Inflation. The seemingly invisible force devouring every B2B company’s budget.
As prices increase and products shrink, the entire world feels the effects of inflation. With B2B businesses specifically taking one of the biggest hits. With an increase in raw material costs, supply shortages, and a rise in labor rates, it has become challenging for many B2B companies to remain competitive. Due to Covid-19, many businesses believed they’d survived the worst, yet inflation is proving to be a difficult obstacle for many who are now unsure how to withstand its impact.
Having trouble keeping up with rising inflation is not uncommon. Many are currently trying to determine how to best combat rising prices. When it comes to inflation for a B2B company, being proactive and prepared is key. Here are the top 5 tips we recommend to overcome inflation for B2B companies.
1. Maintain a Healthy Cash Flow to Overcome Inflation
Inflation makes it particularly important to keep an eye on your cash flow. Your business’s normal spending and charge of services may need to be adjusted. You must act fast if you are losing sales and your expenses are rising to maintain a healthy cash flow. Here are a few ways to ensure a steady flow of cash.
Analyze Your Finances
Before deciding what to do to maintain a healthy cash flow, first analyze your expenditures. Reevaluate your costs and then determine what expenses you are facing in the current economy. Once you’ve identified those margins, you can begin looking for solutions to increase them. For example, you may need to increase pricing strategically or cut costs.
Increase Pricing Strategically
Maintaining cash flow and staying profitable when inflation is high is possible by increasing your prices. Price increases aren’t ideal on any end of the spectrum, but for many B2B companies, it is the only option available.
Because consumers are already feeling the impact of price increases in many other avenues of their life. It’s best to create a price increase announcement that can convey a sense of understanding of their position while also rolling out the new pricing.
Get Crafty
Maintaining a healthy cash flow is vital for your business, and by implementing strategic price increases, your B2B business can overcome inflation. Aside from raising the prices of products and services, your business can also increase indirect costs such as the following:
- Shipping
Your business is likely dealing with increased shipping costs, and raising shipping costs for clients is an ideal way to keep your cash flow healthy. It does not directly impact the price of your product or service, but it benefits the bottom line.
- Add-on Features
The best way to increase pricing and not overwhelm buyers is to add features for an additional fee. For example, maybe your line of work can do something extra that will not cost your company time or money. Why not add that as a new feature with a pricing model? Your clients get a new feature, which makes you money.
- Other crafty ideas:
- Bundles
- Downloadable PDFs
Cut Costs
Just like in your everyday life of cutting back on spending; apply the same mentality to your B2B business. Because inflation makes it challenging to remain profitable, you need to cut costs wherever possible. Take a deep dive into your business expenses and see where you can cut back for the time being. For example, cancel unnecessary online tools or services that team members are not utilizing. Or, to achieve even more cost-cutting, your B2B business can downsize your office. With many employees opting for remote or hybrid workspaces, this can be a win-win for your costs and employees.
Additional Healthy Cash Flow Tips:
- Invoice Immediately
- Regularly Review Expenses
- Require Immediate Payment
2. Penny Pinch to Overcome B2B Inflation
With inflation impacting all avenues of B2B companies, it’s vital to be smart, and tight, with your budget.
Negotiate Prices
To do this, you can negotiate lower prices on the everyday operations of your B2B business. Think about it, buyers who call and ask for a lower rate are always almost always successful at getting some kind of deal. Why not do the same?
Postpone High-Cost Investments
Let’s be clear, there are always exceptions, but for the most part, during inflation, it’s wise to save budget-busting expenditures for another time.
3. Keep Employees Happy
We’re talking about inflation and company costs, so what does employee happiness have to do with it? Well, your employees’ happiness is key to overcoming inflation. For your B2B company to operate, you’ll need a team of dedicated employees. Thus, employee retention is a must to survive inflation. The good news is keeping employees happy isn’t a hard task. By conducting surveys, and finding ways to add perks and benefits to the job, your employees will be happy to stay and help your business continue to grow and succeed.
4. Boost Efficiency with Automation & Overcome Inflation
Do you know what’s a waste of time, money, and resources? Manual tasks that can be automated. In a time where inflation is already eating at your budget, it’s wise to invest in automated tools that can help improve productivity and help your B2B business overcome inflation.
With technology constantly evolving, B2B business owners have endless opportunities to streamline their operations and increase efficiency. For example, you can automate the following areas if you have not already done so.
Automate nurture campaigns, ongoing emails, and even birthday emails while generating revenue with email automation tools.
Social Media
Increase engagement levels and brand presence with automated daily social posts and marketing campaigns.
Invoices
Reduce risks like manual errors, and decrease operational costs by automating invoice processing. In addition, you can speed up the invoice processing time.
Sales & Marketing
By automating sales and marketing tasks, repetitive tasks that slow down the sales pipeline and interfere with lead generation can be eliminated.
5. Form a Partnership to Overcome Inflation
As a B2B company, countering inflation can be tricky, but there is a simple way to succeed. Establishing a partnership with a lead generation company can help your B2B business combat inflation. If you require expertise in overcoming inflation, that’s exactly what lead generation can do for you.
With a team of experts and a strategic plan to help your company, your budget is going straight to the solution that can help you overcome inflation and a pending recession.
Ready to Overcome Inflation?
At 360Connect, we understand how the current economy and inflation crisis are impacting B2B companies specifically, and we’re ready to help.
With 360Connect’s True-Intent process, we connect you with buyers requesting quotes for your products and services. Our mission is to focus on your success, so let’s get in contact if you’re looking for a way to overcome inflation.