Start with hard-nosed realism. If you've been studiously trying to avoid talking recession, I totally understand. Me too. But we must not ignore the above-mentioned elephant. Equally, we must not curl up in a ball until all the nasty stuff goes away. We've got to get busy.

When I wrote the review/preview article for January's issue, Tony Lock, MD of PenCarrie, told me "I believe the current economic climate is actually invigorating, in the sense that it will bring a breath of fresh air to many organisations and the fittest companies will have the opportunity to survive and to prosper." At the time, I thought that was distinctly over the top. I no longer do. He was talking about mental attitude, mental toughness and that's going to be an essential element of recession beating.

Running your own business is a consciously positive, optimistic activity. From set-up forwards you are making a statement: "I can do this better", indeed "I can be the best". So, when a recession comes along, that mental attitude is put under pressure. It's important to recognise how essential that is to success; if you think you can't, you won't. But if you stay upbeat when all your competitors are downbeat, you're ahead of them. Fear, not the economy, is the biggest threat to your business in the coming months.

Banish the thought that you are powerless in this situation. OK, you didn't cause the mess, and some of the fall-out looks truly toxic. However, as with everything else in business, you can make specific plans and undertake particular actions to ensure that your company bucks the negative trend.

First up, don't cut your marketing spend. In a recession you need to be marketing harder (which doesn't presume more money, incidentally), not less. If you go off the customer's radar when he's reading about closures in other businesses, he's inclined to think you've ceased trading. Also, plenty of your competitors will make exactly this mistake, so your activity will take place in a less crowded market place.

Part of better marketing is more and better selling. Having banged both of these drums in the last issue of P&P, I won't repeat myself, except to say that the winners in this recession will be best at selling. Those who are better will also keep their margins up. One of the worst sales traits is to cave in on price without a fight. Anyone can give product away. Working for nothing is not recession busting.

Chase payments rigorously. Tightening up on cash-flow management is a cornerstone of reducing costs and improving viability. By contrast, increasing your overdraft because you haven't been paid is a recipe for disaster. Chasing payment is done on the phone on day 31 of a 30 day invoice and is followed up in person if needs be. If you leave it to sending statements of account, woe betide you. In the same vein, invoice immediately work is completed. Don't leave it all to a given day of the month (as many businesses do); you might as well stand at an open window, throwing out money.

Talk to your bank. Do it regularly, keeping them fully informed of what you are doing to achieve targets. Given what's happened recently to the banks, your hearing should be far less ‘master to servant' than hitherto and it's sure that they are far more responsive to customers who do keep them informed. Don't wait until problems arise, do it now while your status with the bank is good.

How good is your accountant? If you're dissatisfied, find a better one, preferably someone who actually knows something about this business sector. Apply for all possible reliefs and grants. Right now, a good accountant should recognise that, if he insists on fees for every second of his time, he's likely to be part of the problem, not the solution.

I have recommended here before to join the Federation of Small Businesses. I repeat that idea. You get access to advice, help lines, significant savings and a customer base. organisation has over 200,000 members. Amongst the best deals they offer - and there are lots - is free business banking with the Cooperative Bank. That alone can be worth the membership cost.

Be more selective over your consumption of the media. I've commented before that newspapers and TV news are scary, so be picky about what you read, watch and listen to. That might seem an odd thing for a journalist to write, but it's the truth. You'll find more positives in the local press and radio and the trade media, plus more business opportunities. If you have a national daily delivered to your premises, I'd cancel it. You'll save some money and you won't have your staff starting the working day full of its doomy, gloomy headlines.

Let's get those smiles in place. You presumably know the golden rule of putting a smile on your face to use the phone. Make sure your whole team are doing it. Encourage everybody to apply the same thinking in all personal contacts: let's make this a fun place to be, not just for the benefit of customers, but for all of us.

Have you got a joker in the pack? Most businesses do. Get him or her to put a joke on everyone's desk every Monday morning, better still every day. Starting the day/week with a good laugh helps set a positive tone.

Start the day with some exercise. Walking or cycling to work is ideal but even if it's only a fiveminute trip round the block, it helps. The reason is simple: it gets fresh air into your lungs and kick starts the whole system. Teachers repeat constantly that children who walk to school are more alert, more enthusiastic and perform better than those who are driven. The same truth applies to adults.

Avoid the Eeyores. You might feel like a couple of beers at lunchtime after a depressing morning, but if the pub is full of moaners and groaners it'll do more harm than good. The same goes with suppliers. Tell any who carp and bind in your premises quite bluntly that you don't want to hear it - this is a positive environment and they have to join in or get out.

Pre-plan full days for yourself and push all the staff to do likewise. Personally, I find a list of activities chopped up into small pieces - each phone call, each letter, each visit separated out makes you do each bit and offers the satisfaction of ticking off a job done. I accept that this may not necessarily generate business, but it works better than a diary entry that says, "Call existing customers". At the same time, never do nothing. If you have a gap in the day, go and visit some new customers. Yes, cold-calling. It may deliver no results but doing something - anything - positive is better than sitting there fretting.

Can you introduce an element of entertainment into your letters and e-mails to prospects, and even more so, to existing customers? Can you inject some humour into the process? If customers think a letter from you is going to give them a lift, they'll read it. Clearly this requires sensitivity and care and a certain talent - not everyone can write wittily. You might just say: "we're smiles better; we're working to dispel the gloom so every communication from us will feature a piece of humour".

Do your staff understand the seriousness of the situation? If they're young - anyone under 30, or 35 for graduates - they have never worked in a recession. They will need a reality check. Assuming that they're not living in cloud cuckoo land, they will be aware that something very nasty is afoot. They are likely to be pretty worried - perhaps more than they need to be, because fear of the unknown is the deepest fear.

The first point to make is a simple but important one: this is going to be the toughest time of your working life, but it is possible to trade through a recession - millions of businesses have done it more than once. What's more, until you've worked through a recession, you're not fully experienced - it's another learning curve and they are not all nice.

Your second point is that you aim to keep the whole team in place for the upturn which will follow the downturn, but to achieve that you're going to have to be Scrooge. You have to demonstrate that the first person on whom that will land is you personally. Cancel the new car, don't recruit that personal assistant, cut up your business credit card in front of them. Make it dead obvious that this is serious with a capital S.

Every sales opportunity must be grasped instantly. I hear constantly of businesses which don't follow through assiduously on every single lead they generate. This is commercial lunacy of the highest order and if any of your team have become used to picking off just the low-hanging fruit, they've got to unlearn the habit, fast. Go back into that database and give yourself the hard, painful job of checking if any enquiries you didn't sell to are still in the market. This is embarrassing and a thankless task until someone says, "Well, actually, we did nothing, but we are interested now". You won't hear that often, but it does happen.

Every piece of expenditure should be scrutinised. This is where the Scrooge bit really kicks in. Do you need flowers in the showroom? How often do you need a window cleaner? Why are you buying expensive branded pens for the office? Don't print out e-mails unless it's essential. Get everybody to tidy their desk drawers and put all the unused booty back in the stationery cupboard (you'll be amazed!). Contact your utility companies and threaten to move to their competitors - there are big savings to be had.

The staff are going to have to work harder. You might broach the subject of putting in extra unpaid hours. Staying until six pm for instance to send out a list of prospecting e-mails. This requires kid glove handling and it would be far better if the suggestion came from them (see below).

If they don't like what you're saying, they might go down the road and find a new job. Really? They shouldn't bet on it and, if they did, they could well find themselves out of that job if the new employer hasn't put in place recession defence.

Look hard at where extra sales can come from. There are a number of routes, which may all look like a statement of the obvious: sell more of the same to the same people; sell something extra to the same people; sell the same thing to more people in your normal trading area; sell in a bigger catchment area. There are implicit costs in each of these, so you'll need to do your sums.

An important point is to involve your team in these activities and get them to throw in ideas. You might be pleasantly surprised what selfdenying solutions they come up with and quite possibly some clever ideas they hadn't yet mentioned. If you try to impose a new tougher regime without selling the reasons and getting their input it just won't work.

Finally, plan how you're going to tell customers and suppliers about the new regime. Either group might get jittery if they see cutbacks on visible costs.

The message is that you're in for the long haul and you believe that doing this now will put you far ahead of competitors who don't - it's a positive move, not a negative one and both suppliers and customers should be very happy with that.

Paul Clapham is a marketing consultant with over 25 years' experience covering a broad range of business sectors and a full spread of marketing disciplines. He works with small, medium and large companies alike to increase their profitability through marketing. Tel: 01453 765432

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