Ticon UK Ltd

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 Six habits of winners in a downturn - Part Two 

By Gerard Burke

Director of the Business Growth and Development Programme (BGP)

Cranfield School of Management.

In any economic downturn, in every sector of the economy, there will be winners as well as losers. What do you need to do in your business to ensure that you are one of the winners?

Through our work on the Business Growth and Development Programme (BGP) at Cranfield School of Management, which is the UK’s leading programme for ambitious owner managers and has been running with great success for over 20 years including through the last recession in the early 90s, we’ve identified six habits of those who grasp the upside of downturns and emerge as winners. This second article, in a series of six, looks at the second habit - confidence.

Behaviour #2: Be Confident

In his victory speech last November, Barack Obama inspired the American people, and millions more around the world, with his clear and transformational vision for a different and better future, even at a time of great challenge for his country and the world. Not all owner managers will have the oratory skills of the current US president. But, we can still adopt his ‘can do’ attitude. 

In the current economic climate, it’s tempting to become short-sighted - living from week to week and channelling all your energy into the immediate challenge of survival. The problem is that a short term agenda can be dispiriting for you and other people in your business. So, as the owner manager, you need to have the confidence to look beyond the short term and have a clear and compelling view of where the business is going in the medium to longer term. 

Having created a compelling vision, you then need to articulate it, and preferably in a way which inspires other people to help you bring it about. That doesn’t necessarily mean delivering a rousing rhetorical speech every morning. It’s also about letting people see your passion for your business, communicating your plans, and helping your people see how they can contribute. 

And remember: every owner manager is in show business. You are on show all of the time, you are always communicating – even when you’re not saying anything! Whether you like it or not, you are the person from whom everyone else takes their lead and your every action, word and mood will be taken as a signal of how you’re feeling and, therefore, how the business is doing. So, hard as it may be right now, you need to be as positive as you can be all of the time.

Case study: Ticon

Participating in BGP gave Ian Makgill the confidence to embark on an ambitious growth strategy, despite a difficult economic climate. 

Makgill started Ticon, a consultancy which helps public sector organisations increase efficiency and reduce costs, in 2002. He participated in BGP at the end of 2008, as although the business was growing steadily, he felt it lacked direction.

“We were doing okay but I knew we could be doing much better,” recalls Makgill. “We had never had a business plan or a strategy for driving the business forwards and I knew I needed help to sit back from the day-to-day running of the business and work out where I wanted to go with it.”

He says BGP opened his eyes to possibilities for expanding the business. 

“Our focus was on local government, but our services are just as relevant to central government, so we needed to broaden our client base. Also, clients only thought of us as procurement card experts, so while there were plenty of other opportunities with existing clients we weren’t being considered for them because they didn’t know we could do anything else.”

A comprehensive marketing strategy, which included investing in a new website and developing case studies, white papers and customer relationship management systems, is helping promote Ticon’s full range of services to existing and prospective clients.

It has also given Makgill and his team newfound confidence about the consultancy’s capabilities.

“We’re more confident about the value we deliver to clients, which is key to driving certain parts of the business. In pre-paid card schemes, for example, I don’t think there’s an agency who can touch us in terms of insight and technical expertise. We’re also winning tenders for projects we might not have bid for previously.”

Broadening the company’s client base, meanwhile, has made it more resilient to the downturn.

“Some of our clients were banks who were paying us to work with their public sector clients, but that part of the business has effectively closed down,” says Makgill. “Despite this, we’re on track to increase turnover slightly on last year.”

That’s not to say there aren’t still day-to-day challenges. However, because Makgill now has a long term plan and the ability to monitor how the business is performing in relation to that plan, he can react quickly to events.

“There was no planning before BGP. Now we have targets for turnover, profitability and income per head and we’re plotting our course against that.”

These are turbulent times – and they will pass. In the meantime, you need to stay confident about what makes your business great. Stay confident about your passion for your business. Stay confident about the future you will create for your business and yourself. Communicate that vision in a way which inspires other people to help you bring it about. This confidence will spread to your staff, to your customers and to your suppliers. And the effect will be dramatic.

The next article in the series will look at why being distinctive is so important in a recession.