Improve Market Share Without Spending A Penny

Developing a marketing plan is a great starting point for survival in these difficult times. Without a plan, organizations don’t have a chance of staying alive. Take the time to sit down with your team and come up with an approach to attack new markets and meet new people.

Get going now so you can put these tactics to work to help your company increase its market share.

 Don't Accept "No," "We Never Did It Before," "Our Systems Won't Allow It"

 If you let naysayers stand in your way, you will not succeed. Just because you have never done it before doesn't mean it won't work. Systems are there to serve the company –- not prevent progress. There is always someone who can figure out how to make a program work within the confines of IT or other systems. As a leader, you cannot allow "No" or other objections to stand in the way of a program that has great upside potential. These are times when leaders must be bold.

 Promote Your Company's Major Skills

 Your company does certain things very well. Is your technology particularly good? Are you great at developing overall campaigns? Do you have an eye for trends? Do your people relate to customers especially well? Look at your company very honestly and figure out the one or two things you do best. Then promote these to your customers and to your own people constantly.

 You may not be perfect, but if you are better than competition, promote it! If you have skills that make a difference for customers -- promote it! If you are universally loved by customers -- promote it!

 Go Back To Lost Customers

 When business was good, losing a customer may not have seemed important. Now that the market is significantly smaller, the customers who have survived are much more important.

 All it may take is a simple "we are sorry;" sometimes it may take much more. You must do whatever it takes to see those past customers who are not buying, and find ways to win them back.

 Price will be important, but it is not the only thing. There are other valuable tools you can bring to the table. Start by asking every salesperson to name the one potentially significant customer who used to buy, but now isn’t. Then work with the salesperson to figure out a tactical plan to get business back from that customer. If you do get some business from that customer, be sure your company handles it perfectly. Then go back and get more.