I've been thinking on and off for, oh, about the past two and a half years about how to sell differently during a recession. Here are a few thoughts:

Sell to people whose spending isn't affected by the recession.

Not everybody hurts during a recession. A lot of people make less money, but some people make the same amount, and others make more. If you've been selling to the people who are out of work, either find ways to market your products to people who aren't, or adjust your product mix.

Focus your message on how your product will help people solve their recession woes.

If your product can make people money, make sure they know it and believe it. Sure, some people are tearing up their credit cards and locking up their checkbooks. But not everybody's single-mindedly curtailing spending. A lot of people are looking for ways to increase income, and are willing to spend if needed to do so.

On the other hand, if your target market is trying to maintain their image while cutting back on spending (and you're the low price alternative), dressing up your image without increasing your price might be the solution they need.

Offer your product in smaller chunks.

Here's an example: I just started doing this myself with my flagship product, CaRP Evolution. For years, I've given away a free, stripped-down version of CaRP, and sold CaRP Evolution with a bunch of plugins for $47.

As of last Friday, I'm giving away the core CaRP Evolution app, and selling the plugins individually for as little as $0.97. I'm also still selling a package that includes all of the plugins and bonuses -- pretty much the same package I was selling before. Only now, since I can add up the prices of the individual pieces and show that it's a $122+ value, I'm raising the price to $67.

I'm betting that I'll sell individual plugins to people who only wanted a few of them in the first place, and didn't want to spend $47 before. And I'm betting that a lot of the people who would have paid $47 before will pay $67 now, because they simply want it all, and they're part of the group who can afford it.

Conclusions

None of these ideas is necessarily a recession strategy. You should always be selling to people who have money -- you just need to pick your market more carefully now. You should always focus your message on how your product fulfills the customer's needs -- their primary needs have just shifted a little.

The last idea is the most controversial -- you don't want to offer too many options, confuse everyone, and sell to no one. But you should always look for ways to turn the traffic you're losing into paying customers. If you can accomplish that without losing your existing buyers, you're in good shape.