As horrendous as it might have been, this pandemic and lockdown are slowly becoming history. Business owners are moving forward with trepidation and with calm resolve. It’s quite an amazing time to be a business owner because just like every recession, there is a lot of money to be made climbing out of the economic hole. With the global economy shut down, small business owners have learned a few harsh lessons. With every dark cloud, there is a silver lining, and these lessons must never be forgotten.

Receiving your mail

Of all the things that small business has over the large business, adaptability is the number one asset. In fact, many people simply stop relying on big business for their needs and stick to local, small enterprises when things have gotten tough. If you had a PO box, you would have been able to continue being sent your documents such as contracts, invoices and photographs; even while other postal services were shut. The mail will be scanned and forwarded to you. This is why you need to use a physical address service that provides an excellent in-house virtual PO box. All your mail can be stored here and there’s no limit to how much. Their personal experts will be the only ones to handle your mail, so no peeping Toms from a third party will see your private mail. 

Warehouse relationships

Small business owners have been wondering what to do with all their stock? Since the world is on lockdown, some products may expire while in storage. For small business owners that work in the food and beverage industry, this was always a concern. Millions of people were panic-buying but it was only for essentials, such as eggs, milk, pasta and bread. What happens to your artisan cheese, cider and vegetable growers? You must forge closer relationships with your warehouse partners. Only they can offer you solutions to prolong your products in storage. It could be done with better maintenance of stock, better storage techniques and better handling of products when an order has been placed. Warehouse storage services may also lead you to potential buyers of overstock that will happily buy your products before they are in line to be thrown away as waste.

Back to basics

SMEs are fantastically good at working with the local consumer. Millions of businesses that would otherwise never perform delivery services, have and are making home deliveries of their products. Local consumers should be told that you are willing to do this if they spend above a certain threshold such as ‘orders over $25’. Load up the products yourself and drive to people’s homes. This is called being flexible to the extra mile. It’s crude but in times like this, you have to keep the engine ticking over and making sales. You may now wonder if you shouldn’t just carry this on when the lockdown is over. Consider making a delivery day whereby one of your employees or you yourself, delivers to local people.

Don’t look back on this troubling time without taking something away from it. Make your small business more flexible regarding your mail, forge stronger relationships with warehouse companies and start valuing your local customers more.