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In this challenging economy, some of the healthiest companies are those that are taking steps to win new business or preparing to scale up once money starts flowing more freely. We asked professionals who advise clients on growing their business for strategies to increase profit margins even as the effects of the recession linger.

Take advantage of bargains

When the stock market suffers a significant decline, many investors view it as a good time to buy stocks. Company owners should use the opportunity to invest in their business.

“The talent pool available now is amazing,” said Joe Campolo, a partner at the Bohemia law firm Campolo, Middleton & Associates. “The companies that are doing well are those that are investing in people, marketing and technology. Those three categories are the biggest bargains in the marketplace now, and the best investments to make to become scalable for future growth.”

Today’s bargains don’t only apply to organic growth. Anecdotally, Richard Daniele, a partner in the Melville office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, has noted an uptick in the mergers and acquisitions market. “Companies with a lot of cash may be able to get a good deal right now,” he said.

Keep marketing, but do it smarter

While it’s tempting to cut back on marketing to, say, keep the lights on, doing so can have a lingering negative impact on your business.

“If you don’t stay in front of your customers, you will make it easy for them to forget about you,” said Julie Gross Gelfand, executive vice president and director of public relations for Harrison Leifer DiMarco, a Rockville Centre marketing firm. “Retrenching can disrupt the pipeline of customers you are cultivating, who may be expecting communication from you when it suddenly drops off.”

With other companies doing less marketing, your message can command more attention through less clutter. “Companies with a small marketing budget can get more bang for their buck now,” said Katherine Heaviside, president and founder of Epoch 5 Public Relations in Huntington. “But you have to be more creative and more agile, monitoring campaigns more closely and making changes as needed.”

Newer technologies often present efficient options. For instance, setting up a Facebook page can provide a company with a low-cost tool to interact with customers, while products can be promoted through bloggers at a negligible cost, Heaviside noted.

Gelfand has noticed, over the past year and a half, an increase in the number of clients increasing their digital marketing budgets. For instance, the law firm Certilman Balin, which has offices in East Meadow and Hauppauge, started a digital advertising campaign on local news Web sites last year. According to Gelfand, despite the recession, the campaign has been so successful in growing the firm’s business that it is now looking to expand it.

Cross-networking among companies within complimentary categories is on the rise. Last November, ImageQuest Communications Inc., a public relations and event planning company with an office in Stony Brook, staged an event with several partners, so they could share expenses for the event while taking advantage of each other’s networking contacts.

“Among our goals for the program were to create or strengthen relationships with strategic partners, meet new prospects and rekindle relationships with ex-clients and influential people we hadn’t seen in a while,” said Warren Strugatch, a partner in ImageQuest. “We followed up with several small meetings afterward, as did our strategic partners.”

Make the message about your customers

Now more than ever, it’s important to communicate how customers will benefit when they buy your product or service.

Instead of focusing the message on you, talk about the issues or challenges your prospective client might have that you can solve.

“If we emphasize that we’re one of the largest sales training firms in the world and we’ve helped many large companies improve their sales, it’s going to fall on deaf ears,” said Richard Isaac, president of Legend Development Services Inc., a Hauppauge affiliate of Sandler Training. “It’s much more effective to point out that the companies in need of our services are struggling to be in front of an ongoing flow of new prospects, or when they get in front of the prospects, they don’t win as many as they would like.” As Isaac noted, it’s important to create a message to which prospects can relate.

Profit trumps revenue

Growth must be measurable. And the metrics shouldn’t just be about revenue, counsels Lee Munch, a certified business coach with ActionCoach in Hauppauge.

“Some companies only know their revenue numbers. They don’t know what their profits are,” she said. Figuring out profit margins for various products and services will help you make decisions such as the areas of the business on which to focus your growth efforts, which lines to discontinue or whether prices need to be adjusted. By taking a careful look at these factors, Munch said one of her clients recently realized a 300 percent increase in profits with just a 25 percent growth in new business.

Daniele also counsels clients on the importance of competitive benchmarking, such as comparing their product costs and product mixes to other companies in the industry. Careful analysis can help companies determine which costs to cut - those that are not driving new business or leading to deeper penetration of existing business.

“Make sure the information systems you have in place are giving you the right data to understand key value drivers,” he said. “Some companies are overfocused on top-line revenue, but there may be areas of the business with lower revenues but higher margins” that warrant concentration.

Campolo has noted an increase in barter agreements, such as a company renting space to an accountant in exchange for his services, or a landscaper and an accountant trading services. “If you don’t have to pay for these services, you can preserve capital to invest back in your business,” he said.

Systematize new-business efforts

Small-business owners are often so busy handling day-to-day operations, taking phone calls and putting out fires, that growth becomes secondary. It’s important to create a system and set aside time to go after new business.

“You have to have a process in place to track calls and follow-up steps, or you’re going to forget who you called when, where and how,” Munch said.

For acquiring new clients, Munch has her own 13-point system that includes seven touch points and four key areas that she measures closely. The steps include making contact, getting the prospect interested in her material, getting them to send back information that she needs, making a follow-up call and setting up a meeting.

These days, chasing down leads may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, but persistence may help you land more than your share of the market. “Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, doing more prospecting activity allows you to take control of your destiny,” Isaac said. “Despite the down economy, for the vast majority of businesses, there is still plenty of business going on.”