If you are a typical business owner, you are most likely spending a lot more money on gaining new customers than you need to – money you don’t have to spend – money that could be used to grow your business even faster – or money that could go straight to the bottom line of your balance sheet, and into your personal checking account to be used as you wish. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are better, more effective marketing methods than what most people are using. Here’s a simple little test that can give you an idea of how you’re doing. Ask yourself the following questions:

* What marketing methods are you currently using to acquire new clients?

* How do they differ from what you used when you first started in business?

* How do they differ from what was used by people in your business or profession 20 years ago?

* Do your advertising or direct mail campaigns produce a sizable profit for you every time you run them?

* Do you have an ongoing marketing system in place that produces consistent, measurable and predictable results, month after month after month?

* What kind of response rates are you getting from your marketing efforts?

* Are you satisfied with those response rates?

The fact is, most business owners are still attempting to market their products and services the same way they’ve always done, and that every other business like theirs is currently doing. Well, that’s exactly the way most business owners operate their businesses today. They continue doing the same things the same way they’ve always done them, and somehow expecting their business to be better.

Now, here’s an interesting corollary: If you do what everyone else in your marketplace is doing, what makes you think for a minute, that you can get any better results than they’re getting? You can’t. It’s impossible. Most business owners in nearly every industry or profession operate from a myopic point of view – they only see things a certain way. They reason, “We use sound marketing principles.

If we built our business to the size it is today using these principles, why should we change? After all, they’ve been proven to work.” Maybe so. But at what cost? If you really want your business to be successful, you must step out of the box, and look at the way other businesses in other industries market themselves and operate their enterprises. By adopting certain strategies – then adapting them to your business, you can take your business light years ahead of your competition, and literally, leave them in the dust.