Coronavirus: Practical thoughts for managing your firm
It’s a challenging, unpredictable time for business. Communications is no exception. Following are some quick recommendations from the counselors of Prosper Group to consider as you manage your business.
Be diligent with your financial management—cash is king in a crisis:
Be aggressive in collecting past due receivables.
Get your billing out quickly to protect your cash reserve.
Develop a plan to handle billing remotely.
Ensure staff understands the importance of time input and expense reports…even from home.
If clients expect to go on hiatus…
Remind them of your agency’s value and the team you have in place to support their priorities.
Request a maintenance budget, if necessary, until activity resumes.
Review contract termination clauses if a client expects to end the relationship.
Some financial actions to consider:
Revise your financial forecasts: Don't panic but forecast out moderate (bad quarter) and worst case (bad remainder of year) scenarios.
Cut costs to degree possible, but keep core team in place.
Explore benefits of negotiating a larger, less expensive line of credit since the government has opened up liquidity.
Look into SBA loans--especially if you have office relocation or large IT upgrade costs.
Be prepared to trim staff if client activity decreases.
Maintain your culture virtually:
Schedule staff-wide video conference meetings. Make them informative, upbeat and brief.
Continue to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, excellent client work with special all-staff announcements.
Be sensitive to the issues facing your staff--home schooling, day care, illnesses. How can the company help?
Keep everyone busy. Apply time to infrastructure, training, intellectual property—the things that typically get delayed.
Support development of at-home offices (training, tools; allow staff to take home the desk chair).
Demonstrate your value to clients in these unpredictable times:
Ensure the team is always ready for client video calls--good grooming and good background.
Reinforce need for effective, trustworthy, rapid communications. It’s more important than ever.
Determine the real pain points for your clients. How can you help?
Recommend alternatives to planned activity.
Conduct virtual brainstorms to provide new ideas based on the new circumstances.
Create scenarios to guide the return to the new normal…whenever it is.
As work slows down keep your staff engaged by developing a new marketing plan:
Update and upgrade case studies, website, prospects list, award entries.
Use the time to network: get in touch, stay in touch with prospects.
Ensure the content of your outreach is relevant, compelling.
We're here to help.
Prosper Group exists to help the owners of independent marketing communications agencies achieve their ambitions and maximize the value of their lives’ work.
Our team of former agency heads focus their deep experience on implementing proven proprietary methodologies across our three practices of agency performance, owner exit planning and M&A transactions in order to drive owner and agency success.
Developed by Alex Halbur/Partner & Managing Director, Rich Jernstedt/Senior Counselor and John Seng/Senior Counselor