You'd think that a business dealing in strategic planning would be sitting pretty during a recession. After all, it's the perfect time to consider a new strategy or business approach that can help you get through the downturn and emerge victorious on the other side.

But it hasn't worked that way, says Beth Zimmerman, founder and principal of Cerebellas LLC, a strategic advisory company that helps businesses find, develop and exploit new revenue opportunities.

In the early days of the financial crisis, she says, companies were doing what felt comfortable for them. "They would ramp up marketing, fix websites and revise sales brochures. But they weren't doing so because they had a new strategy or a new business approach," she says.

As the recession grinds on, there's a resurging interest in strategy, Zimmerman acknowledges. "But now there's a greater sense of urgency because they squandered so many months sitting on their hands," she adds. As a result, companies don't want a high-cost solution that takes weeks or months to develop.

So Zimmerman--no slouch when it comes to re-strategizing her own business--came up with a couple of new flat-fee programs that she collectively calls Strategy Bites: 1. Strategy 9to5, which distills what is typically a weeks-long strategic planning process down to a single day's session. 2. Strategy 911, which provides senior-level over-the-shoulder counsel to executives who don't have a ready peer group or mentor available.

Zimmerman designed Strategy 9to5 to go straight to the fundamentals. What should our goals be? How do we prioritize them? What's the right sequence of goals so they'll have a halo effect on each other? Sequence is important, Zimmerman says. For example, if a company has five goals for the year, if it does goal No. 2 first, that might have a positive effect on goals No. 1 and No. 3.

Zimmerman says she spends about an hour on the phone before with the CEO or the business owner to get a sense of the issues and request essential documents. "But believe it or not, I don't need to know as much as some people think I do.

"My goal is to help navigate the management team to decisions that they buy into and that, at the end of the day, are going to improve their business."

As for Strategy 911, what makes it valuable is its ability to accelerate the decision-making process. "Yes, you're spending money, but you're working through business issues more quickly than you would on your own," Zimmerman says.

The new offerings present an object lesson about retooling your offerings to meet the demands of this recessionary market. Zimmerman says people calling to inquire about the new offerings are intrigued by the creativity as much as by the offerings themselves. It's giving her credibility for the ability to strategize and retool her own business.

Companies continue to find innovative ways to reconfigure their services in the down economy. What's yours? Tell us about it.