Now is the time when successful retailers set themselves up for future success.

The economic recovery is coming. Really. You heard it here first.

The only question is when it’s coming. So far this year, business certainly suggests that it’s still not here, but I can assure you it is on the way.

Actually, there is a second question, and it’s a question that all small retailers need to be asking themselves. When the recovery comes, will you be ready? Will you be ready to take advantage of all the breaks that appear when a down economy turns back up?

During difficult economic times, farsighted companies reinvest in their businesses and prepare to fully capitalize on the opportunities that present themselves when the customer comes back out of hiding. Consider Walmart. In the late ’70s Walmart was a successful midsized southern retailer. By the time the recession of the early ’80s was over, Walmart had built the infrastructure to expand confidently from its southern base into every corner of the country and, ultimately, around the world.

You may have more modest objectives, but the lesson remains. Are you preparing now for the coming recovery? When it arrives, will you be prepared to fully capitalize on the new opportunities?

Here are a few thoughts on what you can do to prepare your business for the coming recovery.

Update your customer e-mail list. There are many small retailers who have never found the time to update their e-mail lists. I know from experience. Many retailers are still sending out postcards to communicate with their best customers, a timely and expensive way to stay in touch. Now is the time to contact the customers for whom you have no e-mail addresses. When the recovery arrives, you’ll want to be able to announce its arrival.

Update your website. A new era is about to dawn, and when it does, you don’t want your website stuck in the previous era. Maybe it needs a full makeover, or maybe you merely need to improve navigation. Perhaps you need to put more of your items on the site to increase your units and dollars per order. Or maybe you need to provide more product information or rewrite your text for better search engine optimization. Whatever your website needs in order to be generate more business, now is the time to get after it.

Invest in your salespeople’s skills. For small retailers, the personal touch is becoming an ever more important point of differentiation with the competition, large and small. Now is the time to invest in the training programs to improve your salespeople’s selling skills and help them connect more effectively with your customers. Now is also the time to schedule those seminars for your salespeople to update their accumulated product knowledge so that it remains state of the art.

Go shopping. When business is good, it’s easy to get all wrapped up in it. Now is the time to break out of the cocoon and go shopping. Shop your competition, shop everybody else, and look for those innovative ideas that you can apply to your own business. Shop the market to include vendors you might have passed by or overlooked in the past. Do they have items or categories that you might have missed, or new items or categories that you need to jump on?

Review your assortments. There are very few clients that I’ve worked with who didn’t need to tighten their assortments. When times are good, assortments have a habit of growing. When there’s more money circulating, marginal items and categories appear to have more potential than they really do. Now is the time to carefully review your assortments, tighten them up where necessary, and cull out and liquidate the deadwood.

Improve the customer experience. When your customers walk through your door, what do they experience? Are you exceeding their expectations and surprising them with things they never thought to expect in the first place? What new services can you develop that can address your customers’ needs, perhaps needs they didn’t even know they have? What capabilities, expertise, and skills do you possess that you can leverage to further distinguish yourself in your customers’ minds?

Give yourself a makeover. Stores have a way of growing stale right under your feet. Walls get dingy and carpets wear thin. Lighting that you thought was fresh and bright several years ago just doesn’t illuminate the merchandise like it once seemed to. Display fixtures start to feel dated, and the cash wrap starts to show its mileage. As you look at your store, inside and out, what needs to be done to make it feel new, fresh, and exciting again?

Think outside the box. A recession like this one represents not just a natural retrenchment of an overextended economy, but also a certain staleness in thinking. In a macro sense, the current approaches are no longer as compelling as they once were. This is a moment for fresh thinking, for reinvention, reinvigoration. Come at it from your customers’ perspective: think in terms of reconnecting with your customer. Which products, services, and experiences would capture their imaginations as they begin to venture forth from their bunkers?

Through it all, of course, you’ll have to budget carefully for whatever you decide needs to be done and then continue to keep a close eye on your cash. It is a recession, after all. But now is the time when successful retailers set themselves up for future success. Now is the time when savvy retailers reinvent themselves to offer customers a fresh and compelling experience once the gray clouds have given way to blue skies again.