I have a confession to make. I’ve made some mistakes over the past couple of years with a few of my clients. This is what would happen. Every now and then a client would hire me to write copy for their Web site. I would do so. A few months later, they’d contact me. The site isn’t working. We haven’t gotten any sales or leads from it, they’d say. I’d get on the phone with them and we’d talk about it. And invariably, I would hit upon the problem.

Courage is sometimes defined as “Grace under pressure”.

In business terms, it is “growth under pressure” that demands courage.

This is not as contradictory as it sounds. Growth is inherently a high-pressure activity at the best of times. It involves one or both of two stressful activities – either establishing a market where none existed before or seizing a share of an existing market from competitors.

This is clearly not the best of times. It might therefore seem to be insane to be even thinking in terms of growth when the top of the “To Do” list of every entrepreneur every day is “Survive”.

Before you started your business, or even started planning one, you were just a regular citizen, and likely a regular employee. You didn’t worry about business plans, hours, hiring services, profit and loss, or any of the business issues that business owners face every day. You probably paid a little attention to marketing and advertising because it’s all over the place, but you never had to worry about getting your name out there. Perhaps the state of the economy crossed your mind, but not for very long. Now, as an entrepreneur, knowing this information and paying attention to these details has become part of your everyday. Fortunately, there are ways to focus on developing a positive business mindset and ignoring the stresses of every day life.

Yes, we're in a recession. But people and companies have not locked up their wallets completely. If you keep your wits about you, you'll ride out the recession just fine.

Four Recession-Fighting Marketing Tactics

1. Emphasize the value you provide. Whenever possible, position your offering as an investment rather than an expense - not necessarily by using the word "invest" but by making it extremely clear how and why the customer will be better off having bought your whosiewhatsit.

To every new potential client your business is like a lake on a nice summer day ... the idea seems like a good one, but plunging in could be a shock to the system ...

This is why it's important to have a way for your potential clients to dip their toes in the water of your business. From this toe dip experience then a prospect is often ready to take the next step and engage further with you...

Top salespeople have similar habits to collector car enthusiasts. A car collector or enthusiast can have what is referred to as a ‘daily driver,’ or an every day driving automobile. A ‘trailer queen’ car simply goes from a heated and air-conditioned garage to a trailer for transportation to a show. And the ‘trailer princess’ is the collector car that only gets driven on perfect weather days and is also transported via trailer, usually for shows. Salespeople who have a consistent flow of sales have a strategy that includes all three of these kinds of ‘cars’ in their pipeline.