Wanted business owners comments!!

Posted by careathome on 25 July, 2008 under Business advice, Business development, Credit crunch, How to save money ideas for business | Read the First Comment

The World economies are in real difficulty with the banking sector having the worst time in years or probably the worst it has ever had! Oil prices at record highs putting pressure on households and businesses alike. Food prices are also on the rise which will impact households and how much the have to spend on luxuries.

It was reassuring to see the banks (The Woolich and the Halifax I think) start reducing interest rates, which will help to ease things a bit – but I see the Bank of England is split on where to take interest rates next time! However, we have just borrowed from Barlcays to buy a property to house our staff and they have charged us 2.5% over base! We were very disappointed in Barclays over this, as they offered the same loan only 6 months ago at 1.5% over base!

It would be interesting to see other company owners comments on what they are doing to beat the pressures they are facing right now. A friend of mine runs a highfi shop and he commented that last week was the slowest week they have ever had in their long history!

We have began to re-direct our advertising into other areas and really begun to focus our attention on our convertion rates of enquiries to customers and which adverts are working best for us. When times are tough you need to start changing what you do – I run a care business caring for people in their own homes and I originally thought that we would not be affected by the tightening economy, but I am not so sure now.

We need to start looking closely at our prices and have just introduced another cheaper service providing a 5-day week service instead of the full 7-day week service. This has shaved £150 per week off our price and we have already got a new client as a result! I guess £500 sounds a lot cheaper than £650!

So I would say that we are beginning to be more creative and getting tougher and leaner!

It would be good to hear your comments to this on what other business owners are doing and maybe we can transfer ideas on this forum!

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