According to U.S. Census report released in late July, the U.S. lost roughly 223,800 small businesses between 2008 and 2010, representing a loss of 3.1 million jobs.

Even though these figures are from two years ago, prospects for SMBs haven’t returned to pre-recession levels. Small businesses have been growing and hiring slowly since the height of the recession, but a recent slowdown in hiring raises questions about the future and strength of the SMB recovery.

Even though we are post recession and have 28 consecutive months of private sector job growth, the perception is that we’re still in a recession. Our GDP growth fell to 1.5% in the second quarter of this year.

But there is good news — you don’t need a booming economy to grow your small business.

I’ve started and grown three businesses over the past 3 decades, through both austere and lavish times, and through two bubble bursts. While it may seem like the walls of your business are closing in around you, here’s how you can ensure your survival in the post-recession economy:

Give your employees the tools they need to become more productive

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U.S. productivity fell nearly a full percentage point in the first quarter this year.

We aren’t getting as much out of our employees as we have been, so how do we squeeze more juice out of the orange?

Collaboration is the key here. Your employees spend needless hours per week trying to find what they need to do their job. Get this number down by implementing a knowledge sharing solution that gives your employees what they need when they need it. If done correctly, you’ll see them collaborating in ways that boost productivity at a non-linear rate.

When resources are limited, you need to find ways to get more out of what you already have.  The best way to do this is to focus on your most expensive and valuable assets – your people.  Considering that payroll is by far the biggest monthly expense for most small businesses, it’s only logical to focus your efforts on people and productivity.

Get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off

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Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, made the point that having the right people on the bus and getting the wrong people off was one of the absolute prerequisites in building a great company.  I couldn’t agree more.  The seats are more precious in a small business and you have to make every one count.

In May of this year, small businesses had the worst hiring prospects in 8 months. More small businesses say they are planning to shrink their payrolls than those that want to expand them.

You may have some positions that are unfilled and have tried any number of methods to find the right people. Searching through LinkedIn, posting on job boards, and asking friends for recommendations only gets you so far.

The scenario has been echoed by businesses large and small:  the candidates you’re seeing aren’t perfect matches for your open positions. There’s an abundance of entry-level applicants, but you’re looking for experienced applicants that you can plug-in with minimal on-boarding and training time. Regardless of what you’re looking for, you can’t afford to leave those positions unfilled.

I will pick smart, motivated people who are banging down the door to get in over perfect experience (who may not be a good cultural fit) any day. The catch to this approach is that building an efficient and low-cost way to onboard new team members is critical.

Onboarding doesn’t have to take enormous amounts of time and be a cost center for your business. There are many affordable tools out there that allow new hires to quickly and efficiently embed themselves into the learning culture of your business, find mentors, ask and get answers quickly.

Turnover happens and no one is indispensable

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Everyone is a free agent and we talk openly about it.  Rarely does anyone stay in one company for a career anymore.  But employee churn can make it hard for SMBs to maintain a stable, productive team. Plus, you’re worried about ensuring the quality of the work of your employees. Competing against big companies when it comes to attracting and retaining talent is hard, especially when you can’t match salary offers.

There are two ways to fight against this. The first, and most widely used is to make your business an attractive destination for your current employees. For example, offering benefits and perks, promoting from within, fostering a strong workplace culture, strengthening employee relationships, parking spaces, etc. Countless strategies are out there, but they are time consuming and often expensive.

The other way is to accept this new normal of high turnover and build structures and systems into your business to account for it.

I recently wrote about how the Navy is a good example of how to deal with high levels of turnover. The Navy experiences 100% turnover every four years, yet operates at extremely high levels of efficiency, risk and expertise. Navy leadership have implemented principles that build and reinforce a strong culture of working collaboratively.  Thus, their knowledge sharing efforts transcend the high turnover.

While your workforce is very different from that of an aircraft carrier, you can still build in the right habits to capture and perpetuate the knowledge of your employees and improve the performance of both current and future hires.

Attract new customers

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The post-recession has wreaked as much havoc upon your customers as it has on you.

You’re caught between vendors demanding faster payment and customers taking longer to pay. Private companies took on average four days longer to collect accounts receivable in 2010 compared to previous years. Websites have sprung up that track clients that don’t pay their invoices.

Plus, after the .COM bubble, and the real estate bubble, what’s the next bubble and where will it do the most damage?

Most people will tell you to diversify your income sources, build a portfolio of clients in many different sectors. But how do you do this?

One idea is to monetize the latent knowledge in your business. For instance – you could open up a new revenue stream by creating a subscription site where you and your employees are experts about a certain topic, and users pay a modest amount per month to have access to your experience, advice, and content.

Your core business might be selling paper to other businesses. But your superstar sales team could also provide services to other small businesses to help them improve their own sales operation. Or perhaps your social media marketing expert could consult for local small businesses at an hourly rate.

Whether you are a product or services company, your latent knowledge and expertise is an asset that can generate entirely new revenue from a diversified customer base.  That’s the type of stability and agility that our small businesses need to create in order to thrive in uncertain times.

Small business credit is tight

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Small businesses are still having trouble getting credit, and loans aren’t easy to come by.  This has been called the “Tale of Two Recoveries”. Credit for large companies has returned to pre-recession levels while small businesses are still hurting.

But banks and conventional loans are not the only place to go to get your business the financing you need.  Friends and family are a great place for to access capital for your business.  Not only do they know you, they can be customers as well.

Almost every major city has an angel investor organization that actively invests in promising companies.  Many states have grant programs available to encourage new business activity and job growth.

Finally, quite a few fundraising website sites have sprung up recently like Kickstarter, or Prosper that use a combination of Web 2.0 technology, crowdsourcing and social media to help small companies access the capital they need to grow.

The key is to look beyond the traditional sources of capital and open up to new methods to circumvent the credit crunch.  In much the same way they you may have recently switched from an on-premise point of sale system to a cloud-based service, you need to think of switching from the old sources of capital (small business loans) to an alternative that meets the needs of your business.

At the end of the day – this is not about “getting with the times.”  It’s about dealing with the times. It’s about being resourceful and creating new options for your business. A small business that can adapt to economic trends, I would argue, is a stronger business than one that was merely fortunate to avoid the fallout.  

About the Author

Craig Malloy is CEO of Bloomfire, an Austin startup that offers knowledge sharing applications for teams and organizations. Craig previously served as Founder/CEO of ViaVideo (acquired by Polycom), founded LifeSize (acquired by Logitech), and is a former Navy officer.