Stacey Shipman

Are you leveraging your relationships?

I spoke to a member recently who recounted what I believe to be a great business story.  To grow her client base, she sent an email to ten contacts with whom she had a strong, well-established relationship, letting them know she was looking to grow her client base.  She also explained a little bit about the type of work for which she was looking.

From the ten emails sent, she got referrals to four new clients.

Not a bad return ...  40 percent.

How are you leveraging your relationships?

I believe that relationships are vital to achieve business goals.  These relationships may be new clients, collaboration partners, support resources or social outlets.

SSWBN provides the opportunity to meet new people and strengthen existing relationships.

The key is to nurture those relationships on a consistent basis.  Then, when the time comes to ask for help, you feel comfortable and confident with them.

If it is your business or your career aspiration, take the risk and responsibility to ask for what you want.

• Send an email, like the member above, letting folks know you're looking for new clients.

• Pick up the phone and ask for the bookkeeping or marketing support you know that you need to take you to the next level.

• Meet for coffee to share ideas, frustrations, and to get much needed social support.  (Sometimes you need to take a break from business to think clearly and ignite creativity.)

Earlier this week I reached out to a contact on LinkedIn.  This person is connected to a company I have targeted to contact.  When I asked for the introduction she said, "Sure! Send me the information and I'll make the introduction."

Why did she do that?  Because we've spent time over the past few years developing a relationship built on trust and friendship.

If you are ready to achieve that next level of success in your career or business (or personal life!), get curious and ask yourself, "How can I leverage my relationships?"  Then take action.  Maybe, like the member I mentioned above, the result will be four new clients.

What are your strategies for leveraging relationships?  Send me an email sshipman@sswbn.org and maybe you'll see your tips listed in an upcoming newsletter!

 Stacey

Stacey Shipman

Executive Director

617-548-5877

sshipman@sswbn.org

Becky Coletta, Esq

Branding with Trademark Law in Mind

In a world flooded with information, branding becomes the key to standing out against competitors, even in relatively local markets.  Picking the right brand presents a marketing challenge, in that you need to find the message, the emotional tone and the specific words and images that work to achieve your goals.   

Before becoming heavily invested in a brand, emotionally or financially, take time to consider the impact of trademark law on your choice.  Two key considerations require your attention:  a) What are you selling and how does your brand tie to what you are selling? and 2) Are you free to use the brand you like?

1.    What are you selling and how does your brand tie to what you are selling?

When you think of what you are selling, what words come to mind?  Are your branding words and images descriptive of what you are selling or are they more fanciful?  More fanciful marks are more distinctive. 

The law considers the distinctiveness of the mark when deciding whether the mark is a protectable trademark, and the level of strength it provides in any trademark protection.  Trademarks are stronger legally if they are more distinctive.  This is because trademark protection is designed to protect consumers from being confused about the source of the product or service they are buying.  The more distinctive the mark, the more likely it conjures up a single source in the minds of the consumer.  The law rewards and protects the distinctiveness of the mark to avoid confusion among consumers. 

Historically this makes some sense.  Prior to the Internet, it was even more difficult to find out whether someone was connected to a specific company or manufacturer.  When the snake oil salesman came to town, you needed to know whether he was selling genuine Acme snake oil.  By giving Acme a monopoly on the name Acme that was legally enforceable through trademark rights, the consumer could trust that Acme snake oil was produced by Acme and not a fly-by-night operation - at least until Acme became one of the most overused words in business.

Understanding the strength of a mark begins with looking at how distinctive the mark is in relation to the goods or services being offered.   On one end of the spectrum are completely fanciful marks made up to serve as a brand name for a product and are considered the legally strongest marks.  Think Xerox.  On the other end of the spectrum we find generic words that simply describe the product being offered, and thus do not qualify for protection as trademarks.  Think widget store.  Xerox has risked becoming generic over time as its brand name was so strongly associated with photocopies that people began saying they were "making a Xerox" instead of a "making a copy".  Xerox then had to campaign to remind people that Xerox is a protected name and not a generic reference to making a copy.  It did this to protect its trademark rights from becoming as generic as "aspirin."

Falling between fanciful and generic marks we find

• Arbitrary marks (real words but not usually used in connection with the products being marketed -- think Apple for computers);
• Suggestive marks (suggest something about the products or services, but do more than simply describe them, and require a little imagination to put the two together - think BeautyRest which requires a little imagination to think of mattresses providing restful beauty sleep); and
• Descriptive marks (merely describe the goods or services and which garner protection only when the mark has developed a secondary meaning to consumers to identify a source of the product - think International Business Machines for computers).  Surnames constitute a subset of descriptive marks that also require secondary meaning to gain protection.

Making these distinctions can seem like splitting hairs, but you can begin thinking where you might want to be on the spectrum.  Then balance the legal strength you want with your realistic business and marketing goals (and dollars).  Do you need to quickly pull in consumers without spending much on brand recognition?  Maybe you are better off using a descriptive mark like "Pembroke Widget Store" and worry about brand protection later. 

On the flip side, if you are embarking on a national Internet branding campaign with a national customer base and want a brand name that can easily be registered as a federal trademark, it may be easier to secure the trademark if you make it more fanciful or arbitrary.  But before you bet too heavily on becoming the next Apple or Exxon brand, you might want to sit down with a trademark attorney.

2.    Are you free to use the brand you like?

Many factors determine if you can legally use the brand you like.  The basic question centers on whether or not someone else is using the same or a similar mark to sell the same or similar goods or services in the same geographic market (or a natural expansion of a market).  If you are already using a mark when you look at this question, you also need to ask who of you used the mark in commerce first.  By the time you are asking this question, you should be planning to sit down with your attorney.  Before you do that, you can save yourself some time, money and aggravation if you do some of the legwork to get a preliminary answer to this question on your own. 

Start by picking several good choices for your brand and then do a thorough search for similar names out there.  Use different spellings or partial words in your search to find similar words.  Search multiple locations for the information - state trademark registries, state business or corporation filings, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings (www.uspto.gov), Internet search engines like Google or Yahoo, industry publications and directories,  telephone directory listings, and domain name registries.  (Do not assume that domain names are the same as trademarks without discussing this with your attorney.)

Cast a broad net over any market segment you might want one day.  Once you find a few brand names that seem to work, review them with your attorney and put your marketing savvy together with your legal savvy to launch a brand that will work for your business.

As usual, I offer my blogs as general food for thought and they do not cover nuanced legal issues you should consider in a specific case.  They are best used as jumping-off points for further research and discussions with your own legal advisor.

Becky

Rebecca Westerlund Coletta, Esq.

Coletta Law Office

620 County Road

Hanson, MA 02341

Telephone:  339-244-4774

Becky@ColettaLaw.com 

 

Lynn Feingold

There is a real theme of connection in my column this month.

Here's my take on it:  If you're building a bridge between you and another person -- how strong would you like it to be before you take a step on it?

Lori Cook of  A Fork in the Road at Bryantville would like to thank Kristen Ford-Hernandez of Premiere Pros for her dedication to Lori's projects.  "Kristen has treated my marketing changes as thoughtfully as if she were working on her own business!"

Caroline Chapin of The James Library & Center for the Arts was thrilled to have SSWBN director Stacey Shipman perform one of the 10 selected stories at their recent, standing-room-only Story Slam.  Caroline said, "Stacey is a terrific storyteller!"

Allison Guido of Almar Building and Remodeling, Co.  had a great one-on-one with Judy Rizzo from Rizzo Plumbing and Heating, and got to tour her new office.  Allison said, "I was really pleased to get the chance to reconnect and talk about how we can keep working together."

Christy Kendrick is very happy to announce that she will be teaching a class at the Inspiring Windows store in Hanover on May 17^th from 3 t0 5 pm.  Christy met the store owners through SSWBN and decided to collaborate for this class, called Whole Food = Real Food -- Some of the Whys & Hows.  They will provide food samples and recipes.  Reach out to Christy for more information and the fee for the event: 508-846-4522.

Stacey Shipman, SSWBN executive director, would like to thank Lori Cook of A Fork in the Road at Bryantvillefor providing a cheese and vegetable tray and sandwiches for a recent Hanover Toastmasters event.  "Lori accepted my last minute order and delivered later that day.  We had so much food I got to take some home!  Thanks Lori!"

Patty Funder of LaserLight for Men and Women acknowledges host Carolyn Chapin of the James Library and Center for the Arts, Jen Mullen of JAM Gourmet Foods & Catering, and Stacy Doherty, president of SSWBN and owner of Errands Etcetera, for their collaboration in the May 6^th Coffee with the President event.  "I walked in to a concert pianist playing the baby grand, the best scones I have ever had, and what turned out to be an inspirational discussion among a nice, but small mix of new and seasoned SSWBN members," said Patty.  "If you have never participated in one of these Coffee events, you are missing something pretty special!"

Stacy Doherty, president of SSWBN and owner of Errands Etcetera, sent in a bunch of acknowledgements:

• Many thanks to Heidi Smith of Heidi's skin care salon for the referral to a great hairdresser!  I love my new look and it is so easy to maintain!
• Thank you to Nancy O'Keefe of Simple Small Business Solutions.  You have been such a beam of support for me and I greatly appreciate it!
• Thanks to Betsy Donahue of M. Donahue Associates, Inc. for passing my name along to your Pilates instructor.  I'll keep you in the loop if we are able to connect.
• Thank you so much to Nancy Boyle of Live Light Yoga for the inspiring meeting at the beginning of the month.  It was great to hear your version of why the Network was started so long ago, and why it has continued to help women in our community to connect.
• Thanks to Nicky Peterkin of NYLife Securities for setting up my retirement account just in time for the tax credit!

Finally, I'd like to send out my personal thanks to Janet LaBerge of Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap and Good Deeds

Build your bridges strong and true, so that they will be there when you need them!

Lynn

Kim DeGust

Kim

Kim DeGust

Molisse Realty Group

Selling the Entire South Shore

(781) 837-5600 office

(781) 363-0485 cell

kdegust@molisserealty.net 

www.degustrealestate.com