through lives that had set businesses back financially but always have bounced back with a newfound perspective and wisdom.
However, setbacks are common in an entrepreneur's journey, research shows that financial setbacks are quite commonly caused due to market losses, job loss, bad financial decisions, earning less money than expected, and stock market investment, also 76% of the entrepreneurs have staged a comeback costing them at least $100,000 and managed to put their finances back in order.
Regardless of what caused your financial setback, your path to recovery and prosperity will require a common set of action steps, so let's get started with the 4 most common setbacks and the process that will help you recover from any financial disaster.
Loss of reputation is one of the most common setbacks which many businesses have faced in their growth. One can lose the reputation for several reasons such as accusations from a competitor, bad reviews or a public expose about the company and these might feel like the end, but there is are ways to repair your reputation with time. Time can heal plenty when you are in a reputation storm, first hire an SEO agency let them help with the first page of the Google Search results tied to your company's name and you focus on how you can improve your online presence more. Work on company reviews and how you can reposition your stance on certain issues, own up to mistakes that you've made and fix it by introducing new improvements to your services or products and showing the world that you can handle resiliency.
All the businesses have a few major clients who contribute a lot to the share of your monthly revenue. Losing a major client can be a vital reason for your setbacks and cause devastation on the financial front, one of the reasons for them to leave be that they might decide to go elsewhere or don't need your services anymore. With full grace thank your client for their time with your company, seek information on why you lost the client, and later rev up your marketing and sales efforts again. You must have an honest conversation about what you could've done differently to make them more satisfied with your work, so you can apply the changes for your next client. Ask for your client's testimonials in case they left your company because of changes within their own company and display the testimonials on your website or use them in sales moving forward.
Grief can make it hard to focus or to be in the right mind space to get anything done as in our personal lives few things impact our businesses more than a traumatic loss or event. It's advisable and vital to take some time off from running your company in the initial weeks after a devastating loss, hand off your reins to someone else on your team. As per research, many say that it worked for them when they took some time off during such scenarios and it's better to persevere against adversity after a time of loss and devastation.
Reckoning on the setup of your team, you may have co-founders or a group of hires, and most of the time, issues with team dynamics or conflicts begin to arise. 65% of startups fail because of interpersonal tensions within the founding team as they are most likely to be in high-stress environments and combine many personalities. While the reasons for the tensions can vary from power, control, care, closeness, respect, to recognition but a common spark for these flare-ups is typical because something is going on beneath the surface. It's very important to discuss and resolve these issues at the earliest furthermore the tensions may reside and transmit your team stronger than it was initially.
These are the four setbacks each business encounter commonly and are tremendously difficult to go through but overcoming these challenges and finding solutions will serve you in the long run.