I wrote this article in November 2025. I often hear complaints from some of my friends about how difficult it has been to make money in recent months. Yesterday, I spoke with a colleague who said that it is now very difficult to get stable sales. What interests me is that I thought this phenomenon only applied in Java, but it turns out that this is not the case. My colleague in Bali also feels the same way about how difficult it is to get good sales like in previous years.
What I have learned is that this phenomenon has spread to various fields. My colleague who works as a freelance UI/UX designer said that there has indeed been a decline in income this year. I don’t know why this is happening, where the money is going, or when it will end. One thing is for sure: most people are being very careful with their spending. This has resulted in a slowdown in the flow of money. If you are a small or large business owner, perhaps some of the things I have mentioned will help you deal with this problem.
Guide to dealing with falling sales
I will try to create some guidelines for truly fundamental businesses. I will not advise you to buy certain stocks or sell some of your property to convert it into gold. When the economy slows down, our movements become limited, and the promotions we launch may not result in a significant increase in sales in the coming months or even years. Limited movement does not mean we cannot move at all. Here are some ways you can deal with this situation.
When sales decline due to a decrease in people’s purchasing power, measures aimed at instantly increasing purchasing are not considered wise. This is because people’s purchasing power has declined, so what kind of discounts or advertisements can be offered if people have no money? Sales may increase, but the effectiveness of your program will decrease dramatically compared to when economic conditions are normal.
The first thing I recommend doing to address this issue is to clean up internally. Sometimes we are too busy running the business that we fail to notice mistakes that occur frequently. Have you organized your business cash flow? Have you checked your company’s remaining materials? Times like these are the right time to do that.
Here are some things you can do to earn more profit without having to sell more products.
Pareto principle
The Pareto principle states that 80 percent of the results we get come from 20 percent of the effort we put in. You read that right: 20 percent of the effort produces 80 percent of the results. You can apply this to your business. Try to keep track of your sales—which products are selling well and which are not. You can increase the production of products that are popular and reduce those that are not. By doing this, you can minimize the risk of leftover products and maximize your profits.
You can see which customers bring the most profit to your business, and you can prioritize those customers, for example, by offering them payment relief compared to other customers.
Organizing administration
This is a very basic thing, but many businesses, from MSMEs to companies that have been around for decades, often forget to do it. Checking whether the invoice received matches the goods delivered and whether the money received matches the records, may sound boring. However, I often hear of companies that have been around for decades going bankrupt because they underestimated the importance of this.
I have always had the philosophy that if I don’t lose a million, then I’ve already made a million. By reducing potential leaks, you can extend the life of your business.
Expansion with minimal capital
If you want to remain aggressive in the face of declining purchasing power, my advice is to try to expand using the resources you already have without having to hire additional sales staff or advertise. Times like these are the most important times to learn what needs to be done so that your products will be accepted by the market.
Try checking your salespeople who go out into the field to see what obstacles they encounter. How are your products doing in the market? How do your products compare to those of your competitors? What are market conditions like? Listen to their complaints and find out what you can improve. Make small improvements to the products you sell and see what happens.
Let me give you an example. I work in distribution, and when I first started, deliveries were only made three times a week. If you want to increase sales, what would you do? Most people would add a salesperson to increase sales. But I tried a different approach. I went on a delivery and saw that the market closed at 11 a.m., while my shipment left at 11 a.m. From this point alone, it was clear that many stores in the market could not be covered due to late deliveries.
To save an hour, I needed to change the previous manual administration system to a computer-based one. I trained the existing administrators to do bookkeeping using computers, and we managed to cut the delivery time by an hour. What used to be 11 o’clock became 10 o’clock. Interestingly, sales, which used to be only three times a week, increased to six times a week.
Sometimes we can increase sales without having to put in additional effort such as advertising, promotions, or hiring more employees.
Lean Management
Lean management, also known as streamlined management, is a term commonly used in organizations that refers to how a small team can have a big impact by eliminating waste.
In my area, there are two companies working in the distribution sector. I cannot mention the names of the companies, but let’s assume that they are Company A and Company B. Company A is a very ambitious distribution company that aims to dominate the market. They have a large fleet that can even reach small shops in villages. Imagine how much profit they can make. Next is Company B. This company only has eight key distributors in one region. You read that correctly—they only have eight distributors.
In normal periods, Company A would earn a lot of profit considering the number of stores it controls. Company B cannot automatically earn as much profit as Company A because it only controls eight distributors. However, when people’s purchasing power declines, as is currently the case, everything is reversed. Company B can still operate normally, while Company A has to do many things to maintain its sales targets, including laying off many employees. Basically, the bigger a company is, the more difficult it is to move.
From this, we can learn a valuable lesson that we must be as lean as possible in running our business. If selling to only eight distributors is enough to distribute the product well, why bother adding more employees? We simply need to set a price level for resellers or partners and let them work to help us distribute our products to the market.
Conclusion
Basically, when the economy is sluggish like this, everyone is very cautious about spending money. Sales are declining in all sectors, so remain cautious in dealing with this situation and don’t be too eager to increase sales. Do everything slowly.
Also read: Data visualization techniques