http://www.netregistry.com.au/blog/?p=312?grc=&RefCode=RNL_NOV09

A pending, or registered, trade mark may be grounds for another party to stop you using your registered business name

Look for potentially conflicting pending and registered trade marks before adopting a trading name

- look before you leap!

In this video Patent and Trade Mark Attorney Michael Buck discusses a common problem that arises where a business or product name is settled on without checking if other parties already have it registered as a trade mark.

Other parties may be able to enforce their own right to the name, for example, under the common law tort of Passing Off, under the Trade Practices Act or, as discussed in this video, by virtue of their own registration of the name under the Trade Marks Act.

Make sure you understand that none of business name, company name or domain name, registration actually gives you a guarantee that you can use your chosen name in trade. Check to see if you are likely to infringe any third party rights to the name you’ve chosen.

This 4 minute video discusses the issue in greater detail…

http://www.patentsandtrademarks.com.au/01video.html

‘When you are at your weakest, it demands you to perform at your best’

I thought it was worth sharing.

Here’s Ronnie’s site where you can watch a live radio interview he did from the summit.

http://ronniemuhl.com/

We’re going to be away from Friday December 18 to Monday January 4.

Enjoy the festive season and the New Year celebrations and we’ll see you in 2010.

With best wishes,

James, Jess, Pete and Trish.

Here are two photos taken that night. The first is our table and the second is Acorn CEO Nolan LeSueur awarding the 2009 simPRO Excellence Awards to Bill Watson of ‘Connectors the Plumbing People’. Congratulations to Bill and all of the other category winners.

Mediaglue and Acorn Software staff and partners at MPAQ awards dinner. L to R: Soona Jang, Andrew Crowe, Megan Coupin, Nolan LeSueur, Rianna Ash, James Yuille, Stephen Bradshaw, Debra Jarvis, Lynelle Hills, David Hills.

Bill Watson receives simPRO Excellence award from Acorn CEO Nolan LeSueur

“The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people… treat it as a salesman. Force it to justify itself. Compare it with other salesmen. Figure its cost and result. Accept no excuses which good salesmen do not make. Then you will not go far wrong.”

Sergio Zyman, former Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola repeated this sentiment in his book “The End of Marketing as We Know It” when he said:

“Marketing Is Supposed to Sell Stuff.”

Find out more about Claude Hopkins

Find out more about Sergio Zyman

Click Here for Free Download of Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

We’ve recently been through the process of hiring a new graphic artist and this post is a commentary on that process.

We placed a carefully worded advert on a recruitment website. We were looking for someone with experience in print and web design as well as some experience coding websites. I asked for portfolios and examples of capability.

Over a two week period, I received about 30 applications. Here’s what I found:

Close to fifty per cent were in Word format. These applicants made no effort to demonstrate their ability to create a pdf file. Very few applications showed any form of design creativity. Yes, there is a school of thought that a resume doesn’t need to show any form of creativity, but from my perspective, an application with absolutely no styling doesn’t display your creative ability, and that’s what I’m looking for when I’m making my first cut.

Your initial impression is made by the look of the document you submit.

The majority did not provide evidence of work that matched my key selection criteria. In other words, they told me what software they were able to use instead of showing me what they could do with that software. To me, that’s like having a carpenter telling me he can use a saw and a hammer instead of showing me what he can do with them. I expect you to be able to use industry-standard software…

Those that did show me examples didn’t show me what I wanted. I saw sketches, cartoon character renditions, student-grade exam graphics, and very basic, badly-coded websites. Far too many websites used as examples were either template-based or totally non-commercial. There was very little demonstration of real world examples and experience.

Few applicants took the trouble to visit our website to find who they were writing to, or to look at our portfolio, even though our company name was on the advertisement.

Several applicants lived overseas or at such a distance from our office that commuting would be totally impractical. If you live 150 km from our office, how do you expect to manage a daily commute to Archerfield and be fresh and invigorated when you arrive at work?

Many were freelancers no doubt seeking shelter for economic reasons. I suspect that if I hire a freelancer; they’re likely to continue freelancing after hours. Why would I want to risk you coming to work tired and drained because you had been working late on a private job that could have been done here under our banner? Moreover, if your private client sees that you’re working for someone else, how do they feel if they can’t reach you during the day to discuss their project?

Yet when asked about how they intend to continue their private client relationships, not one interviewee has ever asked if they can bring the client into our business and take advantage of the team’s input or the protection afforded by our (expensive) liability and indemnity cover?

I suspect that freelancers expect an employer to allow them to have their cake and eat it too. I have no issue with you doing your mate’s wedding stationery, or your mum’s home based business graphics at home, but not chargeable work. How do I know you won’t say to one of our clients “Listen, let me do this for you at home, I’ll only charge you half their fee.” That’s both unreasonable and professionally unethical.

I know that it’s difficult to get experience in any field, and that gaining experience isn’t easy. Nevertheless, if I want to hire a graduate with little or no experience, I’ll say that in my advert.

The bottom line is this: Don’t tell me what you can do, show me what you’ve done. I’m looking for capability and potential. If you have those, I’ll gladly train you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

We chose Terri Cooper’s business breakfast at the Broncos Leagues Club as the ideal venue to launch our new marketing campaign, “Are You Getting Enough?”.

(Image. left to right: Debra Jarvis, Terri Cooper, James Yuille, Rachael Bermingham)

Guest speaker Rachael Bermingham co-author of “4 Ingredients” – delivered a brilliant motivational talk on how she raised herself from total financial disaster to become an International Best Selling Author with the book “4 Ingredients”, written in conjunction with her close friend, Kim McCosker.

Her anecdotes about handling her Instant Celebrity status were outrageously funny and she kept the audience laughing and learning with her brilliant, yet simple, message.

One of the best moments was when man-about-town Peter Jenkins of Bennett Carroll Solicitors thanked Rachael for allowing him to now think he can actually cook… Nice one, Peter!

Several well-known Brisbane business people, including many self-published authors, queued to buy Rachael’s books, including her new title, “How To Write Your Own Book & Make It A BESTSELLER”.

See http://www.rachaelbermingham.com/ for more information about Rachael’s books.

Two-thirds (65%) of retailers currently lack fully automated loyalty tools at the point-of-sale, and both card and non-card loyalty programmes need to be simplified for retail employees, according to a survey of 165 retailers by Aberdeen Group*.

This inadequacy at the point of sale suggests that there is a significant gap between customer service processes and technologies at the focal point of retail customer service. Considering that the store still accounts for the greatest share of sales for the average multi-channel retailer, this gap undermines the retailer’s ability to build long-term, profitable customer relationships.

The report, entitled ‘Cutting edge customer loyalty: Retail best practices’, also found that 50% of the best-in-class retailers identified already use fully automated loyalty processes at the point of sale, which are responsible for improved performance metrics such as a 16% year-on-year increase in customer retention.
The company’s original ‘Responsive Customer Loyalty’ report in June 2008 showed that loyalty has become one of the most critical factors that impact retailers’ sales and customer retention performance. But in order to ensure effective results, loyalty platforms and points solutions need to be combined with the key loyalty-related process workflow functions: planning, implementation, evaluation, and analysis.

The focus of large retail companies has largely been on the upgrade of legacy loyalty systems that are five to ten years old, or sometimes even older. These systems require constant updates for new loyalty scenarios and business attributes and, in the past three years, both ERP and best-of-breed loyalty companies have turned their focus toward providing loyalty solutions for small and medium-size retailers. These segments are most likely to grow and adopt loyalty solutions within the next two years, while large retailers will continue to update, improve, and adopt solutions that are function-specific (such as CRM, business intelligence, personalised e-mail, gift cards, private label credit cards, and rewards cards).

Interestingly, the 2008 report indicated that the top pressure for 58% of best-in-class retailers was the need to develop Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), which was defined by the report as “the present value of future cash flow through long-term customer relationships”.

However, in 2009, year the top pressure facing 61% of companies is the pressure of survival in global recessionary conditions that have changed the consumer spending landscape and made it more unpredictable than ever. Moreover, the second biggest business challenge (for 35% of best-in-class retailers) is the need to reduce customer acquisition costs in a recessionary market that is characterised by the high cost of goods sold. Best-in-class businesses cited the following key pressures:

1. Increased competition in a tough economy: 61%;
2. Need to reduce customer acquisition costs: 35%;
3. Need to reduce customer retention costs: 30%;
4. Need to increase brand awareness: 22%.

Among the 2009 survey’s key findings and recommendations for retailers:

* 90% of the best-in-class retailers indicated some level of success from their loyalty programmes. In contrast, less than one-third of Industry Average and Laggard retailers reported success from their programmes;

* Best-in-class retailers were found to be 1.8 times more likely than Laggards to develop customer behaviour-based promotions that ultimately drive greater loyalty;

* Best-in-class companies were also found to be 70% more likely than their peers to develop multi-tier rewards plans for their most profitable customers.

* In order to achieve best-in-class performance, retailers should conduct customer wallet share and market basket analysis, measure the net profit margin impact of customer loyalty expenditure, adopt rules-based and POS-integrated customer loyalty systems, and upgrade their loyalty infrastructure on an annual basis.

The 2009 survey also found that grocery, department stores, luxury, and retail financial service institutions are particularly affected by the need to reduce customer acquisition costs. In the entire customer loyalty lifecycle process, the acquisition of a customer is the most difficult and expensive process, due largely to a fiercely competitive retail landscape. In today’s down economy, customer acquisition costs are even more risky due to uncertain consumer spending and downward pressure on both prices and margins.

Currently, with same-store sales in decline, retailers are using every possible price-based ‘customer pull’ strategy to drive incremental sales through untapped customer segments that have any amount of buying power. Such short-term customer acquisition tactics drive costs upward as retailers sacrifice their net profit margin to increase sales volume.

According to Sahir Anand, analyst for Aberdeen Group, the difference between the 2008 and 2009 customer loyalty-related business pressures is primarily due to current market conditions which have led retailers to adopt desperate, short-term tactics to survive the downturn rather than focusing on long-term customer relationships.

For more information about customer loyalty programs, gift cards and referral programs, please call us on 1300 139 467 or fill out the Contact form and we’ll discuss how you can have your own customer loyalty program, gift cards and referral program.

*Aberdeen Group

Update: May 29. For a comprehensive report on Customer Loyalty, see this article from Aberdeen Group.

This is an older article, one I wrote back in 2004. It’s now on many other article sites around the world and ranks very highly. For that reason, I’ve posted it again on this site.

My mother instilled in me an ethic of reliability and punctuality. It’s been with me for as long as I can remember. I was never late for school, for scouts, for sports training; I’ve never missed a plane, train, bus or ferry.

You could set a meeting with me today for November 12, 2007 at 11 am and I guarantee that as long as I’m still breathing, I’ll be there. You won’t need to remind me.

I allow travel time and parking the car time in between client meetings; being late is just not part of my agenda. Nevertheless, every now and again it happens. A client meeting runs over time; there’s a traffic accident or roadwork and things just go pear-shaped. So here’s what I do to prevent stress…

When I schedule meetings, I always say I’ll be there at (say) 2pm “Give or take a few minutes – is that OK?” and invariably it’s OK. So I have a small buffer. But if I know I’m delayed, I take another step and call at my earliest opportunity, saying, “I’m running a few minutes behind schedule and expect to be there at 2:15. Is that still OK or did you want to reschedule?”

Most times it’s OK but if it isn’t, I say “OK, when I get back to the office, I’ll call or email you to find out when it suits you to meet again” Then I’m at their mercy because I’ll do whatever it takes to make it at their convenience. I figure I’ve put them out so now it’s my turn.

What gets me annoyed is when people don’t tell me when they have to cancel. Like today; I drove 35 minutes for a 9:30 meeting only to find the client would be out until 2pm. And he wanted the meeting… I billed him for my travelling time, stating on the invoice “Travelling time to appointment cancelled without notice”

What made it worse was that it was the second time this week only he called to cancel the first.

Another client, who knows that Friday afternoon is difficult for me with family sport commitments, cancelled their second consecutive Friday afternoon meeting – they knew on Tuesday they were going to cancel, yet didn’t tell me until today, Thursday.

Like most people, I budget my time and allocate it to projects, research, marketing etc. I turned down another meeting on Friday because I was already booked and now can’t reconvene with the second client for another week.

The results of all this:

1. One morning and an afternoon that could have been billed but now isn’t
2. Time today that had been allocated to preparing for Friday now unused
3. An alternative client who could have had his problem solved earlier now waits a week
4. My cash flow adversely impacted as of course I can’t invoice Friday afternoon

This is neither a professional nor a profitable way to conduct business – for any of the parties involved. Not for me; not for any of the three clients.

Why did it happen? The bottom line is that both clients who messed up my schedule ironically really need my services because they’re reacting to crisis rather than planning their time and actions. Someone else’s priorities interfered with their day / week. As a result, they jumped in response – putting out the fire instead of having support mechanisms or systems in place to deal with them.

Do I just say “Ah, that’s business…” – yes I have to right now but it begs the question: How much do these clients value time, especially other peoples? If they do it to me, how many others do they do it to.

Or do I change my habits and say, as another coach I know does:

“Cancel or not be available for any appointment with me and the fee stands, along with the remainder of all fees for the remainder of our agreement AND our agreement is immediately cancelled as I can’t and won’t work with unreliable people”

He never gets cancellations… His fee? $1,000 per hour. The duration of his agreement with you? Minimum 13 weeks.

A reputation as being unreliable gains momentum quickly and it’s one you can’t afford.

Punctuality leads to reliability, which leads to trust which is seen as professionalism. That’s why mother taught me about punctuality.

I urge you to reflect on the way you conduct your timetable and to ensure that you respect other people’s time the way you would have yours respected by others.