It has to be said that things are rather tough out their in the business world due to the current credit crisis. The recession is starting to bite and company profits are starting to become affected. The majority of small businesses are looking at ways of making cost reductions; some are laying off members of staff and others are finding different ways of reducing their overheads. These days obtaining cheaper business call rates is one of the most popular forms of cost reduction strategies. No longer are businesses accepting paying over the top for their call rates when in reality they can receive the same service at a much lower cost.

Now before I continue I must point out that I am in no way a cost cutting specialist, therefore I am not trying to sell you anything here. I am in fact a speech coach who runs a stammering course; I also have an interest in becoming a foster carer for my sins!

So now we have established that this is not a sales gimmick let us continue! That sounded rather abrupt. Cheap calls are now all the rage and there are specialist companies out there who are experts at finding you the cheapest call rates and therefore enabling you to save the most money. This is what they call in the city of London “a no brainer”.

I was reading an article last week about this very subject and one of the businesses that had managed to save a decent amount of money by this cost reduction method, made quite an interesting point. He stated the following:

“I am more than happy at the savings that we have made and at just how much lower our telephone bills have become. There is however a part of me that feels like somebody has been stealing from me for the last ten years, the period that our company has been in business. I really wish that I had acted sooner.”

You may think that this is merely sales jargon and in a way I suppose it could well be; it did however make me sit up and think.

So how has 2009 been for your company thus far? Are you ahead of your targets for this stage of the year? I hope, for the sake of your business, that you have answered both of these questions in the positive; I am however fully aware that the majority of the readers of this article will in fact be struggling. During the course of my week I meet a lot of business owners and from what I am hearing things are very tough out there.

So what can a business do in order to survive this recession? Well a number of the company directors that I have spoken with have contracted a cost reduction to enable them to reduce their business overheads. Having this extra pot of cash, from the savings that they have made, is of massive benefit as we are all very much aware as to how scarce money is right now.

Just a quick point before I continue; I am not a cost cutting expert therefore please do not think that I am trying to sell you something here. I am in fact a person who offers various forms of stuttering aimed at helping people to achieve fluency.

In which areas could a business potentially reduce their costs? There are, of course, many however the more obvious ones would be the electricity, gas and the telephone. Then there are the telephone charges; there are many company’s now offering a “cheap calls to mobile phone service”. There is also computer services, window cleaning, general maintanence, I.T, to name a few others.

There has never been a better time to think about ways in which your business could cut costs. I personally believe that we are now very much in the middle of this recession and I am yet to see any of those infamous “green shoots”.