OK, as Chief Marketer for your small business, you recognize that understanding customers is one critical key to long-term profits. If you know what your customers want, then you can tailor both your product and your marketing message to the customer.

One inexpensive way to uncover what customers want is to assemble a team of your best achievers. We like to call this the Bloom Team, and with it you can:

• Uncover insights about your customers from individual experiences.
• Discover new ideas from team members' interactions.

Your Bloom Team members may be adept at their jobs; however they may not open up at a meeting. Staff may be shy, or they may have been burned by speaking at a meeting and later having their idea ridiculed in some subtle (or not-so-subtle) way.

Or, you may have the opposite problem. Perhaps you've a few members on the team who like to open up a bit too often; perhaps they enjoy hearing themselves talk. Perhaps your Bloom Team meetings are the only time they get a chance to talkpossibly nobody listens at home. There may be good reason for this, but you must think they have something to add; else you wouldn't have invited them to the team.

You will run a more effective Bloom Team meeting if you learn to use questions to your advantage. Plus, you will more readily draw out needed information from the participants. Remember: the Bloom Team isn't just an exercise; it is the #1 well for a small business marketer to draw out new ideas. Even if you have sufficient funds to go outside and hire an ad agency, there is still no substitute for listening to your staff members as they bring their own front-line experience to the table and then interact with other staff members in creating new ideas.

Learning how to use questions to steer the Bloom Team meetings will help you immensely in uncovering that new marketing magic you need to help your small business grow. A great book to read on how to ask the right questions is Tom Reillys Value-Added Selling Techniques.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks