What to do when business is slow

Look for patterns

When business slows down, make a note of it. If it’s happening frequently, is there a pattern?

Does it coincide with the start or end of a fiscal year? Is it in August when everyone goes on vacation?

I’ve noticed January is traditionally slower for our business. We write a lot of proposals, but aren’t starting a lot of projects. My hunch is everyone has a new budget and is spending the first month making strategic plans.

Talk to your clients and ask them, “How’s business?” A number of our clients are marketing managers and call March “trade show season." That explains why they don’t have as much time for new web projects.

Embrace the downtime

If you see some down time coming, prepare for it. Sock away extra cash. Make plans to build a product. Plan a vacation. Ramp up marketing. (Probably not all at once though.)

If you find yourself in a dry spell, don’t fight it. Try to embrace it.

This is really hard to do.

I’ve been in business six years. I know January is traditionally slow for us. Yet when 2013 started slow part of me worried that the well had dried up. I heard that little voice in my head.

“This is it. We’ll never get another project again!”

Of course it wasn’t true. I knew we had projects waiting for us in February. I knew the pipeline was strong. The work just wasn’t ready for us right this instant.

I told the team to enjoy the down time because it doesn’t happen that often. They took a few weeks to update internal processes, take care of our maintenance clients and create open source tools like Member Group Tabs. This work will pay dividends for us throughout the year.

Do a rain dance

While the team was in the lab I was doing my best to make it rain.

I was pretty sure our January slowness was part of a pattern, but I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

I checked in with clients to make sure they were happy. I asked if there was more that we could be doing for them. In some cases this led to more work for us.

I followed up on every lead, no matter how soft, to see if there was short term work that would keep us busy. I put the word out that we had some availability for quick turnaround work and followed up on leads that had previously fizzled.

Now is not the time to hide in your turtle shell and hope the storm passes. This is the time to pound the pavement, shake some trees and make things happen. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)

Depending on how desperate you’re feeling you may also want to:

• answer job board listings
• temporarily lower rates
• call a colleague to see if they have overflow work they’d subcontract to you
• attend a meetup or industry event and casually mention that you have some short term availability (Try not to look desperate.)

If you need quick results don't bother cold calling someone you’ve never worked with before. That takes more time and effort to turn into a paying gig than you can afford right now.

Services is a funny business. It will have you stressing about too much work one minute and stressing about not enough work the next.

Enjoy the ride.