Positioning Your Business For Market Fluctuations

The nature of business is cyclical. US Business Finance Corp offers several alternative financing solutions for business owners looking to position their businesses to weather the business cycles with the least disruption. Restaurants have days of heavy traffic and slow days. Gift stores have seasonal cycles. The building industry has longer cycles, both the residential building cycle and the commercial building cycle. The following guidelines should help your decisions to guard your cash flow and operating capital reserves.

1. Keep the typical business level in mind. When times are very good and an expansive mindset is in place, always keep in mind the nature of the business cycle. Decide whether you really need to hire more employees or if allowing for overtime will best meet your labor needs. The benefit of overtime is that you are using experienced employees and when the sales cycle shifts employees go back to their regular time and no one needs to be laid off. In good cycles, talk to your financing specialists, lining up a business cash advances or a business line of credit is best done in solid business cycles.
2. Recognize when you have a “hit the wall” situation and need outside advice. A hit the wall situation is one that you are not trained to handle and are tempted to solve in ways in which you are comfortable. Unfortunately in hit the wall situations, your gut instincts tend to be wrong – usually leading to wrong decisions. A red flag is if business decisions are reactionary: crisis-management thinking. Typically the reactionary thinking is following a period of denial that the market has changed and avoidance of painful, but necessary, business steps.

   Outside advice can help you gain the necessary perspective. US Business Finance Corp assists small businesses with alternative financing that can deal with business changes. One business consultant commented that most small businesses fail by fixing the wrong problem – they fixed the one they knew how to fix, not the one that endangered the company.

   US Business Finance Corp has helped many small businesses meet operating capital needs with cash advances only after the owners widened their search for solutions beyond traditional bank sources. Once they found out how quickly and easily they could access business cash advances using their future credit card sales, they were able to turn around challenging business situations.

3. Approach cost cutting carefully. Drastic cost cutting can send the wrong message which has a way of reinforcing the market’s negative perceptions. Always keep the vision for what you need coming out of the market fluctuation. Employment expenses and business supplies offer the largest amounts of costs that tantalize with a fast cost cutting step. However, these are also the ingredients you will need in place to take advantage of your next business opportunity. Another option is to be honest about the state of the business with your employees and then you can explore less drastic and more beneficial measures, such as pay cuts or reduced hours that will see the company through and keep your trained work force intact.
4. Never lose sight of adding more markets. No business saved their way to profitability. Building the income stream and constantly looking to service new markets not only builds profitability, but is also one of the best measures to minimize market fluctuations. New customers, strategic alliances with complementary businesses, new products or services or business cash advances to bolster operating capital all build the company’s forward momentum. Also, remember to take input from and reward your employees for business opportunities they perceive.

Business downturns and upturns can equally benefit your company if you address the needs of the market with your vision and your workforce – addressing the present while building for the future. Contact your financing professionals at US Business Finance Corp to see what alternative financing solutions we have to meet your business’s operating capital constraints.

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Filed under: Alternative Capital, Business Cash Advance, Business Solutions, Management and HR, Money Matters - Business, National Economy