Years ago, I had a client who was in the silk flower business.

There came a time when he needed to find a new retail location.  One day we were walking through a local shopping center that someone had suggested as a possible retail outlet.  The first thing we noticed was that traffic seemed to be on the low side.  I suggested that maybe we had simply picked a bad time for our visit.  Perhaps traffic would be higher at a different time of day.

My client replied that maybe that was true.  He then walked up to a mixed nut vendor and ordered a bag of cashews.  After eating a few of the nuts, he mumbled, “There’s your answer.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, totally bewildered by the idea that he could figure out anything by simply munching on a few cashews.

“The nuts are stale,” he explained.  “The nuts are stale because there is no one ordering them.  And no one is ordering them because there is no one here.”

I have to admit that I was somewhat astonished by this piece of fine detective work.  And as it turned out, my client was right.  After several more visits to the center at different times of the day – we found the traffic to always be less than desirable.  And thus we knew that in terms of a good retail location, we had to keep on looking.

The takeaway?  When you’re trying to make an important marketing decision – make sure you pay attention to what’s going on around you.  Many questions can be answered by little clues.  Clues that more often than not go unnoticed.