Then there are the ideas that are more about important principles and taking a different perspective. Sometimes these are where the most profit will be found. Here are some of those. I call them my "stolen business ideas," because I took them where I could find them over the years, so I can't even credit the authors. They are all in question form - questions to be asked about your business, in order to make it more profitable.

Questions To Help Your Business Make More Money

What is the least expensive way to get a new customer? You know you could advertise to get more customers, but you don't want to spend a thousand on advertising to get nine hundred in sales, right? Look at all the ways you have gotten new customers and all the ways you might get new customers. The most profitable step is to then start getting new ones at the lowest cost.

What low risk ideas can you try to increase profits? There may be new services or products you can try that take very little risk. Starting with these lets you fail nine times out of ten and still come out ahead after the tenth.

Can you "educate the customer" to increase sales? If people saw photos of the dust mites that live in their carpet and read all about "indoor air pollution" they would clean their carpets more often. Is there a way to "educate" your prospective customers into buying more of your product or service?

Have you tested prices? Sometimes things actually sell better at a higher price. Apart from that, on a product with a ten percent markup you can double the profit with a ten percent price increase. Unless you lose half of the sales as a result, you'll make more money. The only way to know these things is to test.

Can you increase the average sale? This is the principle behind the "Would you like something to drink with that?" question you get at every fast food place. It is often easier to find ways to increase the average sale amount by twenty percent than to find twenty percent more customers.

Can you find customers that didn't return and find out why? Twenty percent of your customers may be going to your competition the next time, and you might never even know it. Find out, and find the reasons why. Resolve those problems, and you might keep half of those customers from now on.

There are dozens of these questions that point out some important principles. Many of them won't apply to your particular business, but sometimes it only takes one or two to make a big difference. Why not get in the habit of asking questions when you want to make more money in your business?