by Jay Abraham

Listen to your customers' comments. I wouldn't try to argue or rationalize or "Yes, but" them. I'd objectively and respectively and devoutly want to see how they view my company and my people and my business, and I would ask them about the competition. I wouldn't pussyfoot around. I would say, "Let me ask you this question: Do you buy from the competition? If not, why not? If so, why? If so, what do they do that I don't do better? What do you like about them more than you like doing business with us? What about their products? Are their products better? Are their salespeople better?

By asking your customers questions on a continuous basis, you get the bonus benefit of bonding yourself to customers at a higher level than your competitors can ever imagine. More important, when you lose sales--either to people who don't purchase or people who used to purchase and stopped--you can almost always regenerate or salvage that business.

Most people stop buying for diverse reasons. One is certainly price, but it's often not the critical issue. More often than not, the customer does not feel that he or she is understood, or that their needs are fully appreciated and served. By securing a customer, client or patient cooperative, a partner-like contribution in making your business a greater provider for them, you endear, engage and ingratiate yourself with current, past and future customers at a level you can't believe.

That's the bonus. The literal benefit is that your customers, clients or patients will tell you all kinds of things that you're doing well that you might not even appreciate and on which you can focus greater effort, promotion and sales attention. If you assure them that you appreciate it, they will share with you insights into areas of performances in your company or people or product or services that may not be as superlative as you thought. You can ask them how you can improve, and they will tell you. All of that help is free!

The next thing I would do is shop the competition. I would call them. I would visit them. I would then call people who I know are their customers. Or talk to people who I know are the competition's customers who I have the occasion to deal with.

And I would not do it covertly. I would ask them forthrightly, what do they like about my competitor's business. Why do they do business with them? What do they think about the product or service or the people? And I'd listen with an eye--again going back to my philosophy of "adapt and adopt"--to learn what the competition does that I don't do.

The answers to questions like these will help you further strengthen the strongest parts of your own business and help you start strengthening the areas that are weak. It can also show you weaknesses in your competitor's ways of doing things that you might be able to profitably exploit.

Pilfer From Your Peers

Adapt and adopt the successful techniques and ideas of other businesses to your business or professional practice.

Let me go even further and say, "Go ahead and steal those good ideas." In business, you can't get arrested for copying the successful techniques of your peers, your competitors and businesses in entirely different industries, unless it's a patent, trademark, copyright or some other legally protected concept or product.

Become an idea felon. Pirate ideas. Pilfer ideas. Be so good at "borrowing" profitable ideas that you receive a life sentence of business success! (That's not, of course, to say that you should ever do anything unethical or illegal. I know you wouldn't do that.)

What's the worst thing that could happen to you if you adapt and adopt profitable ideas? The absolute worst thing that could possibly happen is that someone might say, "Yeah, that was a great promotion, but they got that idea from so-and-so."

You know what I say to that? Great!

So, let me get you started on the road to becoming an idea felon. You'll find it useful--if you aren't doing so already--to take the techniques and concepts that I discuss each month and visualize how they can be adapted and adopted to your business. Not only do I want you to visualize how they can be adapted and adopted to your business, I want you to actually go out and adapt and adopt them to your business or practice!

What I want you to do is to stretch your mind. Starting today, I don't want you to even think of saying "That technique doesn't apply to my industry."

Nonsense! Who says it doesn't apply to your industry? Where's the law that says it doesn't apply? You were put on this earth to be creative, so let those creative juices flow. Adapt and adopt--and pass your envious competitors on the way to the bank!

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This resource is (c) Jay Abraham, a renowned marketing expert, and is taken from the "Jay Abraham's Business Breakthroughs" newsletter.