13 Tips for Small Biz to Thrive in a Down Economy

If your thoughts are primarily fear based, if you’re envisioning the worst for yourself and your business, if your conversations are focused predominately on bad news, then you’re seriously impeding your own success. Instead of giving succor to all the negative blathering, buckle down and determine to take three actions every day to improve revenue. Here are some suggestions:

1. Don’t pick up the phone unless it’s to generate business. Be ruthlessly disciplined about generating business as job one. Any activity that doesn’t secure new business should be delegated, or done during non-business hours. Prioritize everything else around this fundamental principle. During business hours, dedicate yourself to building business.

2. Virtually stalk your prospects. Describe your ideal customers. What types of organizations do they belong to? Join them. What kinds of publications do they read? Read them. What types of events do they attend? Attend them. Differentiate yourself with detective work about your targeted prospects. Research them and tap your network to learn more.

3. Work backward to move forward. If you’re a vendor tracking important ratios, you know how many qualified prospect meetings it takes to generate one client, and the average sale per client. With only these two pieces of information, you can control how much you sell each month. Determine desired sales volume, then conduct two to three times the number of qualified prospect meetings required to achieve it.

4. Invite scrutiny. Whose business acumen do you admire? Who’s already successful in your field? Whose clientele does your product or service complement? Invite these folks to be your advisory board. Meet quarterly to gain their advice on you business challenges. Advisory boards impose a level of scrutiny and accountability that both challenge and comfort. Ensure you get unbiased, unemotional, tough truths by not including friends and loved ones on the board.

5. Your pipeline is your lifeline. Never stop prospecting. In good times or bad, keep your pipeline full. Even when you’re flush with business, don’t get cocky. Realize that if you wait to prospect until you need new clients, it’ll be too late to achieve immediate results.

6. Lag before you bag. The lag time between a vendor’s first meeting with a qualified prospect and closing the sale is an essential ratio for managing productivity. The sales you bag today likely began at least three months ago.

7. Play the numbers. Whether you enjoy it or not is irrelevant; networking is an imperative. Learn how to do it well. If you want to survive the lean times, you have to network regularly, and focus on helping others. Understand that networking is a numbers game. Play to win!

8. Don’t pander; ponder! Showcasing your wisdom without taking time to probe causal factors can be insulting. Instead, honor the complexity of client issues. Be inquisitive about their goals, frustrations, hopes and struggles. Then construct a matrix of options, and augment this with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

9. Predict trends. Be vigilant about monitoring relevant trends, since they’re always in flux. Also, anticipate and maintain an awareness regarding forces that could affect the trends you’re monitoring. Doing so enables you to foresee and adapt to emerging trends before your competitors do.

10. Don’t defer getting referrals. Once you’ve delighted clients, conduct a brief interview to learn what they valued most about working with you. Using this information, draft a brief testimonial for them to edit and print on their letterhead.

11. Publicize or perish. Both credibility and sales increase from publishing articles or books, and speaking on your area of expertise. Every time you solve a problem for a client, produce an outline of the process from start to finish. Then fill in the outline, and voila, you have an article or a speech.

12. Don’t attend conventions without clear intentions. Recoup the opportunity cost of attending conventions. Identify and research your targets before you leave town, and then make it your mission at the convention to establish contact and engage them. Make your participation result in new business by preparing in advance.

13. Break it down to build it up. Identify key result areas of your business, such as prospecting, delivery, marketing, speaking, new product development, etc. Each quarter, write out measurable goals for each. Break these down into component parts, and include them in your calendaring tool.

No matter how many of these tips you implement, your own outlook and attitude can diminish their effectiveness. Those who prevail in difficult times are the ones who steadfastly refuse to allow negativity to form a barrier to their success. They instead deliberately and diligently take constructive action, thereby refreshing and reinvigorating their minds and their spirits. This enables them to take more action, which refreshes and reinvigorates.

Francie Dalton is president and founder of Dalton Alliances Inc., a Maryland-based consultancy specializing in the communication, management and behavioral sciences. Her new book, “Versatility,” published by ASAE, is available at www.daltonalliances.com. Dalton can be reached at 410.715.0484.