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I had an interesting conversation the other day with 4 retired and very successful business owners. Two of the people were retailers and two sold to retailers, one being a distributor and the other a manufacturer. Needless to say, with this diverse group, there were some interesting points of view.

I was interviewing them for a future book but some of the information was so good I just wanted to share it this week. I asked if there was one thing that made them successful, what would it be?

These were some of the comments I received:

• “I knew who I was and who I wasn’t.”
   
• “If you start trying to be everything to everybody you are nothing to nobody.” (I don’t think the English was quite right but I know what he meant.)
   
• Then one of the woman said, “That’s all great but if the customer doesn’t know who you are and what you can do for them, what good is it?” A quick retort followed. “That’s what we are saying when I said, Know who you are. If you don’t know who you are, how is the customer going to know?”
   
• “Some stores confuse the customer. They say one thing but do something else. Those stores never last.”
   
• “Marriage is a union between two people and so is being in business. It’s a union between the customer and the business.”
   
• “If you just listen to the customer, they will tell you what they want but remember to ignore just a little bit about price. People want things other than just the lowest price.”
   
• “The key is in the customers.”

I really didn’t expect to hear a conversation about who they were. I expected some tricks or tactics but I didn’t get that. When I questioned them about any tricks or tactics, they laughed and said that this is the trick that few people understand.

So I asked this vocal group to give an opinion about what a business owner should know about their customer. What should they ask? They answered that “it’s not just the customer you want to ask”.

After another 30 minutes or so of discussion, these are some of the questions my distinguished panel came up with that I will pass on to you.     

• What do your critics say about you?
• Why do your best customers do business with you?
• What do customers say about your business regularly?
• What ability do you have that you are most proud of?
• If a newspaper were to write a story about you, what would it be?
• Why do new customers do business with you?
• Why should someone buy from you?
• The next ones are fill in the blanks:

  We make our customers lives better by ______________
  We are famous for our _______________We are the best, first, or only business that __________

After I wrote the last question down, Saul, the elder statesman of the group, said something that became the title of this piece. He said, “Now you know the secret of doing business”. At first I didn’t get it but the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. Then I started answering those questions.