Your next normal may not be so normal. We know business won’t suddenly come back full-throttle. It will open in stages. Now, most of us are beginning phase one (or we can at least see it in our near future). As talk buzzes of restarts, we’re left with a lot of noise and questions. How do we manage our teams, operations, and finances if the rules change every few weeks? How do we know when to move from one phase to another?

Sometimes we’re just stuck. We can’t see a way through many of the obstacles in front of us. We feel like our minds are spinning... like a stalled computer. We know there’s a pathway out of this pandemic into the new normal, but we can’t seem to move past the spinning color wheel and onto the next great thing. If you’re stuck, it’s time to get out of your day-to-day brain and figure out how to creatively solve the problems in front of you. To do so, you need a strategy.

What have you done lately to increase your customers’ perception of your value? If your answer is “nothing,” you’ve trained them to think of your value as minimal. Maybe you looked at the pricing structure we discussed in the previous webinar and thought, “My clients won’t pay that!” Why? You taught them what to expect. Your customers’ price sensitivities are a trained behavior. That’s actually good news. You trained them to have low expectations for your pricing… and you can un-train them.

Throw out everything you know about pricing. As we think about the future and how to establish a new normal when our companies reboot, we need a healthier understanding of pricing in the rental industry. The rental model is genius when business is good. You buy a product once and get to sell it repeatedly — but at what price?

Most of us are in the live event industry, which means we get paid to live and work in problem-solving mode. But since it’s all screeched to a halt, what should a workaholic problem-solver be doing right now? While we’re experts at solving problems on the job, it can be difficult to figure out exactly how to solve this problem. Business is on pause and we feel as though our hands are tied. They’re not.

How long can your business last? It’s a scary question, but one that every business owner (both AV and outside our industry) should be asking. To find the answer, we have to look at cash flow. It's crucial for staying in business during the current global situation.