How To Recession-Proof Your Business South Africa is in a technical recession. Here's how to navigate the turbulent times ahead.

For the lay-man like myself, it's important to understand that a technical recession is an economic term that describes two consecutive quarters of negative growth in an economy. For South Africa, gross domestic product (GDP) declined 0,7% during the first quarter of 2017 after contracting by 0,3% in the fourth quarter
of 2016.

Why is this a big deal? Because the economic outlook, even without the technical recession, was bleak. Ratings agencies are losing confidence in South Africa. S&P downgraded the country to junk status earlier this year, followed by Moodys, which revised South Africa down a notch.

How organisation's respond to recessions

There are a number of knee-jerk reactions to a recession as a direct result of decreasing revenues and profits. The most relevant to SMEs are:

Cutting R&D spending

This means no new product lines, and no incremental innovation expenditure unless it returns direct value to the business.

People get fired

In a time where underperformance has a double impact on the business, people that aren't performing are performance-managed out the door.

Market shares shrink

This is often due to reduced R&D spends.

Processes are evaluated

Companies start looking for efficiencies that should have already been in place.

Outlook and opportunities for SMEs

For SMEs, sales and product planning in a recession is key and must align to the way big business is responding to the recession. Fundraising for capital expenditure is more expensive, but not impossible. It may be valuable to invest ahead of the curve to capture the emergent big businesses during this period and therefore external investment may make sense. In an increasingly collaborative economy, SMEs should look to each other for partnerships and complementary projects that cost little to assemble, but amount to great value for a big business.

Survival of the nimblest

1. Cut down

SMEs have the ability to be nimble and move quickly to change organisational structures and deliver on just-in-time value. This can be hamstrung by unpredictable fluctuating expenses like cell phone contracts that may vary in cost in an unpredictable way from month to month. The fewer of these costs on your books, the better.

2. Sell harder

The term "always be closing' is a famous sales mantra, it's also applicable in a recessionary context. First, because you don't know what they don't know and unless you tell them — who will? Second, the feedback loop of understanding the concerns and actions from your customer or client can only be understood through interaction.

3. Position smarter

Is it clear that you are the best provider for the job that needs to be done? If not, it is important to build a stakeholder strategy that puts your business in front of the key procurement and strategy custodians. This may be a great opportunity to exhibit demos, case studies and showcase the efficiency that you offer.

4. Focus on value

I can't over-state this. Value, value, value. It goes without saying that one of the key reasons anyone would consider an alternative supplier is because of the specific problem they solve, so this should be your approach in reinforcing the value you bring to the table. Repetition builds memory structure.

One recession doesn't fit all

It's important to understand that for SMEs a recession can have an expansionary effect in the same way the lipstick effect applies to luxury goods and services. The lipstick effect is the theory that when facing an economic crisis, consumers will be more willing to buy less costly luxury goods. Instead of buying expensive fur coats, for example, people will buy expensive lipstick.

A series of psychology experiments have confirmed for the first time that while tougher economic times decrease desire for most items, they also reliably increase women's yearning for products that boost their attractiveness.

Parting shot

So, for SMEs, the formula is simple — don't panic, analyse your customer value chain and position your solution accordingly and then sell, sell, sell.