Business 101 - the fundamentals - should not be passed over during a recession. Today, we are in the vicelike grip of the “credit crunch” and businesses from continent to continent are feeling the pinch each and every day. The pace is gathering with ever more going out of business signs popping up - another symptom of the problems faced.

We have ourselves to blame in a myriad of ways. Economies act in cycles - when there are good times, this will inevitably be followed by a recession, this is not inevitable perse, but because economies are driven by emotions instead of hard and fast logic, balanced P+L accounting.

The greedy and the needy perpetuate these cycles. During the bear run, there is greed driving the incessant growth of the market. Management, Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers turn their back to suspect practices by their employees and in some cases give a wink to huge and irresponsible risk-taking. When everyone is earning huge sums, everyone is happy getting their bonuses and living it up.

You need to be careful when you hear the term “leverage” used by “these people” during an economic upturn. Leverage when used with prudence can indeed build a company organically and responsibly but when you over-extend your leverage your balance is lost. In fact that’s precisely what leverage is all about - unbalancing your books in favour of growth.

So, what happens when the bubble bursts - this happens for a variety of reasons but the number 1 underlying reason is fear. Those “in the know” become afraid when they see these huge unbalanced leverage disparities. When they notice a share price too high for a company, they look to profit take and start to sell, sell, sell.

The sheep-like mentality then kicks in and before long, a crowd are jumping on the bandwagon and making matters worse. The problem is - even businesses who were relatively healthy and who had not over committed themselves can also be effected as funding dries up, tough lending restrictions are put in place and the future which looked so bright before now looks very grey.

Increasing Your Sales
This is why Increasing Your Sales is so necessary during such hard times. Maybe you’ve heard of of the “Power Parthenon”. In this powerful strategy, Jay Abraham extols the value of having what others have called “multiple streams of income” for your business.

In computing terms, this is all about making sure you protect from a single point of failure in your business whether this be a way to get new customers, having multiple suppliers to source from and also having many products to sell.

With one product or service, you are in trouble. If you have a single product or service you are relying upon, it is inevitable you will hit hard times. So start preparing now if you haven’t already.

There’s an old Chinese saying:
“The best time to plant a seed is 20 years ago, the second best time is now”.

Apply this multiple streams approach to all areas of your business but remember you have to maintain focus on customer conversion very carefully to maximise the rewards you can get.

You need to look at your sales funnel as a chain of interconnected tasks and at each point in the process, you need to focus on maximising the amount of people you bring along to the next process.

Remember the analogy of a leaky bucket - no matter how much you pour into it (traffic), your bucket will empty before you get it home (a sale) unless you plug the leak (customer conversion).

http://www.PDQCustomers.com focuses on customer conversion and increasing your sales.