To increase your chances of product or service success, you must know many important things about your product or service. Visiting the competitors, testing manufactured goods or the services of potential competitors is an informal and very valuable process.

Keep a record of the answers to these questions:

1. Is there a need for your service or products? If yes, is that seasonal or year-long?
2. Do you know what to charge to cover your costs?
3. Are your prices competitive?
4. How important is low price?
5. Is service more important?
6. Must you include delivery cost in your price?
7. What will discounts do to your markup?
8. Must you give discounts for cash, volume, distributors, salespeople?
9. Are your products unique, eye appealing, higher quality or better designed?
10. Must you offer a guarantee?
11. What will be your return policy?
12. Must you stock parts for service?
13. How much is normal advertising costs for your products?
14. What media? How often? Seasonal?
15. Is any free publicity available?
16. Do you have a trademark or logo? Is it registered?
17. Will you need an advertising agency?
18. If you are buying how much of each (size, color ) will you buy? From whom?
19. Can you return unsold merchandise?
20. Have you stock control plan to avoid overstock, under stock and out of stocks?
21. Have you established a line of credit with your suppliers? How long?
22. If you are a manufacturer how will you sell - through dealers, distributors, sales agents or direct?
23. What type of distribution is common in the industry?
24. Do transportation costs dictate the best method of distribution?
25. What percentage of the market will you get?

How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market - Building on research from disciplines as diverse as neurology, sociology, literary analysis, and cognitive science, Zaltman offers rich insights into what happens within the complex system of mind, brain, body, and society as consumers contemplate their needs and evaluate products. Zaltman illustrates how leading companies are "mining the unconscious" - with remarkable results, and introduces innovative tools & techniques that help marketers:
* Develop research questions that speak to the unconscious brain.
* Evoke valuable meaning through a customer's metaphors and instill those images in brand communications.
* Measure consumer reactions to marketing stimuli and alter advertising or positioning strategies accordingly.
* Build "consensus maps" that reflect a market segment's universal thinking-and reengineer them to boost customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales.
* Understand how their own minds work-and how they can think in creative new ways. The mind of the market is waiting to be explored. Make sure your competitors don't get there first.

Tested Advertising Methods - A legend in advertising for more than 60 years, John Caples still serves as a guide to generations of creative marketing people. Now his classic work on how to create successful advertising has been updated by respected advertising consultant Fred Hahn. It retains all the clarity, candid analysis, time-tested experience and invaluable award-winning ideas from the original, while bringing it right up-to-the-minute on the many new changes in the field.