During this time of economic recession, what is your sales strategy?

When times are tough, customers typically reduce spending. They cut back on their purchases, hold off buying, decrease their budgets, even look for alternative (cheaper) suppliers. And all these can wreak havoc on your business, as well.

Brent Holloway, co-author of the book Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology, recommends that now is the time to pump up your Sales 2.0 strategies. These covers the use of innovative sales strategies focusing on improving process and customer engagement, such as:

• Selling more through video or web conferencing, saving on travel costs and increase selling time.
• Consider products and services, especially those of relatively small to average value, that can be sold profitably with a remote or low-touch sales model.
• Accurately capture key market information and metrics such as average sales cycle, average deal size and sales-cycle conversion rates. The information can help shape your sales strategy and better direct your resources
• Experiment and test: test a new sales message, pricing options, new technology, or even a new sales process

Tom Hopkins, in an article in Success Magazine , offers the following advice:

• Get out of the “woe is me attitude” and instead focus on what’s right with the world and your industry to come up with creative ideas for how you will continue to win business.
• Sit down and analyze what you’re doing differently today from when you were at your peak performance.
• Contact your best accounts weekly during tough times to let them know you care.
• Take a lesson from the Energizer Bunny and just keep on going.