The Real Deal Offline Series: What To Do When Your Clients Niche Market Is Dying...

Hey Offliners,

One of the biggest challenges I've faced over the past ten years (even before my offline days) is what to do if a target market is shrinking and dying.

Now, you may say simply change markets. But, step outside of the internet marketing world for a second.

See, in our IM world, you can simply buy a plr product, get hosting for $10 per month, buy a $8 domain name and throw up a salesletter and thank you page and you're all set.

However, in the offline world, business owners have hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in product, supplies, employees, permits and contracts etc. which have huge legal and financial consequences for changing.

So, the advice of simply changing markets for them is not as simple as it is in the IM world.

In fact, I've spent the last ten years working in two industries that have recently shrank by almost 2/3's. The first industry is the loan origination industry. The second industry is the furniture industry.

Now, both of these markets shrank for different reasons, but my main focus is on how to advise clients during those kinds of scenarios.

Here's what I've learned after years of working in shrinking markets and here's how I advise my clients:

- Get the cold hard facts about their sales. Hire a book keeper (or use their existing book keeper) to go through their sales numbers and at a minimum, find the following:

- What's selling - colors, shapes, sizes etc.
- How frequently it's selling
- At what price it's selling
- Who's buying it

Side note: Their normal accounting firm or person will usually not want to do this, so they will have to bring in someone just for this assignment.

- Shop their competition. Most business owners simply refuse to find out what's going on in their industry. It's unacceptable to run a business this way and is the fastest way to lose touch with the marketplace.

- Survey their customers. This has to be the most underused strategy in most of the offline businesses I work with. They simply don't want to know the truth about their business. Sadly, the few times I've seen it used, business owners rarely every take the advice of their paying customers.

- Begin to negotiate for lower rates, prices, long-term contracts BEFORE there's a payment issue. When you're a client in good standing, it's much easier to negotiate than when you're behind, late and have been giving excuses for weeks or months.

These are just a few of the changes I ask my clients to make when we're dealing with a shrinking market. Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Chris Rivers