Your small business can move mountains....call POSITUS!

I’m no soothsayer (and I love that word), but people still ask me regularly for my opinion about when we will go into economic recovery. I truly wish I could answer that question correctly, but alas I cannot. What I can do, however, is give you as small business owners some economic recovery signals to watch for or identify in your businesses.

1. You notice an uptick in interest about your business or its offerings. This doesn’t have to mean that your sales have increased significantly – yet. More interest in your business means that others are thinking about your product or service and may be planning to incorporate it into their budgets in the coming months.
2. One or more staff members are overwhelmed, where they were not several months ago. When staff shift from asking for work to do or tasks to perform to citing extra working hours or being concerned about getting everything done, it could be a signal that your business is moving in a positive direction.
3. Your thinking as a business owner has subtly changed from worrying about where the next thing will come from to making the next thing happen. Ultimate outcomes are impacted by correct thinking. If you’ve stopped obsessing about being slow and have started meaningfully doing something about it, your business is already better off than it was when you were in fret mode. You’re on your way to recovery, and you will pull others along with you.
4. “Yes” is more the norm. If you are winning a greater percentage of the business you’re pitching than you were a short while ago, it could be a sign that the general business community is abandoning its mode of caution and moving more toward assertive action.
5. Your network is more positive about the future than they have been in a while. If you associate with people who tend to be positive (and you should try to hang around such people), they will be even more positive than they have been. Your negative nellies will likely also work in a positive comment or two here or there. Either way, you will see people feeling more confident about business, which will lead to meaningful action in the coming months.

If you have noticed two or more of the items on this list in your own business, it may be well on its way to helping generate an economic recovery. Are you ready to pounce? At POSITUS, we are already helping small business owners evaluate the lay of the land and position themselves to maximize their returns when things recover. Maybe we can help make things happen for you, too.

Let us hear from you. Have you seen any of these upswing economic indicators in your small business?