Almost anyone can be successful during good times. The real test of an entrepreneur is thriving during a downturn. Doing so requires much more creativity, a keen sense of how and where value is created, and deeper knowledge of the needs of your key customers.

Here are 6 powerful and proven ways you can still profit during a downturn:

1. Add more value: Customers still have needs and are willing to spend money during a downturn. They just get much more pragmatic, and look for solutions that will provide greater value at a lower cost and a manageable level of risk. They’re less likely to take a chance on an unproven solution. If you have proof of the effectiveness of your product or service, it’s time to share these success stories with your key prospects. Focus on providing your products and services at a fair price that delivers excellent value.

2. Be of greater service: Increasing your level of service is another way to increase your profits during a downturn, albeit indirectly. Before the sale, that could take the form of consultative selling – offering qualified prospects with a free evaluation, for example. After the sale, services may take the form of helping your new customers get their new purchase up and running and efficiently integrated into the rest of their processes. Later on in the life of the product, such services could include preventive maintenance checks, advice on maintaining their asset and dealing with end-of-life analyses (do I keep this machine or trade it in for a new model.

You should also brainstorm ways in which you can increase your level of service before the sale. Some ideas include offering a free needs assessment to prospective customers, creatively bundling or pricing services in with the price of the product or its financing, or forming partnerships with companies that sell complementary products or services to create “bundled” solutions that meet more of a prospect’s needs. Overall, focus on delivering a superior experience to your best customers.

3. Be innovative: Brainstorm ways to rethink your current products and business model. Go beyond what your customers are telling you their pain points are to what that implies. Take a broad look at what jobs and outcomes they need to achieve. Your firm may only be providing a small part of their total needs. Can it cost-effectively expand itself into other aspects of your customers’ business processes? Keep asking “Why?” multiple times to drill down to the root causes of customers’ problems, and then think creatively and laterally about potential solutions. Select a handful of key customers to try out your potential solution. In return for giving you feedback that will help you to improve it, they get first access to a cool new product or service. That makes them feel special and helps to improve their loyalty to you – as long as you don’t stumble badly in your rollout of the prototype to them.

4. Provide assurance: During a downturn, it’s critical that you maintain the loyalty of key customers. Revenues are already down; you don’t need some of your best customers walking out the door. During times of uncertainty, provide these VICs (very important customers) with assurances that you will not compromise on the level of quality and service they have come to expect. Be a comforting voice that seeks to guide them toward a wise, prudent decision during tough times. Reinforce your relationships with key managers at your key customers. Providing them with moral support now can help you to retain them later.

5. Avoid the temptation to cut prices: Often, companies feel under tremendous pressure to cut their prices in response to competitors doing so. It looks like a quick and easy way to grab more business – but ultimately, it tends to weaken the companies that do it aggressively. It’s also a loser’s game, because someone can always undercut your price. Also, be careful about the relationship between your pricing and your brand image. If you don’t think this through carefully, you could do irreparable damage to your brand, which could hurt you further once the economy is back on its feet.

6. Empower your key customer-facing executives: Support, coach and mentor managers responsible for all touchpoints with your customers. They need to have a positive, can-do attitude. Sometimes that means moving a senior-level person out of the way who became cynical because of the customer spending cuts they had to live through. I saw that happen to an account manager I worked with at an advertising agency. A key client cut nearly $2 million from their spend overnight, and he became very depressed and openly cynical to managers on the client side. This caused an irreversible poisoning of the client-agency relationship that eventually resulted in the loss of that business. Don’t let this happen to you! Do what you need to do to put the right people and processes in place to keep your key customers satisfied.