Women Business Owners Not Intimated by Recession
The survey results below are based on 3,964 responses from businesswomen across the U.S. and Canada.
| Q1: | What words best describe how you feel about the current economic situation as it relates to your business? |
#1 answer: Charging Ahead with a Positive Outlook - 72.5% response
| Q2: | Do you think this is a good time to grow and expand your business? |
74% responded YES!
| Q3: | What are you doing to keep a positive outlook? (Multiple selections were allowed) |
The top four responses were:
Networking/Building Relationships 92.3%
Collaborating with others 74.9%
Managing my expenses better 70.9%
Ignoring the negative news 51.2%
| Q4: | Even though the economy is in bad shape, I am… |
Below represents a micro-sampling of the thousands of responses received:
- Constantly looking for new and innovating ways to market my business and really thinking outside the box!
- Making the most of my own opportunities, giving back to community, supporting others' success, and welcoming new ways to serve.
- Continuing to work hard and set goals for the future of my business.
- Staying positive, saving more, working more efficiently with respect to cost and time.
- Actively seeking new opportunities.
- Trying to keep myself positioned for the future.
- Unwilling to be victimized by the sensationalized and often misinformation in the "news."
- Networking more than ever.
- Making lots of great relationships and continuing to grow my business in areas that I may not have considered before.
- Staying focused on my business and my goals, maintaining a big picture approach to my business, and constantly evaluating my approach to the market based on the changing conditions.
- Feeling very positive about the future.
| Q5: | Describe why now is the best time to grow and/or expand your business. |
Below represents a micro-sampling of the thousands of responses received:
- This is the perfect opportunity to stretch creative muscles, partner and collaborate, and create connections that seem unrelated.
- This is when business owners get creative on how they can grow and expand their business.
- We can think about what our customers need in a more clear and concise fashion as well as thinking outside the box.
- I can be more flexible with marketing strategies and reposition our services to create new customers.
- Competitors are dropping out at a high rate. In these slow times, we are streamlining processes and procedures, developing key trade alliances, and getting poised to gain market share.
- Now is the perfect time to expand because so many people are 'frozen' or 'waiting' to see what is going to happen which means to me that they are not moving at all.
- Studies have shown that people who continue to market and advertise in an economic downturn come out ahead when times are better when compared with people who pull back.
- Businesses that are prepared to take advantage of current market conditions to acquire their competitors or absorb market share from their failed competitors are likely to benefit from the current economic environment.
| Q6: | What advice do you have for women business owners who are really struggling right now? |
Common themes of the responses provided were:
- Do things differently than before, think outside the box to meet your customers’ needs.
- Take positive steps to grow your business like collaborating and being active in your community.
- Focus on the positive aspects of business. Promote those areas that are showing positive response and put non-essential efforts on the "back-burner".
- Find those advocates in your current customer base who love what you have to offer and ask them for help by providing you referrals.
- Gain as much knowledge as possible and prepare yourself for a change to your current situation so that you do not become a victim of circumstance.
- Get creative with your offerings. Diversify the product or service. Team up with other women business owners and create package deals.
- Contribute to others - not knowing what you will get out of it!
- Re-contextualize your marketing and repurpose your products and services.
- Network, network, network!
Of the women polled:
- 81.4% are business owners
- 10.6% are employees
- 6.6% are employees with a side business
- 1.4% are unemployed or in transition
- 3.0% are retired
- 1.0% are full-time homemakers
For more information or to interview Sandra Yancey, contact:
Bridget Moore
Bridget.Moore@eWomenNetwork.net
(972) 620-9995, ext. 1010
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