What to do?  Cut one senior experienced position or three junior, net-savvy positions to save the same amount?  It hurts either way.  These people are not only colleagues but also friends.  But your first job is to protect the agency. You’ve read about the best way to let people go and will do it as professional and humane as possible.  

Once you have your expenses down to match your anticipated income, now what?  Isn’t that all you can control?

No.  Now you go to work on your clients; with focus on your best and most profitable clients.  Your unprofitable clients you may want to resign.  That seems strange in this economy but they are taking up valuable resources of the agency with no benefit.

Even your best clients are going through the same difficult times you are.  Maybe worse; they may also have to deal with unions and shareholders.  And, like you, they must sell something to stay in business. That’s your opportunity.  

They too need to do business more effectively and with less expense.  Hopefully they’ll turn to you for help and not your competitor.  If not, you have to be pro-active and go to them with new ideas to help their business.  These new ideas must come from your superior understanding of their market, their distribution, their competition and their customers.  Something your competitors won’t have.  

Start with their customers and work backwards.  Whether they are B to B or final consumers they too are dealing with a down economy.  What can your client offer them that will make their situation better?  A special deal?  A promotion?  A new money-saving way to use the product?  If you can identify that opportunity and help your client understand it and deliver it, you’ll have a new assignment. If your insight and idea helps your client move product, you will open the door to further smart assignments and have a happy client that will resist the siren song of your competitors.  

And, here comes the commercial, don’t hesitate to use your ICOM network to look for new ideas and opportunities within your clients product category.  Use the MAR system to know what your client’s competitors are doing in other parts of the world.  It will make you look even smarter.

Your goal is to keep your client thinking your agency is an ally in troubled times, not an expensive supplier.

Good luck.