Contrary to popular belief, small businesses can survive a crazy economy by taking some proactive steps.

1. Provide spectacular customer service -- every time. Have a friend or colleague visit your business and provide feedback from a customers perspective. This person should be unknown by your staff and willing to provide a candid assessment.
   
   
2. Make sure your front and back office work like a well-oiled machine. Are the front line and the back office telling your customers the same thing?
   
   
3. Manage your customer relationships -- return customers take the least amount of effort -- use that to your advantage. Keep in touch often.
   
   
4. Review your strategic plan monthly (weekly is even better). Make sure youre doing the things that will get you where you want to go.
   
   
5. Adjust your strategic plan as necessary. Your "smallness" makes you more flexible.
   
   
6. Communicate, communicate, communicate -- with your employees and your customers. Nurture those relationships. Ask for feedback often.

Denise O'Berry

With more than two decades of operational and management experience, Denise O'Berry has developed a sharp eye for how businesses get bloated with inefficiencies, cross-purposes and miscommunication -- and how they can retool for a sleeker, smoother, strategically focused organization.

An entrepreneur who quickly built her own successful consulting business, she helps other small business owners set priorities, take action to grow their business and create the balance they want between life and work. Her clients have ranged from telecommunications giants like Verizon to Mom-and-Pop retail shops with a primary focus on those having 10 or fewer employees and up to $2.5 million in annual sales.

Denise frequently speaks to professional organizations, is the author of three booklets, and several "how-to" manuals. She writes a weekly small business column, hosts an online small business owners forum and is called upon regularly by publications such as Entrepreneur, Bank Rate Small Business, Florida Trend, Inc., various newspapers, radio and television to provide expert comments on small business issues.

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