Don't be a Caterpillar

Don’t be a Caterpillar


Let’s face it. Times are tough all around. Business is down in just about every industry except bankruptcy attorney’s and “repo” men. Every time it looks like things are improving, something happens to slow things down again. What can you do?

I remember an old adage that goes, “find a need and fill it”. It used to work for you. Why isn’t it working for you now? The answer may be that the need you used to fill doesn’t exist anymore or, the demand for it has diminished to the point where there isn’t enough business for all the providers. In other words, the pie is smaller but there are still as many people at the table.

My partner and I have had this happen to us in our business. We are knocking on every door we can find to fill business orders but, our customer base is just not interested in engaging either because they have no need for new resources or, they are going to sources that offer what they perceive as the same service for free or at a very low cost. It doesn’t help us to tell them they are losing the professional consulting, screening and time saving we have always provided. They aren’t interested in the value proposition. They are only interested in minimizing their cash flow today. They will worry about the consequences later.

Having encountered this new situation for our business, we put our heads together and came up with a plan. We polled our customer base to ask them what they really needed to help them survive and even grow in the current economic environment. We gathered this information and came up with a model that addresses their stated needs. Next, we prepared a presentation for the executive team of a major corporation (largest Application Software Company in the world) where we presented our concept and our plan to propose it to their resellers. Bingo! We got an enthusiastic response with a commitment to help us refine our offering and a commitment to help us select and close a pilot site. They saw this as a win for them because it would increase their business by increasing their reseller’s volumes. The reseller’s would also increase their business and profitability and we would also see a win from a new revenue stream.

Is this our core business? No it isn’t but, it is finding and filling a need within our customer base. It allows us to continue to serve our customers and it creates a new revenue generating business. It also allows us to maintain the positive relationship we have with our customers and when this storm passes they will need our core product again and we will be there to fill that need.