What can Indian exporters do if demand for their services and products has gone down steeply in the U.S. and Europe?

1. Make trade shows work for you in a better way. Spend time and energy researching the smaller trade shows and regional trade shows. You may know all the major ones, but there are always plenty of minor shows going around. Find out as much as possible about the exhibitors, sponsors and participants of the shows. Be well prepared with high-class marketing communication. And most importantly, set up as many appointments as you can before you land up there. It's a lot of work, but it pays.

2. Look for buyers in unusual places. Try Japan or the Middle East or maybe even China - they are promoting imports in a big way. You may even want to go into Denmark despite a language problem. Translators are easy to find and you can localize your marketing collateral to impress your target segment. Research your new geographies with a microscope, find some collaborators and take the plunge. It's a bit like getting married; you need to look everywhere - including your backyard.

3. Rationalize your marketing and sales budget. Many companies make the classic mistake of cutting down their M&S budgets in line with their current revenues. The logic behind this cut-back is reduced earnings. However, you should actually rationalize your budget to be in line with your targeted revenues. You can't talk more about this because enough has already been said on this aspect, and for people who don't want to understand, more talk is not going to help. If funds need to be raised externally to save your business, we would say - do it!

4. If you can't innovate on your service or product, then innovate on things around them. There's a great story about a Japanese company which won a large account by sending a person to their client's factory in the U.S. to study the way the company used the product and they improved upon the size of the packages, the way they were labeled, and the way they were stacked to suit the way the factory's workers handled their products. While the story may or may not be true, it is a fact that your customers will love it if you give them a bit more convenience - even if it is a simple thing like instructions to use in one extra language. Think, think, think.

5. Keep generating newer leads all the time. And not just for customers but also for buying agents, collaborators and sales representation companies in your target geographies. If you are making plugs, you can always locate somebody who is making sockets - and complete the connection.

6. Use the Internet. After decades of the invention of the Internet, many companies still have a website that looks like a sad version of a brochure. It may sound like an unnecessary expense, but spend a little time on this and get somebody to do you a good website with good content on it. Spend a bit more and you can get Google to generate leads for you.

7. Brand your product. Just having a company name or a product name is not branding. If there are 200 people selling the same stuff that you are selling then there's no point in just having a name. A brand is created by the values that you attach to your product name - reliable, innovative, best in class, environment friendly, safe.

8. Go after market intelligence actively. Some of us think that market intelligence is just theoretical mumbo-jumbo. While there are a lot of big name consulting companies that are responsible for that impression, market intelligence is not just paperwork. It is the lifeline to the shore. Gather as much information as possible about the larger shifts in the buying pattern, large but slow shifts in the global industry, competition activities, and even on your customers. We need to keep profiling our customers on a regular basis and reading about them on Google News or other industry platforms.

9. Use automation for your marketing & sales activities. There are plenty of online CRM applications, email marketing software and leads management programs. They are not just inexpensive, but very simple to use.

10. In the end, do not wait for the global downturn to be over. The thing to do is to act now. Economists predict the recession will be gone by the end of 2009 and then we will go back to sipping wine and eating cherry. But if you remember, these were the same economists who were caught with their pants down when the recession came and hit them on their backsides (and our backsides).



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