Eventually, a steep downturn affects just about everyone. Marketing and sales people can become discouraged during economic downturns. Current customers may cancel orders or buy less than they have in past months. New customers often demand more for less. Frustrated managers and sales representatives begin to push each other. Managers want greater volume from the representatives. The sales representatives clamor for lower prices and special deals, assuming they can push customers into buying more if the company cuts prices. 

Pushing harder on prospects who are skittish will not achieve positive results. Clearly, customers and prospects who are experiencing lower sales will not respond well when pushed harder to buy. In fact, many prospects will resent an over-zealous sales representative. Past experience indicates that pressing prospects to buy more, and offering a lower price tends to alienate existing customers (oh, so you have been overcharging me all this time?). New prospects cannot be pushed into buying from a new source either (so, you are desperate, eh?). Can you recall your own reaction the last time someone tried to strong-arm you into buying a vehicle or some other expensive purchase? Furthermore, there is a steep decline in profitability attached to each percentage the firm drops it's established prices. Making up for low margins with greater volume seldom works. This approach, which does not work very well during good times, will work less when times are tough.

Pulling in your horns is another approach employed by companies that are strapped for cash. Managers cut advertising, drop trade shows, and eliminate other marketing expenses in an effort to save their way to profitability. Some may even trim the number of sales representatives (both inside and outside types) which, in turn, reduces overall sales effectiveness and may disturb customers who have grown to rely on the individuals terminated. Prior studies show that firms who continue effective marketing and sales effort during slow periods ultimately end up with improved market positions. Those who curtail marketing pay a price in overall position. Sitting on your hands, waiting for business to come to you, is also a prescription for long-term trouble.

• First, try to find ways to maintain your most effective marketing tools. It may be a good time to take a hard look at each expense item and to jettison any that have not helped you reach your goals. Keep the basic methods that have worked for you. Support your troops well and expect them rise to the challenge!
• Stay close to your key accounts. Get even closer now and reinforce the ways you have served each customer. Help them remember why they chose you as a supplier, and why they should stay with you.
• Look at individual customer buying patterns. Are you selling each customer all that they could buy from you? Existing customers are the quickest and easiest to sell on additional products and services because they already know and trust you. It may well be in their best interest to consolidate more of their business with fewer suppliers. What could you do for an existing customer if that customer increased the number of products or services purchased from you?
• Ask each customer to share their concerns with you and your representative. Look and probe for ways that you can be of even greater help. Listen to each customer and they will usually tell you how to sell them more, or how to keep the business you now enjoy when your competitors come knocking. If your customer isn't doing well, you will not do well either!
• Build new relationships with key prospects. Focus on learning about their concerns first. Demonstrate your interest in helping them improve their overall situation. Look and probe for points where their needs and your capabilities intersect. The relationship approach beats begging for an order every time! Your key prospect already has a relationship with the current supplier, right? You must find ways to 'create hate and discontent' with what your competitor is now providing, so the prospect will open his/her mind and seriously allow you the opportunity to do a better job of meeting that prospect's needs. Your existing customer base is bound to have some degree of attrition (bankruptcy, merger, credit cutoff, etc.) so you will need a strong new business effort just to stay even and grow a little. Let others do the suffering.
• Customer relationship management (CRM) is a marketing imperative in today's marketplace. Ideally, you are already utilizing relationship selling and marketing to retain and gain business. If not, there is no time like the present to implement the relationship-building approach. Although the term CRM is relatively new, the concept is ancient in marketing terms. I learned and utilized the power of relationship selling in 1963 while with Mobil Oil Corp. on the West Coast. Mobil called it 'Program Selling' and it was highly effective with large commercial and industrial customers nationwide. Now, 45 years later, I am still a strong advocate of relationship selling, which stresses putting yourself in your prospect's shoes, uncovering needs that you can effectively fill, then collaborating with your new customer to implement changes that ultimately realize your mutual goals.