My Top 10 Business Learnings from the Past Year

As we recently passed the 1-year anniversary since starting into the national lockdown due to COVID-19, I took some time to reflect on my own business learnings. Like many businesses, AM Bid initially suffered a sharp contraction, had to take some difficult decisions and since then have ‘pivoted’, ‘bounced back’ and our business is now stronger than ever. My 10 key business learnings from the past year are:   

1.      Do the right thing for the business – you should consider this to avoid risk of losing your business and therefore, potential loss of employment – not only for yourself – but for your current and potential future employees.

2.      Take decisions – at the start of the crisis we quickly comprehended the scale and severity of the pandemic and acted decisively.

3.      Communicate – ensuring regular, timely and open communication with your staff, clients, supporters and family throughout challenging periods helps people understand where things are at.

4.      Don’t drop your prices – trust the quality of your services/products; avoid dropping prices as a means to chase revenue.

5.      Embrace the change – look out for opportunities that this may be bring to your own business.

6.      Do new things – for me this meant starting to do LinkedIn Live broadcasts. I don’t think I’m a natural on video but I don’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough and it has been great to find an audience who are interested in the work-winning content I am sharing.

7.      Watch your cashflow – reserves are vital within a business, so keeping a very close eye on your day-to-day cashflow should help ensure that there are no unpleasant surprises.

8.      Keep checking in with your people – at AM Bid we’ve had regular facilitated virtual social sessions that have allowed us to spend social time together; this helps mitigate the social isolation that many people are experiencing just now.

9.      Take a fresh look at your risk register/ contingency planning – the pandemic has reminded us that we live in a fragile world – our climate, economy and public health are all fragile. This will not be the last severe shock that we have to try to navigate our way through.

10.  Never stop being grateful – and reach out to provide support to people who are in a difficult situation. A small act of kindness or help to a business or individual who is struggling can go a long way to help them rebuild things.

As the pandemic has still not run its full course, I am sure that there will be other learnings on the journey. What have been your key business learnings during the past year? I would be very interested to hear them.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Morrison is the Founder & BD Director of AM Bid, one of the UK’s leading bid consultancies. AM Bid launched in October 2014 and has enjoyed remarkable growth, already winning a string of awards and nominations for its work across over 20 sectors. It is a Corporate Member of APMP UK – the professional body for people working in bidding. All permanent members of staff have APMP bid qualifications. In October 2019, AM Bid lifted APMP UK’s People Development Award.

Andrew holds an MSc in Housing Studies (with Distinction) and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Before starting AM Bid, Andrew spent four years leading British Gas bid teams across the UK, with a further five years as Business Development Director with a property services company bidding to the public and private sectors. His spike is that before his bidding career began, he spent twelve years working in local government, so he has both client and contractor experience. Andrew has led bid teams to over ￡1.5 billion in tender wins, and AM Bid is consistently achieving bid success rates of 80%+ for its clients.