By Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and the Coalition to Leverage & Optimize Sales Effectivenes (CLOSE)

Customer retention, reactivation and recovery are essential areas of focus for recession-proofing global organizations. Consider some of these startling statistics from recent CMO Council/CLOSE surveys of global marketing and sales executives:

• 76 percent of senior marketers believe they are not realizing the full revenue potential of current customers.
• 67 percent of have no formal program for re-activating dormant or lost accounts.
• Just 50 percent have a formal strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key accounts.
• Only 46.5 percent say they have good insights into retention rates, customer profitability and lifetime value.

Now, more than ever, it is critical for marketing to do a better job of identifying and targeting predisposed prospects, delivering sales-ready opportunities into the pipeline, and optimizing the value and return on customer relationships. The sales force, in turn, must rely on marketing for more relevant messaging, content and campaigns that trigger buying and repeat purchase. Members of the channel have to leverage their customer proximity to drive continuous engagement and seek opportunities for up-sell and cross-sell.

Here are the CMO Council's 10 Steps for Riding Out the Recession:

1. Look internally at untapped revenue potential in the existing customer base.
2. Make sure you are doing everything to retain loyalty, and recover or reactivate lost accounts.
3. Dig deeper into customer data for up-sell, cross-sell and add-on marketing opportunities.
4. Grow customer affinity and connectivity through more co-innovation; create communities to continuously engage and listen to customers.
5. Empower frontline employees to further conversations and relationships at every touch point - turn customer pain into competitive gain.
6. Use the power of advocates to mobilize word-of-mouth and increase referrals and recommendations.
7. Add more value, dimension or appeal to the sale, instead of discounting merchandise or services.
8. Devise smart tie-ins or linkages with ancillary products or services to co-op the cost of marketing and increase perceived value.
9. Drive more interactions and communications to the web to increase market reach and the efficiency of spend.
10. Protect and enhance the customer experience; don't cut corners on customer handling or compromise product quality.