Questions That Help a Business Survive a Downturn: A 90-Day Plan

By Michael D. Rubin, CEO & Founder · Updated September 2026 · 748 words

When sales slow or a shock hits, the owners who come through best stop reacting and write a short plan: a handful of hard questions, answered honestly, turned into three to five actions with a name and a date beside each one for the next 90 days. The plan is not a wish list. It is a set of commitments you can check at the end of every month.

The idea spread widely in 2020, when many owners were forced to pause; the PPP and the Main Street Lending Program from that period both ended in 2021. The discipline outlasts the moment. It is worth running whenever revenue drops, a large customer leaves or you start thinking seriously about a sale.

Start with questions about the business you actually have

A downturn exposes what the good years hid. Before deciding what to do, get an accurate picture of where the money comes from and where it goes. These questions do that:

• Which customers, products or services produce most of our gross profit, and which lose money once labor and overhead are counted?
• How many weeks of fixed costs could we cover from cash on hand if revenue fell by a third?
• Which three customers would hurt most to lose, and when did I last speak to each of them?
• What do we still do by hand, on paper or in one person's head that software or a written procedure could handle?
• Which suppliers, lenders or landlords should hear from me now, before a problem forces the conversation?
• If a competitor bought us tomorrow, what would it change first, and why am I not already doing it?

Turn the answers into a 90-day plan with numbers

Ninety days is long enough to finish something real and short enough that nobody loses interest. Pick three to five actions, no more. Each one needs an owner, a deadline and a measure you can check: margin on a product line, days to collect receivables, hours saved per week, a signed renewal. A goal such as better marketing is not an action. Calling your top twenty customers before the end of the month and logging what they need next year is.

Review the plan every two weeks in a short meeting. Drop what is not working, finish what is, and on day 90 write the next plan. After two or three cycles the habit becomes part of how the company is run rather than a crisis exercise.

Ask the people closest to the work

Owners often write these plans alone, which wastes the best source of ideas. Managers, estimators, dispatchers and front-desk staff see waste and lost customers every day. Ask each of them two questions: what slows you down, and what would you change if the company were yours? You will hear things you did not know, and people who helped shape the plan work harder to deliver it.

Bring in outside professionals too. Your CPA can model cash flow under a bad-case scenario, your banker can talk through loan covenants before they are tested, and an M&A advisor can tell you which of your problems a buyer would care about most.

Why the same plan matters when you sell

A buyer asks roughly the same questions a good 90-day plan asks: where profit comes from, how dependent the business is on a few customers or on you, and how it behaves when the market turns. An owner who can show several cycles of written plans and results tells a buyer the company is managed, not just operated.

That affects price. Buyers of companies with $3 million to $100 million in revenue most often pay three to seven times adjusted EBITDA, meaning earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization after one-time and owner-specific costs are added back. Where a company lands in that range depends heavily on how predictable its earnings look. If you expect to sell within two years, aim the plan at what buyers weigh most; the twelve-month plan to prepare your business for sale sets those items out in order.

Where MDR & Associates comes in

Our pre-exit consulting covers the 12 to 24 months before a sale, and much of it looks like the plan above: finding the issues that would lower an offer and fixing them while there is still time. When the company is ready, we take it to market through our ten-step process. To see where you stand today, start with a free valuation snapshot.

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Questions owners ask next

Is a 90-day plan worth doing when the company is doing well?

Yes. The questions are easier to answer honestly when nothing is on fire, and fixes made from a position of strength cost less. Many owners run one cycle a year as a checkup, even in strong years, because the same habit makes the company easier to value and to sell later.

Should I tell employees the plan is linked to a future sale?

Usually not. The plan stands on its own as good management, and there is no reason to mention a sale that may be years away. If you later decide to sell, a confidential process keeps that decision among you, your advisors and screened buyers until the right moment.