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B2B Approaches for Different Economic Cycles 131

for pieces of created content. The clients could then find
this type of service. This web services company also found
that instead of targeting small pieces of business, they could
actually address large gaps in their clients’ web content areas
because whole departments were being cut out. So instead
of their market becoming smaller, it actually became larger
once they stepped back and looked at the entire business
model.

A large homebuilder in the US found that their market
almost completely dried up when the real estate market
severely contracted. It was a desperate time for this builder.
They had to creatively figure out a way to create new busi-
ness in an extremely contracted economy. They asked them-
selves “What do we really do?” “We build houses” was the
myopic answer. The broader answer was “We build things”.
With this revelation, they discovered that there was a market
for building prefabricated walls which were much quicker
and less expensive to supply to the marketplace than having
builders create house walls on location. This change in strat-
egy saved their business and gave them the financial strength
they needed to ride out the contracted real estate market.

A manufacturer who assembled automobile mirrors was
dramatically hit by the downturn in the automotive industry.
What business were they really in? They assembled automo-
bile side mirrors. That was the myopic answer. The broader
answer was that they assembled subassemblies. Having
stepped back from their market, they started marketing them-
selves as an assembly company. They soon won a major
contract to assemble food blenders which gave them a solid
revenue stream to survive the contraction of the economy.

Mergers and acquisitions

As businesses enter into economies or markets that are con-
tracting or are in recession, the valuations of the businesses