“What makes you unique?” I asked a business owner this week. His answer, “This sounds cheesy, but I genuinely care about my customer.” Can a genuine care for your customers set your business apart from your competition? Can it be your unique selling proposition?

What’s the most important question in business? That’s the premise of the book I’m reading by Ian Chamandy, who also spoke at The Art of Sales conference I attended two weeks ago. This book is challenging how I view business and marketing. It’s a book that I recommend every business owner and leader to read.

People buy feelings, and not products or services. It’s a bit counter-intuitive because the product or service a business offers is tangible and a feeling seems so wishy-washy. But studies have shown that people make their purchasing decision based on the emotion they feel. Then they use the facts to support their decision.

The most important page on your website is your home page. Your homepage is the virtual lobby of your business. It’s usually where your website visitors start. The content and design of your homepage helps your website visitor decide whether they are in right place, whether your website has what they are looking for, and whether to stay or to go. If they do decide to stay, where do they usually look next? What’s the second most important page on your website?

When we think of marketing, we immediately associate it with reaching out to our customers and potential customers. How do we share our story and products to the people who will benefit from them? How do we make them aware that we exist, communicate how we are unique, and encourage them to try our products? But rarely do we think about how to target our marketing to our staff.

When I first got married 7 years ago, the one thing I could not figure out about my wife was why she loved flowers so much. At that time, flowers seems like such a waste of money. You pay $5 or $10 or $20 for flowers only to have them die in 7 days. “What about those fake flowers?” I would ask Olive. They seems like such a great deal – buy them once and they last forever. “They’re not the same,” my wife would tell me.

I’m looking forward to growing older. One of the reasons is the potential for personal growth. When I reflect on the past year, I’m surprised by how much I learned. The idea of being able to continue or even accelerate that growth for the next 5, 10, or 25 years is very exciting. On the other hand, I know people who are older who seem to have stayed stagnant for many years – every time I see them they seem to be the same. The idea of not growing or changing over time is depressing to me.

If you’re a small business owner like I am, one of your responsibilities is probably sales. Doing sales is something I’ve never been formally trained to do; it’s something I’ve learned along the way through reading, listening to talks, and practice. I know if I improved my sales skills, my business would grow. That’s the reason I’m attending a sales conference in February.