Build A Database. Building a database should be one of the primary components of a business owner's total business plan. It's absolutely critical that you retain key information about your customers.

Topic for Discussion: What does Carol do to reach out to her target audience?

Answer: She maintains a database that includes the name, address, phone number and purchasing history of her customers. She sends direct mail to them regarding specific items they would find interesting. She also reaches customers with print and radio advertising.

One technique Carol uses to grow her mailing list is to rent the list of a business that has customers like her customers. She told us about renting the one-time use of Bon Appetite’s mailing list for the Zip codes in and around Madison.

Everyone who responded to her mailing by using the coupon or returning the response card is now a permanent part of Orange Tree Imports’ list.

Many people dream of having thousands of customers but only a few do the work that must be done to find and win them. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins writes that great companies pay attention to details and no task is too tedious.

Scott and Marthalee Mooney, founders of Country Supply, used the good-to-great strategy and didn't even realize it. They wanted to build a list and no task was too small. Scott and Marthalee hand-copied the names and phone numbers of people who were selling horses or equipment from newspapers' classified ads sounds very naive. However, he was only 22 years old when he started the process of building a mailing list. Scott did what made sense to him at the time. He did what he could afford.

Eventually he thought of buying lists from magazines and over time he learned how to find qualified names with less effort.