Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

A recession is a massive opportunity for a small business that is willing to take a few calculated risks for a big reward. While your competitors are petrified by fear – real or manufactured – about what the future holds, your business needs to seize the present. By moving aggressively with calculated marketing moves you can snatch customers and marketshare for your company while your competitors’ fears become their reality.

Over the past few months I have written about:

* Yellow Page Advertising Strategies for a Start-up Business
* Radio Advertising Strategies that Work Fast
* Why a Recession is the Best Time to Lead Your Industry
* How to Use Dunn & Bradstreet to Identify & Target Weak Competitors

I know these strategies work because I employ them in my computer repair company, Schrock Innovations. Schrock was started in 1999 and controls a commanding share of the Lincoln and Omaha computer repair marketplace. We have zero debt, great cash flow, and we are taking in an average of 162 new customers each and every month in 2009. We are GROWING in a recession.

Those who read my posts regularly know that I believe that a recession is the best time to attempt to expand your business.

Durring a recession your competition:

* Will be reluctant to match your moves
* Will cut back on service to increase the bottom line
* Avoid investing in people and equipment

How Do You Expand Your Business When Your Customers are Spending Less?

The answer is pretty straight forward – you get more customers. You take them from your competitors.

While your competitors are cutting like mad, you reach out and entice disgruntled customers into your fold.

To do this you have to increase your marketing budget, and radio auctions are a nifty tool to convert your unsold inventory or service certificates into needed advertising dollars!

How Do Radio Auctions Work?

Typically, radio stations sell air time for money. In a tough economic climate,advertisers cut back, so stations have to get more cretive to hit their sales goals.

For example, lets say you own a website design company. You might provide a $1,000 gift certificate to the radio station to auction on the air. You would receive $1,000 in trade to spend on commercials, et. in exchange for your certificate.

The station would then auction the certificate on-air to its listeners who call in to make their bids. The certificates often sell for less than their value, so the callers feel like they are getting a good deal.

You get the free commercials (not to mention a 5-minute plug during the auction its self), the customer gets a great value, and the station gets money. Everyone is happy.

Last month Schrock Innovations screwed up badly repairing a customer’s computer. Our customer had a Sony notebook and Best Buy said it would take 2 weeks for a warranty repair. The customer was going to Spain in a few days and needed the notebook. They brought it in to us for a speedy repair and in our zeal to provide a superior service experience, we fell flat on our faces.

There are only two ways for businesses to survive an economy in recession. They can lower service levels and hunker down for the economic storm or they can raise your service standards and position themselves to take customers from their cowering competition.

The way your company handles difficult situations is more important than anything else if you are working to take customers from your competitors. Here is what we did wrong, why the laptop did not make it on the plane to Spain, and why we ended up buying our customer a whole new Sony notebook on our dime. How would your company have handled this situation?

There are some of my basic business principles that will help your business thrive in a bad economy. Never Stop Advertising. Don’t Become a Low Cost Leader…