Marketing is without a doubt the most crucial element for the success of any business. Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing said, Marketing is everything you do to promote your business from the first moment of conception to the point at which customers patronize your business on a regular basis.

Because marketing encompasses so much of your business success, you must have a marketing mindset if your business is going to succeed. To develop this mindset requires that you have a very open mind that looks far beyond the initial transaction to see all the dormant possibilities of re-working, cross-selling, and follow-up. You must be willing to experiment and look at your business related activities in unorthodox ways.

You can never decide in advance what the marketplace wants. Consumers will always tell you what products and services they will buy and at what price. Anytime you want to know if an idea will work or how much profit a concept might add or subtract, you must quickly, efficiently, and conservatively, and inexpensively test that concept in your marketplace.

Once you develop a profitable, working method, dont stop there. Always improve on what is working for you, but never abandon what is working for you and jump to a new concept, no matter how exciting or appealing, until youve tested and proven that it contributes added benefit and profits.

When you test a new ad, sales pitch, or an up-selling concept it allows you to develop a new perspective on the market and enables you to see things differently from your competitors point of view. It will also give you an eagerness to learn by observing others. An important part of developing a marketing mindset is to always search for new concepts, look for new applications, and approaches and techniques that you can use in your own business.

Business owners who have a marketing mindset know that its a waste of time and energy to re-invent the wheel in order to market their product or service. There are many ways to borrow ideas from other successful businesses and use them in your own.

Here are five ways that will help you develop a marketing mindset:

1. Read every ad you can get your hands on, with an eye not for the visual, but for the concepts in the ad.

2. Read all the junk mail you usually throw out.

3. Spend time each day looking at different web sites for approaches you might be overlooking.

4. Subscribe to all the trade publications in your field.

5. Read at least one sales, marketing, or advertising book every week. You should read one business publication or magazine every day. Publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. Particularly read the articles pertaining to your field.

Visiting businesses in your area each week, especially retail stores will help open your mind to new and different market ideas. When you go into a store let them try to sell you something and pay close attention to their sales approaches, guarantees, follow-up efforts, and cross-selling attempts and then try to adapt some of their techniques to your business.

When youre visiting other places of business note the things that they dont do, things they neglect causing you not to buy. Pay close attention to how they make you feel and the things that they dont offer you. Filling these voids in your own business could give you a tremendous advantage over your competition.

Another way to really get some great ideas and develop your marketing mindset is to call the president or owner of a successful business in the same or related field. (Never call a business that is in your competitive market) Identify your self and tell the owner that you admire his or her success and would like to learn from him or her. Could you ask him or her a few question. You could offer to take him or her to lunch or offer to make a donation in their name to his or her favorite charity as a thank you for their time.

Youll be surprised at how many business owners will be happy to spend some time with you talking about their business and their successes. Every time you take are able to set up a meeting with a successful business owner you will gain a wealth of information to help your business.

Developing a marketing mindset means having the humility to learn from the successes and failures of others. When you start a new business, you are launching the profit adventure of a lifetime! From this moment on, resolve to develop a marketing mindset which means testing and applying as many different backend, cross-selling, reselling, joint-venture approaches, and sales packages as you think can work for your business.

Copyright2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.