This recession is a real bad deal for those businesses that sell to consumers. Instead of refusing to acknowledge that we are in a recession and saying, “business will pick up soon,” you need to take action and learn how to find prospects and turn them into customers. Here are 4 ways to do that:

1. Interact with customers. Managers need to be on the sales floor or wherever there are customers. Be helpful. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid of the answers. Find out what they like about your business, what they don’t like, what they wish they could find, etc.

2. Create buzz by leveraging your present customers. Invite your present customers to give a testimonial to post on your web site. If you have a retail store, invite customers to act as pseudo-salespeople on a Saturday. Advertise it as a “talk to our customers day.”

3. Keep sales people selling and customer service people doing customer service. Sure, a customer service person can sell or upsell or cross-sell, but your best sales person is someone who loves to sell – all the time. Take advantage of those people.

4. Help all your employees to leverage their networks. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Teach your employees to network. Ask them to tell 3-5 people they know about an upcoming sale and encourage them to ask those people to each tell 3-5 more people. If you only have 10 employees and each tells 5 people who each tell 5 people, that will be 250 people who get a personal invitation to your sale!

Using just these four strategies to change the way you do business will increase your business. At the same time, your present customers will love you and become more loyal. And, at the same time, they will become sales people for you wherever they go. The best advertisement is an excited customer!