Let them know how you are operating, if you are open, how you are taking precautions and how you can help. Use email campaigns, banners on your home pages, social media and the good old fashioned phone to update your clients.

There are a number of very positive measures being offered for many and these can be viewed here on the HMRC website.

FAQs that will help support your customers and new business enquiries. Make these frequently asked questions readily available on your website, on social media and share via mail shots. This will help reassure your customers and minimise the resources required to support your customers to give them the answers quickly.

To help communicate what you are doing as a business and how you may be operating, host an online event and personally share the messages. Your customers want to hear from you. Invite your customers to join you on an online conference call and explain what you are able to do to support them and answer any questions.

These are uncertain times and it’s unlikely that many business owners will have a contingency plan for what is currently happening. We can only influence what we can control and taking your products and services to market in different ways can help. (view our resource guide on how to operate by industry by staying STRONG).

You have built your business up to be a huge success and your team made this happen. The knowledge and skills held by one team member are invaluable. One day this will pass and your staff will be there for you, and how successfully we come out of this terrible situation will be down to how much of your business and team you can retain. This will then allow for successful rebuilding.

Keep strong communications with your colleagues and clients. Invest in conference call software or free applications like Skype. Daily calls, screen breaks, set up chat groups and even set up a virtual pub where you can all log on at the end of the day for a catch up and your favourite tipple or a cup of tea.

First, identify how you can operate and within the constraints placed on us. How can we serve our clients and what can be achieved? Allocate your resources and team accordingly. Perhaps reassign jobs and tasks to other team members that are not able to complete their roles currently to support in other areas of the business.

Secondly, know your finances and plan for the next three months. What do the delays in paying your VAT and self assessment mean to you? How can the government support with wages assist you? Work your budgets for the best and most challenging of outcomes.

Third, commence projects that you have never been able to complete due to time constraints. Refurb that office, refresh the website, re-do the signage on your vans and write your strategy on how to support rapid accelerated growth when we come out of the situation we find ourselves currently in.

Basic economics requires there to be supply and demand. If we all stop spending and investing it will inevitably slow the economy down. What we must NOT do is stop all spending in these situations. If the drain needs clearing we need to clear it, if the car needs a service we must enquire for collection and delivery services, or if we are clearing gardens then order the skip and replace the fence panels. These small investments keep businesses operating and ticking over.