Bridget Shuel-Walker has felt the futility that is a part of trying to manage a business through a recession. You go out and you get a new contract and feel good that you’re giving your revenue a boost. But just as you are starting to feel better about things, another customer informs you that it cannot afford to buy your product anymore and now you’re right back where you started.
“We just have to continue to put that new business in the top, whether it is through new accounts or continued penetration with our existing accounts,” says Shuel-Walker, president and CEO at HP Products.
“We have been in business for 45 years, and it has been through many economic twists and turns. I do not believe there is any quick way out of this situation, so we will continue to do what we know and what our customers want. That focus on servicing the customer should continue regardless of the economy.”
Shuel-Walker says it is easy to get consumed with strategies and ideas on how to manage through difficult times. But if you focus on what you do best and continue to plug away at improving that, she says you will stand a much better chance of coming out the other end intact.
“We have become better businesspeople,” Shuel-Walker says of her $150 million company, which produces cleaning products, supplies and equipment. “It is about going out and taking share at this point. Our competitors are still surviving. We have got to go out and take the market share.”
Shuel-Walker credits her company’s adherence to its profit-and-loss statement as one of the keys to its ability to endure in difficult circumstances.
“We have looked at every expense there is to address,” Shuel-Walker says. “You look at that P&L and you go down the list and you address every one of the points.”
Here are some of the ways Shuel-Walker got her team of 400 employees to focus on the nitty-gritty details to keep HP Products moving through this most recent economic storm.
