February 11th, 2009 by Brian Klansky
Every day I read more and more blogs extolling advice for how companies should shift gears to survive the recession and save money. Come on everyone, this isn't rocket science!!

There are ONLY 2 things that you should do in a tough economy:

Cut costs and/or increase sales. Many companies make the mistake of only focusing on cutting costs when this economy is actually an opportunity to increase market share. Do those two things, using the following 3 golden rules to stay competitive during a market slump:

1.Get the leading indicators of sales success-When they find the black box, or the flight data recorder it can tell you what caused the crash. However, what you need to do in this environment is make sure the plane doesn't crash! S what does this mean for sales? You need to know before you miss your forecast and correct activity quickly.

Are your sales people making enough calls, is marketing providing enough leads to make your revenue objectives? Most people look at what's in the sales pipeline, but then at that point it's too late to make any substantial difference. You need to be thinking about next quarter.

2. What you measure improves-The number one reason why marketing gets cut in this environment is that most companies can't prove $1 million dollars spent on marketing produced $1 million dollars in revenue. You have to measure everything and then invest MORE money in what's working, and not less.

Do you have the tools to do this right now? Are you measuring the right things?

3.Survive-Don't cut sales or marketing, but cut everywhere else. Think Engineering is a nice thing to have? Perhaps staffing is a little fat? Time to be lean and ask yourself if you survived to this point with who you have, there is probably a bit more you cut.

Show everyone's commitment to this by getting more hands on in the sales process. Don't think the CEO should have to be involved in closing deals? Well, its better to be involved closing deals then the alternative, which is updating your resume.

Almost every great American company was made during a down economy, for instance Microsoft, CNN, HP, Fedex and many others. The survivors came out of the down-turn stronger companies and leaders in their space.

Will your company be one of the leaders coming out of this recession? Stick to these two strategies and it's a possibility. Best of luck out there!