5 More Tips for Business Growth in Tough Economic Times

By Chuck Terry
Executive Vice President & CSO, Carew International, Inc.

In a previous blog, I shared five tips for building your business in tough economic times. Since that proved to be a popular posting, I thought I would revisit the subject with five more suggestions:

1. Read Every Day- Read your local papers, the Wall Street Journal, and sign up for news postings on the internet. Look for articles about your prospects or that may be of interest to your prospects. Then share these articles with your prospects to let them know you are thinking about them and their business. Even if they are not actively in the spending mode, your continued interest in helping them will pay dividends down the road. This is also a great way to maintain frequency of contact, while adding value.
   
   
2. Meet Two New People Per Week- Set a goal for yourself of meeting and adding to your business network at least two new people each week. Ask your current contacts to introduce you to people they know, attend networking meetings, talk to other parents at your kids’ sports events; but find a way to meet AT LEAST TWO people a week that you can network with professionally for MUTUAL benefit. Although quality is more important than quantity, the more people you meet each week, the better. Make two new quality contacts per week your minimum discipline.
   
   
3. Get Creative- When times are tough, you need to be flexible and also more creative in how you approach your business. These are great times to find ways to stand out from the crowd. It might be creative pricing strategies. It might be creative marketing strategies. It might be creative selling tactics. Or it may be all of those and more. Challenge yourself to “get out of the box” and try some new approaches. A colleague of mine often recant the story of “The Watermelon Man,” a business owner who got creative in order to engage his top prospect, who had been avoiding him. He began personally delivering a watermelon a day to his prospect until finally; unable to control his curiosity any longer, the prospect told his assistant he wanted to meet “The Watermelon Man.” They had a good laugh and “The Watermelon Man” got the business. Get creative and have some fun with it!
   
   
4. Use Online Networks to Reconnect- Online social networks make it easier than ever to re-establish lost business connections. Go back through your old client files and look for all the people you know, but have lost contact with because they are no longer with your client organization. On a site like LinkedIn, finding these individuals is quick and easy. I recently invested a couple of hours to find past contacts from one particular client organization. As a result, I reconnected with ten people who had moved on to new companies. I did not reach out so that I could immediately ask them for business, but because these are people I admire and respect. Maybe I can help them, or perhaps they might help me someday. The only thing I know for sure is that nothing will happen if I don’t stay connected!
   
   
5. Set Activity Goals in Addition to Financial Goals- When times are tough and you aren’t having as much success closing business, it is critical to celebrate the success you are having in moving closer to getting business. It is tough to stay motivated in a sales slump and the last six months could put ANYONE into a bit of a slump. Set goals that you can reach daily; goals you know will eventually result in closing business, and then celebrate attaining those goals. It will help you stay positive, not to mention keep your sales cycle momentum moving in the right direction. I am not talking about rationalizing missing sales targets; rather, adding new ones that help you stay focused on the right activities during tough times.

There you have it, five more ways to keep growing during tough times. I will leave you with this quote from Henry Ford, “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”