I've been thinking about trends and suggestions for sales and marketing your small business in the New Year. Based on the current state of the economy, some of the "old" advertising and marketing methods are not going to work. This list of 10 suggestions will help you remain viable and profitable in the New Year. If you have any others to add to the list, please share them.

#1 Emphasize results. Now, more than ever, the focus will be on results. Clients will be seeking the best return on investment for all of their purchases. How can your business more effectively and efficiently demonstrate results for your clients? This is the time to capture testimonials of these results- and use them on your website, blogs, and in other promotional media.

#2 Emphasize referrals. The shortest sales cycles are those which result from referrals. If you have not focused very much on generating referrals, this is an easy to implement, no-cost way to grow your business. Benefiting from referrals is easiest when you know your ideal client and what results they most desire.

#3 Tell "teaching stories". A "teaching story" is, simply, a story of some results you helped a client achieve, but worded in a way so that it is generally applicable. These kind of "teaching stories" make it easy for potential clients to know you are a good match for them. You know you have a good "teaching story" when clients remark that your "teaching story" sounds exactly like them. These kind of stories are powerful shortcuts for delivering your marketing message.

#4 Emphasize your brand. This is a good time to get around to all those business branding efforts you might not have focused on too much lately. Does your business card need updating? How about your website? Do you have a blog? An online media kit? Are all of these fresh, current, and representative of who you are now? (This is one of the areas I'm focusing on very heavily in the first quarter of 2009.)

#5 Understand your most valuable promotional strategies (VPS). Do you know which promotional strategies are responsible for bringing you the most clients? If not, it's time to start tracking this. This will help you know better where to focus your marketing efforts. If you do have marketing which is working well, how can you improve on it even more? Little improvements can make a big difference.

#6 Develop new skills. The new economy requires each of us to go past our comfort zones and build new skills. Anything you do in your business could, potentially, become a product or service line. Are you staying current with your industry? Are there skills you could develop which would make you more efficient and effective? Would these be skills your clients would pay for?

#7 Focus on adding new marketing and distribution channels. It's not enough anymore to have a website and a blog. You also need to be involved in social media. You need to be spreading your message as far and wide as you can, by leveraging technology. Set up automatic marketing channels (AMC's) which work for you 24/7/365. This is especially important if you are a solopreneur. Examples of AMC's would be your website, blog, autoresponder series, voicemail, videos, audios, and articles.

#8 Develop passive profit streams. Taking the knowledge you have, plus some of the new delivery mechanisms available through technology, and you have a recipe for profit. Share your knowledge in the form of audios, videos, and ebooks. Build a step-wise system for prospects to become clients. Aside from bringing you income, informational products also help you prequalify your best long term clients.

#9 Build patience and perspective about the future. Instead of focusing on what might happen, shift your attention to what you can make happen. Maintaining a sense of personal autonomy and capability is a huge source of strength in the challenges of building a business.

#10 Create space for creativity and innovation. It is possible to create results very quickly when you give yourself space and time to find creative solutions. Obstacles are not a sign that you're on the wrong track. They are a signpost that you should keep going.

How about you? What strategies are you implementing to grow your business in the New Year? I'd love to hear from you. Thanks and Happy Holidays!

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Hopefully it's not just me (because that would mean I'm being cranky!), but are you, too, *really* sick of the doom, gloom, and all the negative press about the economy and the recession and blah…blah..blah?

Me too - in case you hadn't guessed that by now. I see so many people spending a lot of time worrying about what will happen when they really need to be focused on what they are going to do. In these times of uncertainty, we can sit around and worry, or we can refocus on our businesses and do more of what's working, and less of what's not.

This highlights the need for very good tracking and record-keeping. Every business owner should understand how he or she could generate more clients if needed. So rather than worrying about what's happening out there, focus, instead, on what you can do to solidify your business for now and the future.

Here are 5 tips I'm implementing in my own business:

1) Prune back anything that's not working. If you have been testing out some new ideas, and your preliminary results are not good, be OK with pruning back for now. This means cancelling services you won't use, perhaps reducing the size or scope of your service commitments, and placing your efforts on strategies which have served you well in the past. It doesn't mean you cut back on services or items your business really needs; but, instead, that you take a look at reducing your overall costs around services or items you don't need or don't use.

2) Refresh yourself on your most marketable skills. It's easy to become complacent when things are going well, but you must, periodically, remind yourself of what skills you have that you could get paid for- if you had to. In my case, for instance, I could take on more coaching clients, or build membership websites for people, or help businesses promote themselves through social media, or I could bring offline businesses online. I could also help business owners get started in blogging, product creation, and probably a whole list of other areas, too. I know I'm not unique. You have a multitude of skills you could be paid to do.

3) Continually cultivate referrals. This is a good practice all the time, but especially when you want to keep your client inflow steady. People who come through referrals are often pre-convinced to work with you, which makes it easier to close the sale. Referrals can help shorten your sales process and cycle.

4) Create additional streams of income. While we all would like to generate huge sums of income all at once, multiple streams of a few dollars each eventually add up to the same thing. If you can create additional streams of income, now is the time to do it.

5) Focus on holding steady, not contracting. This final tip refers to showing up each day and doing what you must do to keep your business running. This is not the time to contract (that is shrink and withdraw), and it may not be the time to expand, so your best option may be to maintain the status quo as much as possible. If a client cancels, consider that new-found marketing time or passive income creation time. Those who hold steady are less likely to be jostled about by changes in circumstances.

Every down cycle has an up, and the task for each of us is to keep our businesses steady until the cycle turns again. All the extra effort you put in now WILL result in a bigger, stronger and better business.

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