9) Focus on the vital few: Focus on the ‘vital few’ initiatives that are critical to your business. Cancel or postpone those which are not considered core and those where you know you are unlikely to give the investment or support to proceed to full implementation in the current climate.

10) Rethink your marketing tactics: Never neglect marketing as an effective tool even in an economic downturn. The internet and social media tools such as Twitter are proving to be powerful low cost ways of maintaining and enhancing brand presence. Events can be very effective – particularly when you can provide the kind of training and education that customers may be cutting back on.

11) Be magnetic: Does your business generate opportunity while you sleep? It is important to ensure that you are working in a smart way to attract new business opportunities and ideas. The more your people are visible in the market and out there communicating, participating and adding value in physical and virtual social networks, speaking at events, writing articles in key publications and keeping the brand visible – the more ‘magnetic’ you become and the more opportunities will come to you.

12) Build confidence for the future: First, generate trust by sharing your results and plans for the immediate future. Second demonstrate all the things you are doing to create added value for your customers. Finally, make it clear that you are not panicking but using the downturn to innovate, plan for the longer-term future and review every aspect of your customer offerings to ensure they are adding value.

13) Focus on the future: Sales and marketing approaches need to shift away from simply promoting what you have to genuinely adding value for customers. A really powerful tool is to develop and share scenarios for how you see your market developing. Every customer that you serve needs to ask themselves, "What's next? What's going to change in the future?" It could be technology, new markets, environmental pressure or the way businesses are operated. Everyone is desperate for such insights but many don’t know how to gather and analyze the information or free up the time to do it.

14) Listen: You need the insight of your suppliers, distributors, affiliates, customers and ultimate end-users to fully understand their challenges, which will enable you to create the best possible product and service portfolio.

15) Adopt a winning mindset: Give yourself permission to believe you can do things a different way. You don’t have to follow the path of the rest of the industry. You can be the first try new approaches; innovation doesn’t have to be expensive. Try to develop this kind of mindset throughout the business.

16) Drive environmental improvements: Our environmental performance will be under increasing scrutiny. An honest and pragmatic approach is required. Acknowledge that it is a real issue, sign up for all of the key industry wide initiatives and act fast to implement the solutions that emerge. Measure your environmental footprint, benchmark against competitors and leaders in other sectors and determine the improvement actions you will take. Share your plans and progress with the supply chain and seek their input. Work with customers to create the next generation of more environmentally products that help address their challenges. There is a lot of good practice case material to draw on.

Implementing these 16 practical ideas will help you to both survive and thrive during the current recession.