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How to deal with the crisis and even make money on it

On May 12, 2022

The behavior of your cat, dog, parrot or fish is unlikely to have changed compared to what they had back in the summer. They do not watch TV, do not listen to the radio and do not access the Internet, and for this reason they do not even know that the global financial crisis has happened, and for this reason they do not think about how to deal with the crisis.

However, one is amazed when many crowns of creation – people endowed with consciousness behave in the same way as animals, fish and birds – pretend that nothing has happened, and yet the most terrible reality of recent times is precisely that there is no only winter is coming, but also the global financial crisis. It has already erupted in many countries and, undoubtedly, began its destructive procession in Belarus as well.

The government can reassure citizens as much as it likes that this cup will pass us by, but these reassurances can only serve as anesthesia. But, as you know, anesthesia passes sooner or later, and pains are felt both from itself, and also from what it was intended to calm. The result is a double whammy.

Of course, you can take anesthesia and not notice anything, but you can muster up the courage, open your eyes wide and look around. We will see that in reality, many enterprises have already reduced output, accumulated balances in warehouses and cannot do anything about it, because buyers have little money and they cannot pay for products.

There are other facts – the growth of interest rates, rumors that deposits will not be paid, and much more. Experts expect that the financial sector, the tourism sector, and car sales will be most affected by the crisis. It will be enough that the financial sector will be affected, there will already be a domino effect behind it.

A large number of reasons are given for why the crisis happened, but this is not so important in principle, the more important thing is that it happened and you have to choose between “to be" or “not to be”, because you can sit and wait, but you can prepare and begin to carry out prevention, although to learn recipes on how to deal with the crisis.

At the same time, various joyfully instinctive reactions such as hiding your head in the sand, loud screams, flight, puffing out your cheeks – nothing will help. Only real actions aimed at adapting to the conditions of the crisis will help, but for real actions you need to know how to deal with the crisis. Recipes for improving work with clients will also help. not to lose them.

Details on how to deal with the crisis

World financial crisis in myths. Laziness or ignorance leads to the fact that most people do not know what a crisis really is and replace real ideas about it with myths. This is used by a more literate and less lazy minority. Competent people with a stable psyche know that you can make money on a crisis and use it to scare others.

Therefore, although the crisis is a one-time action, it is so inflated, the situation is swayed that it seems as if it continues for a long time. All this is done by them deliberately, because through inducing panic they disorient other people, and disoriented people do not know where to go and what to do. They are like drowning people, ready to grab at any straw and are on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

They are very vulnerable and ready to overpay money, because they are afraid that tomorrow it will be even worse and more expensive. All this is because for such people the crisis is very big uncertainty and uncertainty. For them, a crisis is like walking through the forest at night in pitch darkness. Every rustle and rustle evokes images. Children's, as well as primitive fears, fixed at the genetic level, begin to emerge.

Lack of information gives rise to a large number of myths that act as compensation for the state of uncertainty, because you don't know how to react to not fame, because it is incorporeal and you don’t know what to expect from it. It is much easier to come up with something about the crisis of analogy methods, which allows you to somehow respond to it. As a result, such behavior leads to the fact that they lose much more than they would lose if they behaved more intelligently. But in order to behave reasonably, one must know what a crisis is in reality.

The global financial crisis in reality. Reality is much simpler than myths and sometimes it is very difficult for people to perceive everything as it is. It is very difficult for most to understand that the word crisis is ancient Greek and for the ancient Greeks it meant only a turning point, nothing more and nothing less. A turning point means a change in conditions that is irreversible in the short term, and sometimes in the long term, or an irretrievable change in the situation.

It turns out that when they talk about a crisis, they simply mean that the conditions of activity have changed. It turns out that nothing mythological has happened, but some familiar conditions have simply changed, and in order not to lose from the crisis, you just need to determine which conditions have changed, how they have changed, for how long they have changed, and learn to live in new conditions. As you can see, the secret of how to deal with the crisis is very simple.

Moreover, if you understand before others that everything is really so simple, you can get additional benefits due to this. While others will complicate things, panic, you can intercept their customers, their markets and leave them, in fact, with a nose, because by the time they do understand what it is, it may be too late.

Macroeconomic Consequences of the World Financial Crisis. The operating conditions of any company are otherwise called macroeconomic parameters. Therefore, it is necessary to determine which macroeconomic parameters may be subject to change and in which direction. Thus, the most important macroeconomic parameters include:

price level for a basket of consumer goods and individual consumer goods
price level for capital goods
service price level
asset price level
real estate price level
total employment, employment by sectors of the economy and specialties
government spending and revenue
change in business conditions (laws, state support or the need for state support)
method and directions of GDP redistribution
economic growth dynamics
volume and structure of investments
exchange rate of the national currency
degree of liquidity
foreign trade balance
structure and volumes of imports
structure and volumes of exports
the level of income in general and certain categories in particular
level of GDP dynamics
level of income dynamics
public debt (external and internal)
refinancing rate of the National Bank of the Republic of Belarus
reduction in the number of transactions and their structure
change in the share of the shadow and legal sectors
velocity of money
savings rate
capacity utilization
bankruptcy
deteriorating market conditions
reduced access to goods
freedom of enterprise

It can be said with a high degree of certainty that certain changes will occur with all parameters without exception, which means that it can be recognized that the general conditions of activity will also change significantly, and the previous way of acting, the old methods and technologies will no longer give the same results that they gave before.

Moreover, some may even rearrange to give results. All this makes it necessary to carry out changes adequate to changing conditions. It may even come to the point where the principle will begin to operate everywhere – change or die.

Consequences for commercial organizations. The consequences of changing macroeconomic parameters will be twofold: some can be considered as pluses, while others as minuses.

Minuses. Among the minuses, which will lead to a change in macroeconomic parameters, the following points can be distinguished:

decrease in demand for products and services
change in the structure of demand
increased tension in working with partners
increased uncertainty
increasing the cost and availability of loans
changing consumer behavior
changing partner behavior
decrease in consumer activity
decline in purchasing power
increased risk
working capital deficit

Negative moments are only seemingly negative, but if you make some effort, it is fashionable to overcome them with minimal losses or even no losses at all.

Pros.

There are not many positive moments, but, nevertheless, they are. Among the most interesting positive points:

decrease in import volumes, especially of premium class goods
weakening of competitors
emergence of assets not sale
sanitation
reduction in the cost of labor resources
emergence of new values: reliability and adequacy of partners
ease in promoting non-standard solutions, ideas, products

However, the advantages themselves are not realized, so you will have to figure out how to deal with the crisis. In order for them to be realized, it is necessary to carry out certain work, take certain measures, and the sooner this is done, the more likely it is that it will be possible to receive the greatest bonuses from the existing new conditions.

What will happen if anti-crisis measures are not taken. One of the options for behavior in a crisis is to obey the mentality familiar to our country and do nothing, hoping that it will pass or everything will go away on its own. This is likely to be the most common strategy for most companies. Perhaps such behavior is justified, but, nevertheless, if you adhere to it, you must be prepared for the following development of events:

you can say goodbye to dreams
you can say goodbye to a happy future
you can lose a lot or even everything
family can be endangered
you can hopelessly lag behind competitors whose leaders have a different mentality
you can lose friends
can lose social status
you can lose your habitual way of life
you can lose your usual ways of resting

All this, of course, is nothing more than speculation. Most likely, everything is still calm and there is no reason for concern. However, this may be just an illusion caused by the action of inertia, when the majority behaves as if nothing has happened.

It is possible that the crisis is still walking in other areas of the economy, and has not yet reached your area, which again creates the illusion that everything has remained the same as before. But, as you know, miracles happen only in fairy tales, and any fairy tale ends sooner or later and you have to plunge into harsh reality. For those who take action, the dipping will be almost painless, and for those who don't, for those who don't prepare, things will end badly or very badly.

After that, those who did not take action will again blame anyone but themselves. They will blame everything around for the childish hope that a fairy will come and help. However, this will not happen. It will seem to them that they are saying something to others, but in fact their conversations will be a monologue with themselves. No one will hear them, because few people want to communicate with losers.

What happens if you take action. Habit is a strong thing. It is always difficult to change something in your life, to make adjustments and novelty into it. Therefore, often the new does not pass. However, there are exceptional circumstances where your whole life depends on whether you do it or not. Here it is already necessary to deviate from habits and take measures, because the measures taken will most likely allow:

not only "stay afloat", but also learn to "swim" even better;
find new business partners and friends against the backdrop of common interests to overcome the crisis
get a hefty dose of adrenaline
improve lifestyle
challenge the judge and emerge victorious from an unequal battle with her;
become a leader in the market and a leader of public opinion, and maybe even a legend;
get a fair amount of pleasure from being able to do what others could not do;
increase status and influence in society

It may not be enough for some, but it's much better than nothing, so it's worth a try.

What anti-crisis measures can be taken. Now that we already know exactly what a crisis is, we can take concrete steps in contrast to the moment when the idea of a crisis was mythological. The list of measures that will help to cope with the crisis is quite large, and includes:

building a marketing system or even better noomarketing
building a system for monitoring the external and internal environment
building an optimization system
increasing company flexibility
transition to a modular structure
building a stabilization system
building a risk analysis system
building a search system for new opportunities
building an expansion system
building a system for the development and implementation of innovations
building a demand creation system
building an outsourcing development system
building a partnership development system

The above measures will provide tangible benefits and minimize the impact of the crisis. Each of them allows you to get specific results:

Marketing system (noomarketing). The use of a marketing system (noomarketing) allows you to always control the situation, have competitive goods and services, an optimal level of demand and income.

Monitoring system. Constant monitoring of the external and internal environment will always allow you to know the real state of affairs, keep your finger on the pulse, take preventive measures and prevent the situation from developing to such an extent that it cannot be corrected.

Optimization system. The original state of nature and everything in general is chaos. If no measures are taken, then everything around tends to its original state – chaos. For this reason, it is very important to use an optimization system that will resist chaos and ensure that each unit of the spent resource brings the maximum return.

All the more important is the use of an optimization system in a crisis, in which there is a high cost of resources and difficulties in accessing resources, especially financial resources.

Increasing flexibility. The panic prevailing in the markets leads to the fact that a large number of unpopular decisions are made. This leads to a serious change in the conditions of management. For this reason, in order not to fall out of the “stream”, it is necessary to take measures that will allow you to stay in it.

One such measure is increased flexibility. The high degree of flexibility of the company allows it to quickly respond to ongoing changes and stay in line with current events. At the same time, those companies that are most flexible receive the greatest benefits from this, because they are among the first to respond to changes in the situation and offer exactly what the market needs at the moment.

Modular structure. The use of a modular structure for building a company allows you to quickly and painlessly make changes, because you don’t have to “cut it to the quick”, but just remove the currently unnecessary module, or add the right one and quickly integrate it. This approach will help to think less about how to deal with the crisis with the company.

stabilization system. You have to deal with fluctuations all the time. At the same time, some fluctuations go unnoticed for the company, but others can have an impact on it up to destruction. If you build a stabilization system, then it will be much more difficult to rock the company and cause damage to it, since there will be a much larger margin of safety.

Risk analysis system. Despite the apparent prosperity, we have to take risks almost every day. At the same time, in unstable conditions, the number of risks increases, and the variability of risk situations increases. The presence of a risk analysis system allows you to increase immunity to risks and make the future more predictable.

Search system for new opportunities. It may seem that everything in the world is unchanging and stable, but in fact it is not. Everything flows, everything changes, something faster, something slower. Everything is subject to change, from elementary particles to stars. Markets are also changing. New consumers appear, old ones disappear, new producers and sellers appear, old ones leave.

All this creates a myriad of possibilities. However, almost all of them go unnoticed. This is due to the lack of systematic work to identify new opportunities. This situation can be corrected only if a system for searching for new opportunities is built. Such a system will make it possible, among other things, to identify opportunities that open up in any conditions, even during a crisis.

expansion system. Staying in one place means sawing the branch on which you are sitting, for nothing is eternal. Any topic is exhausted sooner or later, so you always need to think about a new topic and strive to enter new markets, and it is advisable to do this not when the rooster has pecked, but in advance. Entering new markets can only seem easy.

In fact, this is not easy to do, because for this you need to make a set of efforts, and if some effort is not applied to the extent necessary, then there will be no result. For this reason, in order to enter new markets, it is necessary to have an expansion system. It allows you to determine the strength and direction of efforts, the necessary resources and the most profitable markets.

System for the development and implementation of innovations. If you look at the situation sensibly, it is obvious that even the most delicious, the most beloved, sooner or later becomes boring. If you do not give consumers something new, then they will stop buying your product, because no one has canceled the life cycle.

The only way to avoid this is to constantly offer innovations. But innovations themselves are not formed, they need to be worked on, and for this we need a system that allows not only to develop innovations, but also to implement them. There is no way without a system. Chaotic actions in this direction will not give the desired result, and may even interfere and lead to consumption of resources.

Demand Creation System. Taking into account the fact that our country is far from advanced and the fashion for something comes to us from other countries, it seems to our people that the demand is born by itself and it only needs to be satisfied. However, in reality this is not the case. Demand for most products and services must be created. The worldview, for which demand is something natural, is not able to see that any demand is essentially the work of someone, which means that it can be influenced through certain tools. Without understanding this, it is impossible to understand how to deal with the crisis.

For this reason, no one is involved in creating demand, but only trying to meet the current demand. In a crisis, demand will narrow and a very important skill will be the ability to create it. Again, it is practically impossible to achieve this by chaotic actions, and it is necessary to build a system for creating demand, because only it can cope with such a difficult task.

Development of outsourcing. Different companies have different resources, and therefore different opportunities, and hence different costs. In conditions of fierce competition for consumers, price will be a very important factor. For this reason, it is advisable to deal only with what you can do at the lowest cost, and what you can produce at a high cost, it is advisable to outsource to those who have the lowest cost in this business.

However, it would be wrong to let outsourcing take its course, because this can lead to negative consequences in the form that the supplier did not manage to deliver the necessary materials or components on time, which caused the delivery deadlines to be missed. In order to avoid such situations, it is logical to have a system that will ensure the management of the supply of materials and components transferred to outsourcing, because without a system one cannot cope here.

Partnership development system. There are some projects that are not possible to implement alone, but can only be implemented if you use the resources of other companies. This is especially true in times of crisis, when there is a lack of resources and it is not possible to replenish them quickly. In such cases, having partners is a very good competitive advantage.

In difficult conditions, proposals for cooperation will come frequently, but not all of these proposals will be profitable. Choosing the most profitable areas of cooperation in the best way corresponding to the goals and interests of the company, as well as choosing the most promising partners for these areas, allows building a partnership development system. Such a system will help to think less about how to deal with the crisis.

Selection and implementation of specific measures. Not all measures are equally effective, so it is advisable to choose those that will lead to the required results. The choice of measures should not take place spontaneously, it must follow a certain algorithm, which guarantees that these measures will be effective. World experience shows that the following algorithm is the most effective:

analysis of the situation
choice of measures
drawing up an implementation plan
implementation of measures
summarizing

Analysis of the situation. The first stage is the analytical stage. At this stage, the analysis of the company's activities is carried out. And not just an analysis, but an absolute and complete analysis, everything is analyzed. Nothing without this. If it seems to you that you can get by with a superficial glance, then go to the coaches and players of Juventus and Zenit, who could not achieve the desired results in matches with a modest BATE and ask why they did not win.

The answer is simple to the point of banality: the BATE coach has done a huge amount of analytical work, analyzing Juventus and Zenit inside and out. He understood the situation so well that even the presence of players of 30 million euros did not help BATE's rivals win. At the moment, the BATE coach is the most successful coach in Belarus and his approach can be trusted. Thanks to him, after 25 minutes, Juventus were losing 2-0, and Zenit, 5 times, could not score almost into an empty net, from which the ball was taken out not by the goalkeeper, but by a field player!

All this happened through analysis. It was the analysis that made it possible to compete on equal terms with rivals who many times surpassed BATE in all respects, except for the analytical work done. Rivals have budgets probably 100 times more than BATE, the cost of the teams themselves exceeds the cost of BATE 50 times. But this did not help them.

Goncharenko was probably one of the few who understood, and probably the very first to put analysis into practice. The result was not long in coming – the Belarusian club has never achieved such success. It is precisely the fact that the analysis brought the lion's share of success, says the re-match between BATE and Zenit, when BATE lost.

With a high degree of probability, we can say that Goncharenko did not conduct an analysis before the rematch, or this analysis was rather weak, which led to the defeat with a rather good game from BATE. In general, if we speak in the modern dialect of the current language, the analysis rules! Analysis rules not only in sports, but also in the economy. The turn of the Belarusian companies has come to give battle to the world companies. If you are ready, you can read on, if not, feel free to delete this file and forget that you have ever seen it.

Choice of measures. After a thorough study of the situation in the company, it is possible to determine measures that will contribute to minimizing the consequences of the crisis. The choice of measures must be approached carefully, and not according to the principle of firing cannons at sparrows. The choice of measures should be made by a person who understands what the consequences of each of the measures may be and whether the benefits from the measures taken will be greater than the costs of resources for them.

Drawing up a plan for the implementation of measures. It is impossible to embrace the immensity. In the context of the anti-crisis program, this means that it is impossible to effectively implement all measures at the same time, they must be implemented gradually and consistently, so that the implementation of one measure is not carried out to the detriment of another measure. For these purposes, it is necessary to draw up a specific plan, when and by whom the measures will be implemented.

Implementation of measures. The implementation of measures is probably the most difficult stage of the program. Everyone is used to working according to their usual algorithm, and it is very often difficult to overcome this inertia and start doing something beyond the usual framework. This leads to the fact that everything is put in a box and forgotten. This is not the way out. It is necessary to implement what was planned, and to do it exactly as planned and within the planned time frame.

Only minor adjustments are allowed. Otherwise, it will be difficult later to determine where the mistakes were made, and not to repeat them again. One of the reasons for BATE's successful play is precisely that the developed measures were implemented by the players who adhered to all the instructions for the game that were given by the coach. Thanks to this, it was possible to use the weaknesses of Zenith, which the coach saw, and at the same time neutralize the strengths.

Summarizing. One of the most important stages is the stage of debriefing. We must not allow such a situation when, after the event is completed, they forget about it under the splashes of champagne. This situation leads to the fact that there is no accumulation of experience. It can be accumulated only through the realization of why and how the goals were achieved.

Probably one of the reasons why BATE failed to adequately play the second match against Zenit is just ignoring this stage. After the ensuing euphoria, they could forget about summing up and as a result, the experience gained in the first game was not absorbed by the players. Most likely, it was this experience that was not enough to play the second match with dignity.