1. Develop your sales and negotiation skills. Always ask for a better deal – what do you have to lose? Remember that whatever you save goes right to the bottom line.
2. Double, triple or quadruple your sales and marketing activities. You will maximize results now because so many people are convinced no one is buying that they have stopped trying . . .
3. Demand more value from the media you are working with.
4. Consider repackaging your products and/or services (More on this next week.)
5. Go through all your processes and procedures. Do you have benchmarks that serve as indicators to see what is working well and what needs to improve? Define measurable targets for each area in your business and set improvement goals.
6. Do you have operational holes that drain resources and need to be plugged? Make sure you are not losing time or money unnecessarily.
7. Block out an undisturbed hour to take a critical look at your processes. You will be amazed at the difference a little thought can make to how you do things. For example, a financial planning client was able to increase revenues by 20%, simply by changing the order in which they scheduled their clients for reviews: They moved away from scheduling the easiest clients first to scheduling their wealthiest and best clients first and working everyone else in between those plum appointments.
8. Often thousands of dollars can be saved by simply focusing your attention on reducing seemingly fixed expenses. For example, a call to your delivery, telephone or credit card company can get you on a better plan that puts hundreds of dollars back into your pocket each month. You have nothing to lose!

What do you think? Can you spend at least an hour over the course of the next week trying out a few of these ways? Let me know how it goes for you by leaving a comment below. And if you have any other ways to take advantage of the current economic times, please feel free to share your thoughts below.