  |
|
  |
|
|||||||||||||||||||
        |
Subscribe to Our Newsletter |
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
WANT TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE YOUR COMPANY NEWSLETTER A PUBLICATION YOUR
READERS CAN'T PUT DOWN? Send your check for $25 for a one-year subscription and as a bonus, we'll send you several back issues for FREE! Make checks payable to "Put It In Writing" and mail to 1517 Buckeye Court, Pinole, CA 94564. Money back if not satisfied. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
By Jeff Rubin One of the benefits of being in business for 22 years is knowing a lot of intelligent, talented people. Two of them have articles in this newsletter. Paul Wintroath, whom I've known since he was a student intern at The Mechanics Bank in the early 1980s, writes about customer service, one of my favorite topics. And a new colleague of mine, Sandy Shepard, writes about protecting intellectual property, a concern of every small business person. Having friends like these means less work for me, and more good information for you. I hope you find these articles beneficial to you and your business. Customer service a key to success Editor's note: Paul Wintroath is a Vice President in the Investment Department at The Mechanics Bank (Richmond, CA), which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2005. Paul wrote this for the bank's newsletter, which Put It In Writing has published since 1982. By Paul Wintroath So much of the success of The Mechanics Bank has to do with the way we deal with and help our customers. We've learned over our almost 100 years that people want to be treated fairly and kindly. I'd hate for us to ever lose that. Which reminds me of this quote from Howard Schultz, head of Starbucks: "We're not in the coffee business serving people. We're in the people business serving coffee." That thought probably speaks volumes as to why Starbucks has experienced such phenomenal growth. We're in the people business too. We have to be at our best for every customer, or we've failed. If our mission is to win the loyalty of our customers, then we must be loyal to them as well. Think about it from your personal experience as a customer. Does it seem you're one transaction in a line of customers? How often do you feel like you're a number, a credit card or a PIN to the people serving you? Does the person "serving" you even see you? So much of the retail experience in the U.S. is underwhelming. We can use that to our advantage. A good experience stands out these days. It might be a smile, or recognition of a customer by name. Maybe it's a quick in-and-out of the office or a "thank you for your business." People notice that because, sad to say, it has become uncommon. Our values statement says: "Our customers always have a choice. We anticipate, listen and respond to their needs until they are pleased by our efforts." In other words, our actions help them make that choice. On any given day each customer might decide to ake his or her banking business elsewhere. We want to help them make this an easy decision. It starts in the offices. Hearing about the new record on the Mystery Shops is exciting, and I know a lot of hard work has gone into those scores. Our Call Center is the entryway into the bank for many customers, and
some of the most helpful people in the entire bank reside there. I have
received many comments from customers who appreciate Finally, there are so many people behind the scenes in support departments. They never know when they'll be called upon for information and expertise, yet they are always ready to serve. No doubt we're in the people business. We might never have the worldwide presence of Starbucks, but in our little corner of the world we can have a mighty presence. Protect your intellectual property By Sandy Shepard Now that you have a list of unique characteristics and have crafted them as benefits (as instructed in the last two issues of The Write Stuff), it's time to think about protecting your "intellectual property." In general, IP protection comes in five flavors - copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, trade dress, and patents. By signing your clients' contracts, you may sign over your rights to your IP - and be forbidden from ever using it again! You can also get into trouble by having others help you on a project, without having a contract assigning their rights to you. It's important to have your own template contract spelling out exactly how you do business - and to have an attorney briefly review any contracts you consider signing. But back to IP. Copyright protects the "expression" - the words, dance, or song - used to express an idea. If you put a copyright mark on your documents, use this format: © [date written] [owner]. All rights reserved. See the end of this article for an example. Copyright protects the "right" to "copy" the expression, and the "fair use" safe haven (a defense to an infringement lawsuit) is quite restricted, stopping the second any profit is even indirectly made from the copying. So if you're copying, get permission. While copyrights protect an idea's expression, a patent
protects the idea itself. To be patentable, your product
or process must be repeatable, novel, and it must not be an "obvious"
extension of a Having a "patent pending" can add value to your business in your clients' eyes, or help you obtain funding. By filing a patent, you explain in detail how to make your product or process. In exchange, you obtain a monopoly for a number of years. The opposite of a patent is a trade secret, where you keep the process secret. The recipe for Coke is an example. There is no expiration of the protection term as there is with a patent, but if a competitor can reverse engineer your product or process, you lose it. Trade dress protects the "look" of your product or establishment, while trademarks and servicemarks are awarded for words (e.g., tag phrases or names) or pictures (logos) used on a product or service. Only unique marks can exist within a given channel of commerce, to avoid consumer confusion. General terms cannot be registered. Even if you do not trademark your own terms (you should; if they are good, someone else will), it's always wise to check to be sure a tag line or potential new company name is not already trademarked. And with trade dress, don't try to entice your competitors' clientele to you by being "just like them." Receiv-ing a cease and desist letter can ruin your day. Taking time to understand and protect these rights can help secure
a valuable asset - Attorney Sandy Shepard leads Good Solutions, which is dedicated
to proving the value of having a lawyer on your team. She can be reached
at 707/333.6191 or sandy@goodsolutions.com. By Jeff Rubin A few months ago my friend Craig Harrison, a professional speaker, gave a talk at a meeting of Forty Plus. It's a nonprofit organization that facilitates and supports career transitions for business and professional people 40 and older who are executives, managers, and professionals. These people are unemployed, either downsized out of their jobs or former owners of now-defunct businesses. "I arrived early to get a feel for the group, before delivering a program on elevator speeches for job seekers called 'On the Rise With Your Elevator Speech,'" says Craig. "Members introduced themselves with 30-second summaries of who they were, what they were looking for and what was happening in their lives. One woman shared how she had been a recent victim of identity theft. A few moments later another person said that he, too, had been victimized by identity theft. When Craig began his program, he scrapped his prepared opening and addressed the topic that was on everyone's mind. "What is this world coming to?" Craig asked, "when criminals are stealing the identities of the unemployed! And worse yet, you may already have a new job, but someone else is collecting your paycheck!" Well, he got a big laugh, a bond was formed, and he had an attentive audience for the rest of his talk. Whether you're unemployed, out of business, in business but struggling, or unhappy in your current job, there's plenty of stress in our lives. I was talking about this to my childhood friend Dan Steele, who lives in Maryland. He just found a management-level job after being unemployed for more than three years. So he knows about stress. I asked him how he coped. He sent me the following mesage: "As you know, the last few years have been kind of tough on me and prior to that I was under significant stress at my various management positions. Somehow, I survived this far and I have indicated below some of the "tools" that kept me sane." Maintain proper perspective Learn and use the serenity prayer: Accept what you cannot change and
work to change what you can. * What is the worst possible thing that can happen to you and how does
this fit into the big scheme of life? Take time to do things that you like to do Do something that you always wanted to do. Start a new hobby, take dance lessons, learn how to speak a foreign language, build a barn. Do a few projects that you can complete quickly and get satisfaction in knowing that you did something useful (paint the room, mow the lawn, fix the fence). Incorporate timeouts into your day Work on something else to let your mind relax a little (usually when you come back to the problem you either have some new insights and/or have thought of a potential solution subconsciously). Balance your routine Get enough sleep Avoid watching the news before going to bed. Laugh and cry "These are just a few of the tools that I used. It is also very important to 'share' with your family and friends. "Knowing that you are not alone and that there are others that care about you is a major help. "Getting a hug from the people you love has unbelievable healing power." What to do when your day gets away By Patricia Katz Just 15 minutes into your work day, your list of things to do today is dust. A whole new set of problems has hijacked your attention. At day's end 'the list' floats to the surface again. Though you've been taking care of business all day long, you've accomplished few, if any, of the tasks that seemed so important at the beginning of the day. You feel like a failure. Can you relate? It's a tribute to the spirit of optimism that even though we have the same experience over and over again, we continue to believe that if we create a plan, the day will unfold exactly according to that plan. We need to think again. Days like that are rare. If you find yourself frustrated by the daily shift in plans, take a look at what came up through the day, and the decisions you made about where to put your time and attention. Were the unexpected tasks more important to your key results than the tasks you had planned to tackle? If so, shifting your attention was the right thing to do. Don't beat yourself up over sound decisions. If the new tasks weren't that important and you let yourself be sidetracked, then, as Desi Arnaz said to Lucille Ball: "Some-body got some 'splaining to do!" Test each new task that challenges your plan. Is it really important? If it's a surprise, it likely arrives with an air of urgency. But before you leap to the new challenge, pause to consider how spending time and energy on this new task will help you reach your key goals more effectively than what you had planned. If you have trouble sorting out the relative importance and priority, it could be that your working goals are fuzzy or in conflict. Take time to clarify the big picture and rank conflicted goals and targets - determining what matters most. It could be time well spent. After you've put out a fire, learn from the experience by asking these questions. How did this important but unexpected task come to be a surprise? Did we ignore an important issue for too long? Did we miss a cue that might have helped us anticipate this problem? When your list of accomplishments at day's end doesn't equate with your list of intentions from day's start, you can still consider it a success if - you tackled the tasks that really mattered, made sound choices on the fly, and invested a few moments in learning from your experience of the day. - Patricia Katz owns Optimus Consulting. Visit her website at www.patkatz.com. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
| Back to Top of Page | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
