Your Company Metabolism

How quickly can your company process new ideas, modify them for its use, and implement them to get better results?

What people are slowing the process, and which are being held up by them?

Buy it now

To get your prospect to make one buying decision they have to make four decisions – 

Buy it (at all)

Buy the right thing (the thing you offer).

Buy it from you.

Buy it now.

If you convince the customer to make only three of these decisions, you missed the sale.

How do you (your people) show prospects that it’s in their best interest to make these four decisions – especially the last one?

"I want to think about it"

What are your salespeople TRAINED to say when they hear this from a prospect?

Surely something…..

? 

All things "Basementy!"

How to get a Patent

You can do it yourself, but I don’t recommend it.  Use a patent attorney.  Patents must be filed within one year of using the invention, not including testing/development period.

First meet with the attorney, tell them about your invention, and have them do a search to see if it’s patentable.

Patents are all about the “claims”.  What are you claiming is novel?

The attorney writes up the application with professionally prepared drawings the way the patent office likes it all.  Read it over carefully – particularly the claims.  

You can claim variations of your invention to prevent someone copying you in a bit different way, but the broader you make the claims, the less chance of getting your patent approved as written.

Expect to wait a year or more to hear back from the Patent Office. It’s a government operation – what do you expect? In all fairness to them, the number of applications they get annually has gone up dramatically over the years.

Expect that they will reject your application.  It’s normal.  Your patent attorney will rewrite the claims and maybe throw some out to submit it again to try to get it approved.  This process may go on two or three times over many months.

Hopefully, two to four years and $8,000 – $15,000 later, you’ll have your patent!

What function is the MOST important for you?

There will always be things in your business that need to be fixed – it will never be perfect. Chances are the areas that need to be fixed are areas you are not an expert in yourself.  But remember you can hire excellence in that area.

Sometimes we have decided that one area is “good enough” in favor of focusing our resources making another key area awesome.  What area of your business needs to be not just good, but really great for you to succeed?  Marketing, innovation, sales, delivery, service, production.  What areas can be just good so long as another one is fantastic?

It’s me

My business has a lot of great things going for it.  And there are some things that need to be better.  The reason my business is the way it is, is because I let it happen.  And the reason your business has some good and some that needs to be fixed is because you let/allowed/made that happen.

Identify the biggest problem and make a decision to make it a strength.  Often making the decision – resolving to face what and who you need to – is overcoming the largest hurdle to fixing it.

Control your schedule

If you don’t put your priorities on your calendar, someone else will put theirs on it.

Who’s in charge of your time, your business and your life?

Burnout

Burnout is real.  You may not recognize it at first.  You lose your motivation, you are angry at things and people you didn’t used to be, your down, you can’t handle things, your negative, you feel stress in your body, you don’t know what to do now, your depressed, you feel like giving up.

You’ll recover and get your mojo back if you – take a break, go outside, do physical activity, go on vacation, change your scenery for a bit, eat better, get more rest, hang out with some different people (when you feel like being with anyone), stop thinking about what you’ve been thinking about.

High performance people get burned out every once in a while.  It’s normal for us.  Recognizing it and restoring ourselves is going to be necessary and important.

With What?

The question is not “Will your calendar be full?” or “Will your hours be filled?”

The question is “With what?”