Sales are down. Now what?

What do you do when you see your sales start to falter, especially now in a soft economy? (Soft's kinda generous, really. It implies some structure, if only a bottom...)

Well, the first thing you should do is read SmallBiz Survival.

Then you'd see a great post today titled: What to do when sales are down.

In that post you'd see some great recommendations and tips, most of which are those you can do...today.

My favorite was:

• redoubling efforts to get new clients while doing as much to keep existing ones
  
• trying to get all employees with sense of ownership, we all in this together

A common mistake is to cut advertising and marketing budgets during a recession. Kinda makes sense until you realize that as your competitors fall by the wayside an opportunity grows for your company's message to be seen with less clutter, with less competing ads, with greater clarity. And when we, consumers, start buying again...your message, if consistently displayed, is the message they've connected with all these months.  At the very least keep your advertising budgets in place.

I'd encourage you to redouble your efforts to keep your existing customers. It's a two-fer tactic:  two benefits from one tactic.

1. You generate added sales from your existing customers.
2. You create customer evangelists. Their testimonials and word-of-mouth message that result are far more effective, cost-effective (ahem), than any other form of advertising.

And before you do this, you need to invest your time in creating owners from employees. Time is of the essence. There's an urgency. You have to create these new owners, today. On the other hand, employees don't become owners...today. Your time is required for your employees to embrace their new roles, really believe their new roles, as owners.

That time, your time, has to be spent creating an ownership manual for your employees that answers these three questions from their perspective:

• What's in it for me?
• Why should I care?
• Why should I believe?

Once you've answered those questions, you have your new owners. These are very active owners, the ones who make your brand, your company, now their company.

Disclaimer: I'm a guest author at SmallBiz Survival.