What are strategies for accelerating sales in a slow economy?

Hunting and farming should be the strategy as you hunt continously for new avenues and farm the existing customers.Be a solution provider and build customer intimacy.Keep good control on recievables and inventory to have a better cash flow.

In my view, we should first know the importance of priorising our tasks. No matter the size of your business, place a mental image in your mind as if you are the largest and most successful person in your industry. Think how much time had been spend before and Spend more time with more important tasks such as marketing strategies, improving customer relations, and implementing new strategies to expand your sales and services.

When economies are good, usually customers buy, there is no sale required. But when things are not good, salesmen need to become creative and help customer gain better value through their products are services.

Salesmen should study customer needs in depth, configure a product or service that brings some business benefits in one way or other to the client. Demonstarte the same value to customer and the immediate benefits that your product or service brings to the customer.

Finally demonstrate the monetary value of time delays and as a result failure to benefit from your product or service for that much time.

In my experience, i have felt that, as each month goes by, the customers loses their buying power in our product. Create a customer database and contact them on a regular basis. Mail them a postcard, birthday card, sales flyer, newsletter etc. to keep your name, phone number, and service on their mind. Never lose a customer. During slowdowns retaining these customers is very important.

It is important to tap the right customers for your product/services. Be selective in investing your resources for the customers who have the right amount of funds to invest in your product/Services. No point trying to serve all by designing products/services with 'One-Size-fits-all' strategy. It will be waist of resources trying to gain Business from a customer who do not have enough funds to afford your product/services.

The economic meltdown has made us to eplore our sixth sense and plan accordingly. check your customers and make a desending list with least affected customers and target accordingly. Explore new buisness oportunities in other region. Explore for new applications. Explore new ways of Cost effective Marketing. Innovate according to market strength. Last but not the least This Slow economy has made us understood never to sail in single boat. 

Last but not the least to optimize the cost to maximise profit.

Thats the way to go...

Use promotional route to showcase the brand / product. Maximum visibility. Good time to liquidate stocks with irresistible offers. Do it pan country... Splash the promotions and use the cascader effect for the brand to be visible everywhere where it may not even enjoy a market share..

The ideas mentioned above require you to drive the results and find the customers, whereas this tactic will drive the customers to you. A well conceived tactical marketing initiative can drive targeted results in a short time frame. An aggressive combination of PR and digital marketing can create a windfall of new business sometimes within a matter of days. For these reasons I tend to favor direct marketing campaigns that utilize digital mediums which are extremely cost effective, highly targeted, and measurable in real time.

Hi,  It's a great time to look at different markets, different customers and explore different uses of your products.  I would say go for the blue ocean strategy.. fighting in the same space, espcially in a crowded & competitive environment won't really help sustain the performance levels leave alone add any incremental growth

Well there should be an ideal marketing mix with all the 7 ps and obviously the internet whose potential just keeps increasing atleast in our country India.

The extra flab has to be trimmed down in every department but getting the customers to you is most important with steps in place to convert , retain and if possible to wow them as a customer

The customer should be shown a value proposition which we have made specially for them considering these times of recession. This way they will also feel that its worth investing into.