After talking to a few of my customers that have been around for a while the general consensus obviously is that it is slow out there right now, but they are hanging on. I have seen a few customers go under lately and some survive and seem to be making out ok. I learned that the ones who are doing ok right now especially given the situation all agree that it is cheaper and more effective to focus on keeping the customers you have vs finding new ones. By that i mean that instead of spending money on advertising and/or slashing your prices to try to drum up some business call past clients, send them reminder cards, etc..
Work with what you got. Now I am not saying that you shouldn't try to find new customers by any means, but spend the better part of your time focusing on your current client base, and while doing that you will have time to knock on a few doors like I wrote about in the "cheapest advertising around"blog. Good luck out there, and I really believe at least for us in SW FL that if we can just make it through the summer we will be alright.
