February – 2006 – The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Monthly Archives: February 2006

February 18, 2006 – 4:22 pm

Telephone Market Surveys

If you are marketing locally, or even on a broader scale, telephone surveys are a great way to get to know your target market.

When surveying a business, the first thing is to let them know who you are and why you are calling. This should just be a quick sentence. I usually say something to the effect that I am a small business owner trying to improve my service or offerings to clients, and ask if they have 5 minutes for 5 to 10 quick questions.

The cool thing about doing surveys is that you aren’t trying to “sell” your business. Rather, you are asking for assistance and most people have an innate desire to help others.

In the process, you can phrase your questions in a way that also explains or gives glimpses as to what you do. Since the people you talk to are already in a receptive frame of mind, they are more likely to be curious and many will ask you for more information on their own.

Now while there is an opportunity to reach potential clients, you are more importantly gaining invaluable insight into their needs. It is time-intensive, but it’s time well-spent because it is highly targeted (or should be) and the information you can collect is worth its weight in gold. You can also spread your survey work over several weeks, or schedule it on a regular weekly basis to continually collect industry info.

When putting together your survey form, start with fields at the top to write the date, name and contact info of the business.

Develop questions that are either “yes or no,” multiple choice or “on a scale of 1-10.” A combination of all three is ideal. This way, you can quickly mark off answers so you don’t take up too much of their time writing.

Some people are going to be more even helpful and forthcoming with good information, so you want to have extra space on your form for notes.

At the end of each call, ask if you may send them more information on your business. You will want to have corresponding checkboxes on the bottom of your survey form to indicate their preference, as well as fields to collect their email and mailing addresses.

I think surveys are a much better option than cold calls (customers don’t like being sold to these days), and you are getting meaningful, quality information in order to develop your business and serve your market better.

If you don’t have time to conduct surveys yourself, this is a great job to give your support staff or Virtual Assistant. And you can engage your site visitors as well by incorporating a survey on your website.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Virtual Assistant/Virtual Assistance | Comments (0)

February 13, 2006 – 6:15 am

RAVE: Shout Out to JNCS.com and a Lesson in Customer Service

I have to upgrade my computer soon. I haven’t been looking forward to it since it will involve reinstalling tons of software and restoring files.

In the meantime, I thought I could take a short-cut to improving my computer’s lagging performance by upgrading my RAM.

Much to my chagrin, I discovered that they don’t make the particular memory my computer uses anymore. Buying from the manufacturer, it would be so pricey I may as well buy a new computer.

Alternatively, finding the obsolete parts online is like finding a needle in a haystack, and since I’m not a technical person nor someone who has ever bought anything on eBay, I’d have to place a lot of trust that the seller was legitimate and the parts in working order even if I did find them.

So I asked a group of colleagues if they could check around for me. One woman turned me on to a couple of website addresses of computer stores she had done business with in the past and highly recommended.

Since it was the first one she listed, I looked up JNCS.com.

Oy vey! It was “Z91E” this and “Asus A8N32 SLI Deluxe” that.

Needless to point out, I am a complete dolt when it comes to computer technical stuff. I may as well have been reading Greek or trying to interpret hyroglyphics. So I called their 1-800 number and reached a fellow who introduced himself as Scott.

OH-MY-GAWD!!! I had the most “Wow!” customer service experience, I (almost) can’t even tell you.

Scott answered all my idiotic questions with not a hint of impatience or condescension at my ignorance, and went above and beyond that to give me a wealth of information in such easy to understand terms.

I felt like I’d just received a degree’s worth of knowledge in this one phone call with him, and all the bits and pieces of technical info that had been scattered in my brain that I never truly understood lo these many, many years suddenly got the synapses connecting and it all made sense.

And not once did he act like he had better things to do or was in a hurry to brush me off. You know how some places are like that? They can’t be bothered with phone calls even though we are customers just as if we were standing right there in the store, and sometimes even then they can barely tolerate taking the time to talk with you.

He was so nice, friendly, polite and engaging. His attention was fully in the conversation and nothing was distracting him. That kind of personal attentiveness and quality service is just so hard to find anymore these days.

And once I got off the phone, I didn’t feel the need to talk to the other place, even just for the sake of comparision. I had just experienced such stupefyingly uncommon excellent service that I would have gotten on a waiting list to do business with this guy if need be, and probably even paid for the privilege of doing so – not the other way around.

And not once did it occur to me to wonder if he was the cheapest. I know I’m not going anywhere else when I need the services this fellow offers. And he’s on the other side of the country from me on top of it!

Now that’s sales and service when they make you not even consider the competition.

That kind of superior helpfulness and courtesy is the most simple, effortless, cost-free rapport-builder you can extend to both clients and prospective clients alike.

Think about it. This guy made such a favorable impression on me that here I am writing about it on my blog. Free press, free marketing, free advertising reaching who knows how many people all over the country from someone who hasn’t even done business with him yet.

It’s a lesson that all businesses can learn from.

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By Danielle Keister | Posted in Business Savvy, Rant & Raves | Comments (0)

February 1, 2006 – 5:43 pm

Should You Trademark Your Business Logo?

An article by Danny Bronski of VeriTrademark.

I’m addressing this article to new and small businesses because I believe that there is no rational reason a large or profitable company should not have registered its logo as a trademark.

Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Donald Trump or any other titan of industry can debate me on this proposition later, but for now let’s bring the focus back to you, the small business owner.

When is trademarking a logo critically important to your business?

First of all, when I use “trademark” as a verb, I am referring to the process of federal registration of a trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); I use the concepts of “trademarking” and “registering a trademark” interchangeably.

While I will spare you the details of the process of registering a trademark (which can be found in many of my other articles) for the sake of brevity, please note that you should budget roughly $1,500-$2,000 to do it right (for your information, VeriTrademark currently charges $1,325 for a search, opinion and registration of a trademark in one of the 42 classes offered by the USPTO).

I realize that, for many fledgling and cash-strapped businesses, this is a lot of money to spend on anything, so the focus of my article is to help you determine whether and why it is worth the investment to trademark a logo.

OK, let’s start at the beginning. You’ve recently started a business. You have a million headaches to deal with. Getting that line of credit from the bank. Hiring your first employee. Finding a good location. Surviving the first year.

Of course, one headache is of paramount importance if you want to thrive and succeed in business: selling your products or services.

Tending to this problem can make most of the other ones seem trivial. Whatever you are selling, certain things identify or “brand” your goods and services: your company name, product names, product packaging, logos, slogans, the look and feel of the place you sell your product.

These serve as your trademarks and they vary in relative importance depending upon the nature of your business. They also comprise a substantial chunk of the value of almost any successful business in an information-based economy.

In fact, every business should have filed at least its strongest trademark.

Why? I cover trademark principles and apocalyptic warnings as to what happens when you ignore these principles ad nauseum throughout my VeriTrademark site and articles database. For now, let’s settle for some oversimplified reasons for registering a trademark.

Everything you sell builds goodwill (something with an actual monetary value) in the things that identify you as the seller, and a registered trademark is the vessel for this identification process. Every day you ignore protection of that goodwill is a day that it could be eliminated by the discovery that your identity is trampling on the rights of another (purposefully or otherwise).

Only successful filing of a trademark provides you with a reasonable assurance that you aren’t stepping on anybody else’s toes, and also deters people from stepping on your toes in the future once you are making money (it is a universal truth that once you are making money, everybody wants to copy you, and it costs money to stop them).

Back to logos. For some businesses, their logo is their strongest identifier of their goods and services. For example, Ralph Lauren squeezes an extra 30% out of you just for having a certain silhouetted man, horse and stylized stick emblazoned on your clothing.

For Ralph’s company, this logo is a huge component of the value associated with the business. If this is true for you, refer to that bolded statement above and read no further.

However, for the vast majority of businesses, the business’s strongest identifier (and prospective trademark) is not a logo, but rather the name of the business. So, assuming your company name or something else is your strongest identifier, when should you trademark your logo?

I’ll give you two scenarios…

1) Your company (or product/service) name is considered “descriptive” of the goods and services you offer. Descriptive trademarks offer very limited protection and are difficult to register. Thus, competitors have a bit more leverage copying these trademarks. However, many logos of companies with descriptive names that contain that name can be registered. Why?

Because when you trademark a logo, you are claiming exclusive rights to the graphical presentation of that logo, rather than exclusive rights to the words embedded in the logo.

Of course, this is not inherently positive if you are trying to protect the words, but the critical thing to remember is that the embedded words will show up in a trademark search by others looking to claim rights to them later.

Thus, anyone in the future who wants to protect these same words and who does a reasonably diligent search will be made aware of your existence. This will serve as a significant deterrent, potentially saving you (and them) lots of money fighting for the rights to these words in court.

2) Your logo is distinctive and attractive and an important component of your branding strategy. This seems somewhat obvious, but if you believe a logo will have value branding your business, you shouldn’t play Russian roulette with it!

If you are going to invest in people associating that logo what you are selling, you should know whether it is legitimately distinctive (and not infringing upon existing logos).

You should spend a bit of money up front validating its distinctiveness and deterring and discouraging future copycats. This is a personal decision for logos, much more subjective than the decision to trademark your company name or product name.

About the Author: Danny Bronski is an attorney licensed in WA and NY with a legal practice that includes trademark law. Please Contact VeriTrademark for more information on registering your trademarks. This article is copyrighted and is not intended to serve as legal advice, but rather as a general approach to the law at the time the article was written (in 2006).

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