The idea of testing shouldn't be foreign to most nurses. Isn't it part of the nursing process you learned in school? Didn't you learn assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation? Testing is the evaluation part of this process.

Applying the nursing process to your business can help you succeed where others have failed. When you test you determine things like when, where, and how to best apply your skills. You also learn things like how much to charge.

I am currently in the process of developing 3 new products for nurse entrepreneurs (Nurse Entrepreneur Interviews, Tip booklet, and a 12 month marketing plan with a chart of activities) that will be available at www.nurse-entrepreneur-network.com. I already have an idea of a second product for each of the 3 I am working on. However, I will not begin to develop the second product in each category until I observe how well the first product in each category is selling. Although I think all 3 products will be valuable, the sales will tell me what my customers actually want.

Testing and determining which of these products sells the best will tell me where to put my future energy. How can you apply this to what you are doing? Can you use it to determine if one marketing piece is working better than another? Can you use it to determine if one group of customers seems to be a better target for you than another? Think of ways to test your market to determine how to best use your time and resources.

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