Are service businesses heading for hard times?

To recession-proof a service business today you need more than hope, you need a concrete plan. You need the Blue Screen of Death method.

In times of economic woe, the first chops are areas that I call "maintenance." The important but not urgent activities. In your personal life they may be things like health club memberships. In your business, it may be motivational speakers and company retreats. After all, cash flow is King. We cannot pay employees with hope. We cannot pay the utilities with optimism.

So what do you do if you are that Motivational Speaker?

All of a sudden your ability to demonstrate the 15% productivity gains quarter over quarter is simply academic since your proof is likely fuzzy. Did they really gain productivity because of YOU?

You get relegated to the "Nice and important, but not urgent," category and that category gets slashed from the budget.

The question is, were you solving a complex problem for your client that allowed her to make those productivity gains or were you simply pumping up the staff for brief bursts of energy that happened to create those productivity gains? In other words, did you create long term or short term value?

If you are creating long term value for your clients you need to find a way to remind them of the complexity that you solve for them. An effective way to do this is the Blue Screen of Death method.

Blue Screen of Death Method (BSD):
Who hasn't experienced the agony of BSD? It never happens while you're reading the comics online, it happens when you are putting the finishing touches on the video presentation you will be making tomorrow. You may be willing to swim shark infested waters to avoid having BSD hit.

And that is the brilliance of Apple. Apple products have sub-par specifications and yet, people flock to them - non-turtleneck people, regular people. Because Apple brilliantly plays on your perpetual fear of the BSD. You start to hear voices in your head telling you that having an Apple means everything will just work. They very strongly compel anyone who has ever lost significant sleep over BSD to desire an Apple product.

And THAT is what you must do to save your service business from a recession. You must find your client's Blue Screen of Death that you can solve for them and focus them on fear of returning to that pain rather than proving how awesome you are. Pain is a much stronger motivation. Besides,if you really are so great, what you do will look simple to your client.Focusing on the pain keeps the complexity you are solving ever present and keeps your value invaluable.