Secrets to Success Deborah Cole Micek and John-Paul Micek

Accept input and be sure to respond

I'm talking about input and opinion that can position you as a leader in your industry, profession, or niche. Having a client-centered approach for business development can shave years of trial and error off your product and service improvements.

Let's face it. Your clients are going to have comments and feedback on any and all of your products or services. Why not make it simple for them?

With a specially designed business blog and a little marketing to your clients, you can have the same secret weapon that top international corporations use to dominate their markets.

The key is to direct them to a special business blog where they can voice suggestions, complaints and kudos in a way that benefits your company.

Setting up and structuring a business blog for this purpose works very well because it's non-threatening for clients. It helps open an immediate dialog with your clients as soon as they make a purchase. And, it lets them know that you value their contributions to the development of your products or services.

One word of warning though: If you're going to ask for feedback, you had better be prepared to act on it. You must respond and actively incorporate it into your product or service upgrades. Nothing will tick off a client faster than you asking for feedback, them giving it, and then you not responding or applying it.

Does your business rely on the creation of new products, services or information? If so, you can use your business blog and people's natural curiosity to increase interest with "sneak peeks" at your works in progress.

As an added bonus, with a properly structured and well-planned blog, your readers can interact along the way with comments, trackbacks or even private e-mails. With these forms of communication, you will be opening a dialog that allows you to collect valuable input. Plus, people who do open that dialog with you are prime candidates for testing the product or service before it goes out to the general public. They'll appreciate being involved -- so much so that they'll often become your greatest evangelists. And you'll appreciate the final fine-tuning that they will contribute.

Consider their input as money in the bank because it may affect your development process and generate improvements before your new product or service even hits the market.

Utilize the input from your clients and you'll find yourself so far out in front of your competitors that they will be gasping for air trying to catch up.