When it comes to business, learning to adapt to change is a must. This can be difficult though, for several reasons. This company may be your ‘baby’ – and adapting it from what you had originally planned may be a difficult step for you. You also might not even know how to change your business, for example, if competitors are lowering their prices but you can’t afford to do so, what can you do? Also, you might not have the resources or staff to help you with your change.
However big the change, and whatever it involves, it doesn’t have to mean bad news for your business. In fact, quite the opposite. By adapting to change, you can keep abreast of industry developments and provide your customers with what they truly need or want before other companies do.
Today, we’re examining office fruit distributor Fruitful Office, to see how they have adapted to change over the past decade of being in business. This interview with the brand’s business development manager, Vasco de Castro, gives us an insight into how a company can adapt to change successfully:
Consult people around you
You need to have a good team around you so that if something in the industry changes, you can call a meeting and have a frank discussion about it. Never make big decisions on your own. According to de Castro, it’s the Fruitful Office team who really helped the business to thrive. He says, “You have to surround yourself with a great team that you trust and feel comfortable delegating to. The team must share a common goal and be passionate about achieving it – so that they personally ‘care’ for the success of the business as if it were their own.”
Don’t forget your roots
You need to keep your idea at the heart of your business. For the fruitful office, this was about making our service seem personal. But how do they do that, when they want to reach a nationwide audience? De Castro says this involved setting up complex management systems and local distribution hubs throughout the country so that they could act locally despite not personally being there.
Rely on your customers
Your customers probably already rate your service, so when you need to change something in your business, keep them at the heart, consult them if you need to for advice, and rely on them to continue to support your business. According to de Castro, “Our name is now well-known in the office fruit marketplace and the high level of word-of-mouth inquiries we receive demonstrates our customer’s satisfaction in relation to what we are doing in this space. Throughout our expansion, we’ve ensured that our quality standards regarding fruit selection never change and that our service standards remain second to none.”
Learn from mistakes
You will always make mistakes and that’s OK – learn from them and move on. For Fruitful Office, their mistakes in the early days involved hiring a van which was old and unreliable for their fruit deliveries. Investing in better vehicles, Fruitful Office soon adapted and improved.