As time moved along, I decided to start my own consulting firm. I applied some basic fundamentals, got the promotional pieces ready and out they went! I waited... Hmm... No response. Ok, I sent out another set to the same people. I waited... Hmm... One or two responses. Ok, I sent out another set to the same people. I waited... and I waited... and I waited... Guess what? No new business. Now I couldn't believe this. I was so successful with clients in the past. What was this? I was perplexed. I kept mulling over my promotions. 'I did it right, didn't I?'

Wrong--I promoted but my promotion was off the mark. Something was missing in what I had done. I carefully investigated to find out what I had done wrong. Luckily I had just completed a course of study toward advanced certification that concerned evaluation and analysis of business issues. I applied it immediately to my own promotion and I found something that was very enlightening. There is more to marketing than meets the eye. There is even exact proven technology on this subject. As it happened, I was missing some key underlying points--even though I had once been so successful. I had done some things right but not consistently and never for my own company.

I went back to college and completed a full course on the subject of marketing. You must be consistent, and to do this you need to really understand the underlying basics. These must be applied especially when things get tight or tough like in a recession. Otherwise you can spend a fortune you don't have and may still get end up a loser."

Dave Sanders: "I want to share with you the pattern I have followed very successfully for 25 years as a business consultant to 300 different industries and professions.

My first action when a business is downtrending, which most are in the case of a recession, is to grab the last successful marketing campaign that was run and instantly repeat it as inexpensively as possible. I want to obtain an instant surge in business.

Next, I'll locate any successful campaign I've seen run that I think could work well for this particular business and run again without great expense. Then I run that campaign right away, bang!

Then while those campaigns are moving forward, I'll work out a campaign based on a full utilization of marketing basics. This includes a battery of surveys of existing customers (a.k.a. clients or patients), as well as surveys of prospects. This takes time, so I don't just put all marketing on hold while we get it done. Sometimes the first two steps above alone are successful, but in a recession it almost always takes fresh new market research to really finally create booming sales.

For example, I have a client in the art distribution business. As the recession set in, art sales suffered as buyer's incomes began to lessen or even dry up weakening their wholesale market. So first I had them do some mailings that had previously worked.

Meanwhile we created some new catalogs and a new newsletter to send out to pump up the wholesale business. But moving products as a wholesaler requires that the stores and galleries you are supplying also market effectively in their market areas, something we could not effectively control.

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