A suggestion box is a really good idea for your business. It can help you get valuable feedback from your customers -- feedback that they don't normally think to share with you. Whether your business is a brick and mortar location or purely virtual, it's important to hear from your customers. Here are some tips for success.

- The suggestion box should be in a location where it is easy to see and contain plenty of pads and pencils to make it easy for your customers to contribute their opinions. The same thing applies to your virtual business. Just place a link in a prominent place on your website and call it your suggestion box.

- Sales personnel should be trained to prompt customers at the check out. For your virtual business, direct customers to a suggestion box at sale completion or via an autoresponder after the sale.

- Offer an incentive (monthly drawing or free gift) to customers who do take the time to provide their feedback.

Make sure that your intentions are to use the feedback from your customers to add to your product offerings or improve your business. Feedback for feedback's sake is a waste of everyone's time.

Denise O'Berry

With more than two decades of operational and management experience, Denise O'Berry has developed a sharp eye for how businesses get bloated with inefficiencies, cross-purposes and miscommunication -- and how they can retool for a sleeker, smoother, strategically focused organization.

An entrepreneur who quickly built her own successful consulting business, she helps other small business owners set priorities, take action to grow their business and create the balance they want between life and work. Her clients have ranged from telecommunications giants like Verizon to Mom-and-Pop retail shops with a primary focus on those having 10 or fewer employees and up to $2.5 million in annual sales.

Denise frequently speaks to professional organizations, is the author of three booklets, and several "how-to" manuals. She writes a weekly small business column, hosts an online small business owners forum and is called upon regularly by publications such as Entrepreneur, Bank Rate Small Business, Florida Trend, Inc., various newspapers, radio and television to provide expert comments on small business issues.