Without a doubt, it’s a tough market out there…

I’ve been a tech entrepreneur for nearly 25 years. Over that time, I’ve seen some incredibly good markets as well as some incredibly bad ones. And while I most certainly prefer operating in a good market, I know from experience that it is possible for your business to be successful even through a downturn.

The key is to be sure you focus on the right things.

While there is no way to guarantee success in business – even in good times – here are five “best practices” that I believe can improve your odds of successfully navigating today’s choppy markets:

1. Deliver immediate, measurable value:

People today aren’t making buying decisions based on a vague value propositions or glossy sales fliers. If you aren’t offering something that addresses real business challenges in a way that clients can benefit from right away, forget about making any near term sales.

Realize that you aren’t selling a product – you’re selling a solution. The “product” is just the packaging the solution comes in. You need to understand in detail what a prospect is focused on now, and be able to explain in very specific ways how your company offers them the best solution to deal with it. Also remember that “value” is a function of both “capability” and “cost”. People will only be willing to pay for the specific capabilities they need regardless of what else may come packaged with it.

You’ll need to price that capability competitively, but avoid the temptation to do whatever it takes to close a deal. Even in a down market, not all business is good business.

2. Treat existing clients like gold:

As budgets tighten and sales cycles grow longer, every client you already have becomes even more valuable to you. While the revenue they generate for your business is a critical element of your relationship, clients also can provide a lot of value beyond that.

First, they can offer you real market feedback on what you are doing. This can help you refine the capabilities you bring to the market, and give you a better sense of where to focus and what to prioritize. Some of the best features I’ve developed in products have come directly from client suggestions. And those features helped me win new clients.

Another value you get from having a resume of clients is credibility. Prospective clients are much more comfortable doing business with someone that is already selling into their marketplace. The fact that others are willing to pay for your service can instill confidence in people considering doing business with you. The clients you already have are a measure of your success. And in any market, success attracts more success.

Happy clients are also likely to recommend you to other people in the business, helping you grow by word of mouth. Referrals from satisfied clients can be powerful.

So what do you need to do?

I have a simple rule for taking care of clients. Stop looking for ways that they can make you successful and instead look for ways you can become an invaluable part of making them successful. Good things will follow from that.

3. Listen, listen, and listen some more:

Talk is cheap, but listening is completely free. You need to get out and start hearing first hand the conversations going on in your marketplace. This isn’t just attending conferences and trade shows. You also need to go out in the trenches where business is actually happening. Try to understand the full range of issues people in your market are dealing with – the day to day issues as well as the macro challenges they face. Call people up and just ask for a meeting – you’d be surprised how many will say yes and be willing to talk to you!

To make this exercise worthwhile, check your ego at the office before you head out. Don’t go out looking to justify your own perspectives and plans. Explore the outliers and seek out opposing points of view. Welcome criticism. Reality may not always be flattering, but it’s what you ultimately need to deal with if you want to be successful.

Be open to being wrong, and willing to make adjustments. Talk less and listen more.

4. Grow your “contact footprint”:

The more conversations you have going on in the market place, the better your chances of finding new opportunities and closing new business. It’s the basis for most marketing, and ultimately a matter of statistics. So does that mean you should your start sending out mass emails and printing out product brochures?

Hardly! People just tune that out, especially in a tight market.

The key here is to aggressively network. Scour through your contacts looking for potential opportunities. Leverage sites like LinkedIn to target people you’d like to reach and looks for ways on- and off-line to get introduced to them. Become involved in industry groups and organizations that improve your odds of connecting with people that can help you. Reach out to relatives, friends, and even fellow commuters – they can all be sources of leads and opportunities.

If you’re thinking that this is standard operating procedure for everyone on your sales team, you’d probably (hopefully!) be right. The point here is that networking like this isn’t something that just sales should be doing. Programmers, secretaries, administrators, and managers – people at all levels within your company – have something of value to contribute here, and you need to find ways to capture it.

You need to develop a “networking culture” across your entire organization. Reward people that bring in new opportunities or open doors to difficult to reach prospects. Make it a habit to brainstorm as teams for new, specific opportunities. Challenge people to make creative suggestions.

Most people tend to do what is expected of them, so create an expectation here. If you’re not tapping into the networking value of everyone in your company, you’re leaving money on the table.

5. Sell to markets and relationships, not just to customers:

All of your customers have customers of their own and are looking at ways to strengthen those relationships. They face competitive pressures that drive their priorities and create unique demands. They have partners they work with, and suppliers they depend on. In short, your customers are members of a complex business/social network.

So go beyond just selling to them as if they were isolated entities.

Approach the market the same way an M&A firm does. Look for opportunities that exist between various people or various companies and start selling both side of it. Look for compelling combinations of content or capabilities that are being sold independently, and find ways to package them for customers that can increases their value or reduce their integration costs.

You’ll find opportunities like this in every market once you start looking for them.

While these types of opportunities may be more complex to pull together than ‘single client sales’, they do offer some meaningful advantages. These “strategic sales” can let you leverage the selling power of other individuals or organizations, extending your reach and helping you grow more quickly than you could on your own. Many of them can having multiple revenue streams associated with them, making them more dependable sources of income. These types of deals also become ‘stickier’ for clients since the cost of unwinding them tends to be much higher than the cost of replacing just a single vendor. You’ll also find that deals based on relationships between a firm and its clients can be less price sensitive then deals done directly with one firm. They are also less likely to be unwound when times get tough.

Exploring opportunities like these should become a component of your overall selling strategy.

Hopefully, these “best practices” will inspire you think more creatively about things you can do to optimize your own business. I’ve tried to make each one specific enough to be meaningful, but general enough to remain relevant to most corporations. That said, there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to running a business.

The title of this post not withstanding, I think the points I’ve made here are applicable during both good and bad times. I’m visiting them now because bad times can be a lot less forgiving, and demand that we pay a lot more attention to the business decisions we need to make. Good times have the grace to cover a multitude of sins.

To wrap up, I’d like to share two quotes that I think really capture the spirit of what it takes to be successful, regardless of the market:

“I’d rather be lucky than good.”

– Lefty Gomez

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

– Samuel Goldwyn

There’s a lot of wisdom packed in a those few simple words…

Good Luck!…