This is an excerpt from The Expert’s Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn To Every Time By Ken Lizotte

Can one actually become a thoughtleader just by practicing thoughtleading? Or must one have certain innate qualities? The answer to this question gets us into the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture, particularly with regard to the origins of high achievers. A thoughtleader in his own right, Dr. Charles Garfield, author of the book “Peak Performers,” has been studying this issue since 1970 and has drawn a decided conclusion: Nurture is king, he says. High achievers, whether you call them thoughtleaders or experts or “ peak performers” (Garfield’s term), are made not born. “All of them,” he declares.

Kudos to our client thoughtleaders for their recent victories!!!

* Mary Adams CMC and Mike Oleksak CMC, Founding Principals at Trek Consulting LLC, have co-authored a new book Intangible Capital: Putting Knowledge to Work in the 21st Century Organization. The book, published by Praeger, was released this month

* Longfellow Benefits was recently named one of the Boston area’s best employers by Boston Business Journal in its Best Places to Work 2010 edition. A press release describing the achievement was picked up by various news sites. In addition, a Business Insurance article “Bigger Is Not Always Better” contained comments by an HR officer at Houghton Mifflin that, despite HM’s history with a previous larger benefits consulting firm, Longfellow Benefits proved to be a much more valuable investment.

* An article by Jim Edholm, President of Business Benefits Insurance, titled “Is Your Dental Plan Out Of Date?” was picked up by several PR and news sites, including HR People

* “Is Building Your New Data-Center A ‘DIY’?” by Robert Johnson, Director of Product Marketing at Atrion, in Data Center Journal

* “The ROI For Strategic Change Management In Outsourcing” by Laura Stone, Founder/CEO, Stone + Company, in Outsourcing Journal Online

* Trademark Insider noted that in the Boston area, more existing and startup organizations turned to Wolf Greenfield in 2009 than any other local law firm. Wolf Greenfield reached the top of the Boston-area charts with 292 trademark applications in 2009. It’s the fifth consecutive award for the firm which has been servicing companies with their trademark needs since its founding in 1927. A press release announcing the award was picked up by multiple legal and business news and PR sites

* “Employers Must Eliminate Benefit Discrepancies With Overseas Employees” by Vernon W. Holleman III, President of The Holleman Companies, appeared in Employee Benefit Plan Review. A press release reporting on the article was picked up by several PR and news sites, including Calibre, Reuters, Google News. Vernon also published in The National Underwriter an article titled “Understanding Buy-Sell Agreements For Small Business Owners” and was quoted in Best’s Review in an article discussing corporate-owned life insurance.

* In addition, The Holleman Companies has launched a series of podcasts on business succession planning called The Holleman Business Succession ForumSM. Its first installment features an interview with the legendary Austin Kiplinger of Kiplinger Publishers. A press release announcing this podcast series has been posted on multiple business news sites including Yahoo Finance and Boston.com.

* Jim Foster, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in an article on Law 360 Online titled “If I Were Obama, My Supreme Court Pick Would Be…” Jim was also consulted by the Bureau of National Affairs’ Patent, Trademark & Copyright newsletter, in an edition discussing gene “unpatentability.” Further, Jim was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Bioworld, Managing Intellectual Property, and IP Law 360 on the subject of the Myriad gene case in the US district courts. Both Jim and Mike Rader, also a Shareholder, were noted in the National Law Review’s coverage of their IP seminar.

* Michael Siekman, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in an article for Inside Counsel titled “Wyeth Decision Leads To Patent Term Recalculations”

* Jay Vogt, Founder/CEO Peoplesworth, has a new book, Life or Death Lessons from Extreme Teams, under production with New Word City Publishers

* Mike Rader, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, was consulted extensively for an article titled “Attorney Offers Tips For Controlling Patent Litigation Costs,” in Technology Transfer Tactics

* Dr. Bob Carey, author of Patients Teach A Doctor About Life And Death (Xlibris) was interviewed for several radio programs, including the Frankie Boyer Show, the Bill Frank Show and WBZ-AM. Bob also spoke to the Rotary Club of Arlington. In addition, Bob’s book recently jumped to #80 on Amazon.com’s list of Bestselling Medical Biographies

* Patrick Waller, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, was interviewed by the Bureau of National Affairs’ Patent, Trademark & Copyright newsletter, in an edition discussing gene “unpatentability.” As well, Patrick was quoted in IPLaw 360 and Managing Intellectual Property on the subject of the Myriad gene case

* Larry Green, Shareholder with Wolf Greenfield, was interviewed by the Bureau of National Affairs’ newsletter, Patent, Trademark & Copyright, in an edition discussing a recent court decision assessing when a patent application should be filed. In addition, Larry was quoted by Chemical & Engineering News as well as Bloomberg News discussing a patent dispute between Eli Lily and Ariad. Law.com also featured quotes from Larry in an article titled “Look, You Wanna Invent? You’d Better WRITE IT DOWN.” Finally, Larry, along with Ed Perlman and Jason Honeyman, both Shareholders with Wolf Greenfield, were noted in The Daily Tribune for their recent honor as “Massachusetts Super Lawyers”

* A press release declaring Jim Mooradian And Associates, Inc. “One Of The Hottest Players Nationally In The Booming Voluntary Employee Benefits Arena” was picked up by Insurance Newscast. Jim was also prominently featured in HR Executive Magazine as a leading national go-to authority on voluntary benefits

* Robert S. Litwak, Vice President for Programs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was quoted in a New York Times article titled “Obama’s Nuclear Strategy Intended As Message”

* “The Role Of Financial Executives In Exit Planning For Business Owners” by Michael Oleksak CMC, Founding Principal at Trek Consulting LLC, in Financial Executive Magazine. A second article, this time titled “Exit Planning For Actuarial Consultants” was published in The Independent Consultant. In addition, Michael penned “Commercial Bankers Must Know The Owner/Manager’s Exit Plan” for Commercial Lending Review

* Connie Golleher, Chief Operating Officer at The Holleman Companies, was quoted in an article titled “When Crafting The Estate Plan, Bring The Kids To The Table,” in National Underwriter

* Roque El-Hayek, Associate with Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in an article titled “Federal Circuit Rules Patent Applications Must Have Separate Written Description” in RFC Express (Intellectual Property Today Online). The article was also featured on IP Frontline

* “Stuck In Traffic On The Information Superhighway? By Assessing Your Alignment, Experience And Technology, You Can Shift Into The Fast Lane” by Tim Hebert, Chief Executive Officer with Atrion, in CEO Refresher. Tim’s article was also re-posted on CIO.com

* “Making ‘Sense’ Of Non-Traditional Marks” by Christina M. Licursi, Associate, and David Wolf, Shareholder, at Wolf Greenfield, has been accepted for publication in Executive Counsel

* Longfellow Benefits welcomes Colleen Grady as a Benefits Consultant and Robin Blue as an Executive Assistant. An announcement press release appeared on various business news sites

* “Starting With A Blank Sheet Of Paper Doesn’t Work … And Other Reasons Why Most Innovation Programs Fail” by Chris Jones, a Principal at Strategos, along with the winning team of the Strategos-CBIG Innovation Challenge, in Chief Executive Officer

* “Walt Disney Knew It First: Selling Is About Confidence And Constancy” by Shelley Hall, Principal and Managing Director of Catalytic Management, in CEO Refresher

* “Effective IT Keeps Money In The District” by Charlie Nault, author of Risk-Free Technology: How Small to Medium Businesses Can Stem Huge Losses From Poorly Performing IT Systems (Global Professional Publishing), Chairman of the Board at Atrion, and Principal of Risk-Free Consulting, in School Business Affairs

* Dan Young, Patent Agent at Wolf Greenfield, was consulted for an article in Mass High Tech titled “IP Economy Boosts Research Job Prospects In Law”

* Ed Gates, Chairman at Wolf Greenfield, was recently named a 2009 “Massachusetts And New England Super Lawyer” by New England Super Lawyers Magazine. A press announcement appeared in the Milford Daily News

* Pat Haraden, Senior Vice President of Employee Benefits at Longfellow Benefits, was quoted in Business Insurance discussing the pros of smaller benefit consulting firms

* Larry Karle, Senior Consultant, Longfellow Benefits, was consulted for an article in Human Resource Executive Online titled “Disconnecting Self-Service?”

* Michael A. Albert, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in a National Law Review article discussing the Centocor v. Abbott verdict.

* Michael J. Pomianek, Shareholder, and Tani Chen, Associate, both with Wolf Greenfield, participated in a Q & A focusing on accelerating cleantech patents in Managing Intellectual Property

* MaryDilys Anderson, Associate at Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in IP Today on the subject of fines for marketing products with false or expired patent numbers

* “Successfully Build Your Business Network With ‘Eblasts’” by Aurélie Hiernaux, emerson consulting group’s 2010 spring intern, in The Independent Consultant

* “Unintentional Jerks: The Key to Handling ‘Difficult’ Executives ” by Carl Robinson, PhD., Principal of Advanced Leadership Consulting, in Chief Executive Magazine Online

* “Responding to the Bilski Decision: How Reissue Applications Can Help You Save Your Patent” by Steve Henry, Shareholder and A.J. Tibbetts, Patent Agent, both in the Electrical & Computer Technologies Group at Wolf Greenfield, in IP Frontline

* Strategic Delegation: The Key to Increased Productivity and Higher Performance” by John Myrna, Co-Founder of Myrna Associates, Inc., in Employment Relations Today

* “Measuring Innovation from Different Perspectives” by George Chen and Amy Muller, Chicago-based Directors of Innovaro Strategos, a global strategy and innovation consulting firm, in Employment Relations Today

* “For Most, Office 2010 is Worth Upgrade Effort” by Vin D’Amico, President of DAMICON, in his monthly column for IndUS Business Journal

* Doug Wolf, Shareholder and Co-Chair of the Trademark Group at Wolf Greenfield, was quoted in a story about games and copyright in The Mobile Gadgeteer

* “Safety Pays—How to Make a Zero-Accident Culture a Reality” by Bob Phelan, President & CEO, Construction Risk Advisors, has been scheduled to appear in an upcoming Construction Executive Magazine

* “Mentoring is the Ultimate Executive Education: An Interview with Charles Hoffman” by Michael Shenkman, author of the book Leader Mentoring (Career Press) and Founder/President of the Arch of Leadership, a leader mentoring company, in the April 2010 edition of Leader Pathways

* “Nathaniel Hawthorne: Peaceable & Inspiring” by Tijana Salaj, emersongroup summer 2009 intern, has been published by Amazines.com

It’s transcendentalist Margaret Fuller’s 200th birthday! A buddy of Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott and the rest of the transcendentalist gang, she’s profiled by Apprentice Chloe Lizotte in her popular “Eccentrics” column, published regularly in the Concord Journal. Click here to read.

By Aurélie Hiernaux
This article was originally published in The Independent Consultant.

During a business meeting, one common thing easily noticed is the plentiful exchange of business cards. It’s after all a good way to keep in touch with other business people and thus build your own business network.

But this desirable scenario is not always the case. Here’s one example: say you’re a guest speaker at a business event. When your talk is done, even if you’ve done exceptionally well, your audience, including potential future clients, will not automatically contact you. If you have not taken the important step of getting your audience’s business cards and then staying in touch with them regularly, you will have lost a grand opportunity to further build your business network.

Thus, in such a case, you must not simply throw whatever cards you bring back into a basket at your office and forget about them. You must add all e-mail addresses from your contacts to your e-mail list, perhaps putting them into Constant Contact or ACT or some other similar contact database.

Publishing expert Jia-Ling Loo put it this way in her article “ Why Staying in Touch by Email is Crucial to Publishing Success,” published online: “Gathering new business cards at every possible opportunity can never be enough. It’s what you DO with these new contacts that reaps rewards.”

Business cards and emails however are not the endpoint for staying connected with other business people. A next step is crucial for achieving the same result on a long-term basis–sending eblasts, i.e., e-mails sent all at once to your entire e-mail list. Though too many businesses ignore this practice, sending eblasts of this kind offers several benefits:

* First, an eblast can be in any kind of format you like
* Second, am eblast need not take too much of your valuable time (compared to an e-newsletter)
* Third, it’s a way of communicating with your business contacts that can systematize such communications

What’s the goal and consequence of sending regular eblasts? Simply that you end up generating word-of-mouth within your business network. Indeed, as in the example above of you-as-a-public-speaker, business people tend to forget to keep reminding their connections about their field of expertise and as a result, despite the simplicity of doing so via eblasts, over time their connections forget too! This means colleagues, prospects, even clients talking about your good work, your great skills, your professional accomplishments and other word-of-mouth slows down to a halt.

As Jia-Ling Loo summarized in her article, “It’s really astonishing how few people (and companies) actually take the time to touch base with their newfound contacts, not to mention with past and present clients.” Yes… quite remarkable!

Nowadays social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked In are all very popular and visible on the Internet as well. They too can be effective in terms of building one’s business network and keeping you “top-of-mind.” But it’s also important not to rely solely on these vehicles since eblasts to an e-mail list allow us to send eblast messages to all our contacts, not just those subscribing to (or checking in with) Twitter, Facebook etc. Everyone checks their regular e-mail at least a few times per day, though many may check for their social networking messages only sporadically.

To fine-tune this process, consider also these tips for effective eblast communication:

1. When sending an eblast, make sure to include a button for forwarding your eblast to recipients’ friends and business contacts.
2. On your website, place a box in a prominent position so that visitors can easily sign up for your e-list.
3. Do not make people answer lots of information about themselves in order to get onto your e-list. Name, company name, telephone, e-mail and how did he/she hear about you may be enough. Keep things simple.
4. Always send a nice note to everyone before you officially plunk them onto your e-list. Say something like, “Great to meet you yesterday at the Business Event. Let’s put each other on our respective e-lists so we can officially stay in touch.”
5. Never purchase an email list. Every email on your list should be that of someone you have actually met even if tangentially. E-lists work best when permission-based.

Finally, an eblasts must not be a mere self-promotional advertisement for your business but a message of relevance and genuine value. Here are a few ideas:

1. Offer a short case study of a recent successful project including lessons for your recipients to observe.
2. Announce when you win an award or earn a new educational degree or professional certification.
3. Let your contacts know that you have just published a book or article, which are both fantastic ways to boost your credibility.
4. Offer your opinion of recent business events or business news.
5. Offer clients an “alert” about a change in a law, or a new government policy that might affect them.
6. Write a review of a relevant business book.
7. Create an e-newsletter, though if you do this be careful not to bog yourself down with too ambitious a format. Again, keep things simple!

Despite all I’ve said here, some people will still shrink from sending out blasts for fear of contributing to the daily flood of spam. Though this argument is understandable, if you translate it into lack of action, i.e., you never send eblasts at all, you end up committing a grievous error. In short, you insure their invisibility. So send out eblasts only once a quarter or only once a month but do send out eblasts at some pace periodically throughout the year. In this way you will begin building a strong and successful business network that will raise your visibility above that of your competition keep word-of-mouth about you favourable and ongoing.

Aurélie Hiernaux is a PR specialist at emerson consulting group inc. in Concord (MA) and author of several published articles in French and English. She is a graduate in PR studies at La Haute Ecole Libre de Bruxelles Ilya Prigogine.

fun thoughts…
…great quotes

“A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”
— Benjamin Franklin

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

“I’ve never been a millionaire but I know I’d be darling at it.”
— Dorothy Parker

By Michael Oleksak
This article was originally published in Financial Executive.

Over the next several decades, millions of U.S. businesses will be sold, merged, recapitalized, gifted, closed, or liquidated. In any of these events, both the owner and the company’s value will benefit from advance exit planning. Financial executives, whether internal or external, play a key role in educating company owners on the basics of exit planning.

If you are the lead financial officer of a privately-held business, such as CFO or VP Finance, part of your fiduciary duty is to protect the company from the risk of an unplanned change of ownership, through sudden death, of both the shares and the operation of the business. You also play an important role in increasing the company’s value by strengthening it for the possibility of a future transition or transaction.

Whether you are an internal or external financial advisor, you should make the business owner aware of three things every owner must have: a will, a succession plan, and an exit strategy.

The will protects the ownership of the firm in case a tragedy or sudden death affects the owner. With a will, the shares will stay out of probate court and land in the hands of the person or people chosen by the owner, thereby ensuring some sense of business continuity.

The succession plan will help with the orderly transition of the operation of the business if the owner is suddenly incapacitated. The exercise of preparing a succession plan will also help establish whether internal management is strong enough to handle running the company without the owner.

The exit strategy will be the catalyst to determine whether the company is ready for some other entity to assume ownership. Are the books and records, processes and systems, management and employees, business model, brand, public image and reputation desirable enough for someone else to pay to acquire it? If the answer is yes, the next question is would the acquirer be external or internal?

Exit Options

The owner’s external exit options are sale to a strategic buyer or sale to a private equity group. Internal transfer options include a management buy-out, a sale of shares through the Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP), or gifting of shares, usually to the next generation of the owner’s family. Each of these five exit options has a different valuation range, with external transfers generally having higher values. The owner will also relinquish control of the firm after the external transaction, giving up the ability to subsidize his or her lifestyle through internal expenses. The external exit option also eliminates the owner’s control over his or her legacy, so the owner must determine his or her financial and emotional readiness to exit the business.

If the owner is emotionally ready to leave the business, but needs the highest financial return, as the financial advisor you can recommend that a sale to a third-party strategic or third-party financial buyer should be considered. Under these arrangements, it’s important to calculate investment banking and legal fees, as well as taxes, because all will be subtracted from the amount of the check the owner will cash at the end of the day. Due diligence by the third party buyer will be thorough. If there are family members working in the business, their employment may be at risk if the current owner is not calling the shots. The owner may be required to bridge any financing or value gap with seller notes or earnouts over time.

A management buyout (MBO) creates a different risk to analyze: is the management team capable of continuing to generate enough cash to pay out the owner over time? Some industries lend themselves to MBO’s better than others, such as construction. Such a deal will require outside financing from a bank or another source, and management may be required to pledge personal assets to support a bank loan. Seller notes will also likely be part of the financing. After the buyout, the owner may still be involved and may retain some financial expense benefits under the deal. The further in advance this option is considered, the better the owner can prepare the team for the execution [?transition?].

An ESOP is a tax-advantaged, though administratively complex, way for the owner to take some money off the table by selling shares to employees and management. Under a buyout or transfer through an ESOP, the owner will likely remain in control if less than 50% is sold, and will continue to have some personal expenses paid by the company.

Gifting is also a tax-advantaged way to transfer ownership, usually to (hopefully capable) family members. The owner can stay in control and have expenses paid for by the firm. This option will cause complications in relationships, especially as you get deeper into the second and third generations of the family. Capable outside consultants with experience in family business issues should be considered to help smooth out issues.

All the options that financial executives can suggest for exit strategies carry different valuation ranges, with external transfers having higher valuation ranges (and higher tax impacts). However, a clear awareness of each will help the owner and the company mitigate risk and prepare for the future.

Michael Oleksak is a principal at Trek Consulting LLC, which helps business owners focus on the dual challenges of building and realizing the maximum value of their life’s work. For more information, visit www.trekconsulting.com.

By Charles L. Nault
This article was previously published in CEO Refresher

How reliable is your company’s technology network? How can you be sure you have installed the right system for your needs in the first place, and that it will keep working for you, day and night, warding off viruses, breakdowns and other threats or dangers? And if your system doesn’t appear to be all it should be, how can you stanch the “bleeding” of your company’s money in lost productivity?

If these questions concern you—and they should–you must begin to create real efficiency within your technology by implementing a successful “life-cycle.” This life-cycle starts with planning its existence and ends when the technology is replaced with something new and more effective. A “healthy” life-cycle is achieved when your technology performs to its maximum potential the entire time it is employed to meet your business needs. A five-step process for guaranteeing a healthy life-cycle can be implemented if a specific methodology is followed: assess, implement, train, support, and review. Let’s review each one in depth:

1. Assess. You begin with assessing where you are. When your Technology Council decides you need a particular technology, or when you realize that you need an upgrade to any portion of your infrastructure or that you need to add to it, your very first step is to determine the current condition of your network and the ability to incorporate the new technology into it. If you are one of the few companies that have precise, detailed documentation, this step should be relatively easy. If not, you’ll want to hire an outside firm to do the assessment.

In any case you must thoroughly document the current state of your network with a view toward analyzing the impact of this new technology on existing performance. And you’ll need a full report on all other parts of the network that will need to be changed or upgraded during the implementation process too, to support the new technology.

2. Implement. With a thorough assessment in hand, you can now work towards the most complicated phase of the cycle, implementation. It’s impossible to overstress the planning phase of the implementation process and I’ve seen many people do this. But even when you give implementation its due, please be advised that things will go wrong during implementation, so be prepared: you are going to bleed a bit here in all but the rarest instances! The question is only how badly and for how long.

Your assessment will have a dramatic impact on implementation and how painful it is. Planning effectively includes a detailed, documented project plan which I strongly suggest so that your team can construct and execute the project plan with success. The leader of the team must be a certified and experienced project manager with a proven track record, and another key person will be the technical director, someone experienced in implementing this particular technology.

There should also be a representative of the users of the technology on the team, someone responsible for ongoing support once the technology is up and running. This piece is, amazingly, often left out!

3. Train. Training your IT staff is vital. If this is the first time your staff has seen this technology, an introductory training must take place before the technology is implemented. Do not just send an IT person to a training session on new technology and then ask them to implement it on their network. Although that is the norm, it’s just asking for trouble.

Instead, you need a technical director with prior experience at implementing the technology. Require training here too, during implementation, and have this experienced TD do some over-the-shoulder training with those unfamiliar with the technology, especially those who will have to perform ongoing support. Finally, make sure you train the users of the new technology as well.

While keeping things simple, you should also include some very basic troubleshooting and information-gathering that users can perform should they run into trouble. Your objective should always be to get the user back to full production mode as quickly as possible. I also strongly suggest that you sit through the presentation yourself to make sure it’s presented in a way that the average Joe or Jane can fully understand it.

4. Support. Support for the new technology, once implemented, is the only way to assure the optimal return on your investment. My firm recognizes and provides two important levels of support: pro-active and re-active. Pro-active support means real-time monitoring that not only identifies if the equipment is working or not working but also if there are conditions affecting the performance of the technology even when not actually taking it down altogether.

Pro-active monitoring tools can tell you if a similar condition is occurring in many different types of networking equipment. The more frequently this condition occurs, the more likely that you’ll need to invest in greater capacity to keep your users happy.

Re-active support of course is self explanatory. If you are utilizing pro-active support, you’ll be alerted either by staff that a condition exists to which you must react. This may be a “down” condition that is already causing some bleeding, or as discussed above, it may be something you need to react to in order to prevent down time. In either case, you must react.

5. Review. The final phase of your life cycle process involves the constant review of your technology. This also is multi-faceted, so here’s what you should review and who should review it:

1. Network Performance. Should be reviewed on a quarterly basis by senior management. This should produce a high level report viewed by senior management which your pro-active monitoring tool or provider supplies, to include:

. General network performance and total downtime
. The number of trouble tickets and mean time to resolve them
. Any major outages affecting more than 10 percent of users, number of users affected, duration of the outage
. Existing conditions that require additional investment to prevent performance degradation.
. Any network security issues

2. User Satisfaction. What gets measured gets attention. Measure this, and be sure that your senior management views the results every six months.

3. Technology Advancements. Your technology council should meet on a quarterly basis to discuss emerging technologies that could accelerate your company’s performance.

If you follow the life-cycle process–assess, implement, train, support, and review—the only time you should experience an outage in your technology network will be when you determine it is likely to have the least impact on your business. Try to imagine that for a minute: a fully redundant, resilient, self-healing network that’s neverNOT working whenever your employees are. No bleeding, no lost profits. Your technology fits.

Charles L. Nault is author of the new book Risk-Free Technology: How Small To Medium Businesses Can Stem Huge Losses From Poorly Performing IT Systems (Global Professional Publishing) and Chairman of the Board at Atrion Networking Corporation. A recognized expert in “network utility thinking,” his firm provides training and consulting to companies in addition to working closely with Cisco Systems on network design, implementations and support.

He can be reached at 401-736-6400 ext. 111 or cnault@atrion.net or by visiting http://riskfreetechnology.com.

By Vernon W. Holleman, III
This article was previously published in The National Underwriter

In light of the financial meltdown, it is a good time to talk to the (still) wealthy about using life insurance as a financial tool for giving to charity.

For those with a private foundation, help them think about using life insurance as “asset replenishment” after the recent market storm. The idea is simple: to replenish asset losses of the foundation using life insurance on the donor’s life, thereby creating dollars not there today for real leverage tomorrow.

Life insurance potentially avails donors of new opportunities to make gifts. Today, most donors are simply thinking of how to complete gifts already made and are making few new commitments. You can help them ensure that assets that have been lost are recovered or guarantee a nice return.

Charities love planned gifts. And today they are looking for good planned giving stories to tell. Help them by exciting your clients about the power of giving life insurance. After many exotic and hyped investments failed or proved fraudulent, demonstrating the tax-free growth and returns of life insurance, a known commodity, is cool again.

Life insurance lets donors have a real impact on, for example, their alma mater. The school would apply for, say, a $1 million life insurance policy of which the school would be both owner and beneficiary. The donor would make annual gifts of the premium to the school and take charitable deductions for doing so.

In a recent example of this strategy, my firm helped a 55-year-old man create a gift using life insurance because making a current cash gift was not an option. We suggested he determine his insurability in a preliminary underwriting test. After collecting medical records, the underwriter at our chosen carrier deemed him to be in “preferred” health. Result: He could accomplish his goal of a $1 million policy with his budget.

After full underwriting, it turned out he was “super preferred”–all the better. This created a roughly $9,500 annual premium for the policy. He examined several funding alternatives, including “pay forever” and abbreviated scenarios, and determined the pay forever was the best bet because it provided the best return on his investment.

He also wanted the policy to last until age 100 with cash value in the contract, but he did not want to fund the policy to have it endow (wherein the cash value equals the death benefit at age 100). The internal rate of return (IRR) of the contract if the donor lives to be 100 will be no less than 7%, a handsome long-term net return. Both the donor and the school were pleased—the proverbial win-win.

Issues to consider

Insurable interest is the first planning aspect that must be confirmed. In my example, the donor had not only graduated from the school; he had two children who had gone there and served on the school’s board. Most importantly, he had a long track record of giving, both annually and during campaigns. The Truth is, the school would suffer a financial loss at his death.

It is very important that you understand the relationship of your client (the donor) with the charity so you can justify the insurable interest to the underwriter(s) at the carrier(s). Do this first–don’t just assume anyone with a charitable intent can acquire life insurance because they want to; insurable interest laws were established for a good reason. Also, you don’t want to excite clients by the idea of gifting, only to find they just started working with a charity or there is not enough history to justify insuring them.

It would be easy to assume that your client can take a full tax deduction for a planned gift of life insurance, but don’t assume. Confirm it with a tax professional, so there are no surprises.

In addition to insurability, the client’s specific rating classification makes a real difference in charitable planning. Today, most carriers have as many as five standard or better ratings. Each improvement in the underwriting class means savings for the donor and/or a greater gift to the charitable organization.

Thus shopping for multiple carriers is key, as those with standard and preferred “plus” ratings can create significant savings over a carrier offering only standard and preferred rating classes. However, this theory must be tested, as costs will differ. A market analysis is the only way to find the best product choice for the client.

You must also help clients budget for a policy acquisition, both for the short and long term. Don’t assume that because individuals of means are making a planned charitable gift that they will want to pay the premium forever, or that they won’t ever have cash-flow issues. Therefore, be wary of no-lapse guarantee universal life products that offer little premium flexibility if a donor ceases payments. Also, remember the charity will own the policy and may need to cash the policy in before it matures. So building up cash value is key.

Whole life, as an alternative to UL, may not give enough flexibility either; and a variable life product that sees down markets may affect the expectations of the donor and the charity too much. We’ve achieved the greatest success using life insurance for charitable purposes with a traditional universal life product that offers good cash accumulation until late in life, but that also (to keep the premium reasonable) does not require funding until the policy endows.

This policy type strikes a reasonable balance between keeping the premium low while building a cash value cushion that may be needed to meet temporary needs, maintain the policy in the event of missed premium payments or accommodate a decision by the charitable institution to cash out early. Talk through these issues with the donor and the charity so proper planning can be implemented.

Vernon W. Holleman, III, is president of The Holleman Companies, an insurance advisory firm based in Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at Vernon@hollemanco.com.

by Shelley F. Hall
This article was originally published in CEO Refresher.

Sales rallies are a great way to energize your staff, communicate new selling tools and techniques and to build team spirit. I was recently asked to speak at a sales rally where the theme for the event was Disney, a company selected because of its stellar reputation for service. My job was thus to link my ideas about sales to service. Disney of course has long been known for its excellent customer service, and if you’ve ever been to Disney World you know what I mean. It’s a firm that’s exceptional when it comes to both selling and up-selling. Even better, while doing some research on Disney in preparation for my talk, I came upon this quote from Walt himself:

“Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy, and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way … implicitly and unquestionably.”

I was especially struck by these words and their relevance to sales and service. After all, the foundation of effective selling is uncovering the prospect’s needs and desires. To do this well, sales people must be “curious.” The very best sales people channel their curiosity into exceptional questioning skills that quickly and accurately discover how they can help the customer meet their business and personal goals. That sincere curiosity is the result of being truly customer focused, i.e., keeping your own ego in check.

Once a prospect’s needs have been uncovered, selling becomes all about persuasion. The best sales people really believe in their product or service “all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.” It’s that kind of confidence that persuades people to buy. As a result, it’s damn near impossible to resist buying stuff from Disney! They “believe” in the magic they sell — a belief that’s contagious.

Which creates this question: If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, why should your prospect or customer? When I conduct sales training for a bank, I often ask how many in the room use an on-line account. I then ask those who didn’t raise their hands, why they don’t? I then get standard objections around security, hating computers, not wanting to bother with it or — “I’m just too lazy to set it up!” So when I next ask them how they can expect to sell a service that they don’t use and believe in themselves, an “ah-ha moment” pervades the room.

Ask yourself a few questions: Just how much confidence does your sales team have in your products? How much confidence do your sales reps have in your company? In your company’s ability and willingness to keep its promises to its customers? If you hear grousing and complaining when you put these questions to your crew, instead of “Damn, we’re good!” – you may be in serious need of a change in attitude — and not necessarily just among your sales reps. It might be time to take a good look in the mirror!

Keeping promises is the cornerstone of great customer service. It’s the “constancy” of focus that builds superior service. I know, I know: it’s hard to stay focused on anything these days. But if you have to choose what to focus on, your first choice had better be your customers. Truly great organizations have learned that listening to and responding to customer needs is what drives profits. They know that achieving superior service takes time and commitment. Delivering superior customer service must be more than lip service or “flavor of the month” – the customer must be your constant focus every day, every month, every year.

And to constancy of focus I would add “consistency.” Your message, your service, your products, your people must all be consistent. Variations in service or product knowledge from employee to employee or location to location will undermine your customer’s confidence in you, leaving you vulnerable to your competition. Customers return to Disney World and Disneyland over and over because they know exactly what to expect and they always get it – efficient, friendly service delivered in a fun and exciting environment. Disney is the leader in consistent delivery and constant customer focus.

It takes courage to be a terrific sales person and it takes courage to deliver terrific service. Certainly, sales professionals no matter who they are demonstrate courage every day in the face of continual rejection. It also takes courage to handle difficult, sometimes angry customers while maintaining a cool, customer-centric composure. And finally it takes courage on the part of management to build a customer-driven organization that truly believes in and unfailingly acts upon the precept that what’s good for the customer is good for the company. Executing on such beliefs may be difficult–very difficult—but it is nonetheless essential. Only those who live these beliefs each and every day, faithfully practicing Uncle Walt’s four Cs, can honestly be labeled the best and make dreams come true.

Shelley F. Hall is a highly successful entrepreneur and corporate fugitive who has built, reinvented and turned around companies for the past 20 years. As Principal, Managing Director of Catalytic Management, Shelley delivers velocity driven consulting that accelerates business growth through sales effectiveness, customer loyalty and process improvement. As a thought leader and speaker, Shelley has published dozens of articles for such major business journals as Business Performance Magazine, CEO Refresher, The Handbook of Business Strategy, ManageSmarter, Sales and Service Excellence, Women’s Business and many more. Visit www.catalyticmanagement.com

By Assessing Your Alignment, Experience and Technology, You Can Shift into the Fast Lane

By Tim Hebert
This article was originally published in CEO Refresher and on CIO.com.

Investing heavily in IT, many consultants race to leverage new software and applications and technology as quickly as possible with little regard to their existing network infrastructure. Soon, their overtaxed IT systems become inadequate and unreliable as traffic backs up and slows down as during any major city’s rush hour.

Of course, consultants must have an “always on” network infrastructure since poorly performing systems or outages are no longer acceptable. When system downtimes occur, they can have real effects on our bottom line. Our productivity drops, our efficiency plummets.

All manner of collaboration tools, voice/video solutions, business software have become intertwined into the real-time fabric of our practices. This “network infrastructure” equals the roads, highways, train stations and airports we depend on for our transportation needs. When our IT system functions correctly, we (and our clients, vendors, subcontractors etc.) are happy. But when our IT breaks down, it’s a catastrophe (and if it happens to a great many of us at the same time, front-page news!). Such breakdowns can cripple our business.

Unfortunately, when many consultants recognize infrastructure problems, they often reach for such easy fixes as hardware upgrades or additional capacity (such as more memory). But sometimes IT problems do not lend themselves to quick and easy fixes as there may be several root causes, perhaps in the technology itself, in the operational processes, in your organizational structure, your failure to use best practices, or a combination of all the above.

To understand the true causes of your network problems, conduct a network “infrastructure assessment.” This is a comprehensive study of your IT infrastructure to ensure that it is strong, reliable, and ready to support the objectives of your business—today and in the future.

However, most firms and practitioners fail to make such a thorough assessment because they are narrowly focused on technology. They ask questions like: Is my technology outdated, powerful or secure enough? Does it have enough features? But conducting an infrastructure assessment this way is like repaving a highway to get more throughput…when actually more lanes are needed!

Successful IT assessments thus focus on three key areas: Alignment, Experience, and Technology.

Alignment with Business Goals

Often, business change creates alignment gaps between your IT infrastructure and business goals. This creates inconsistencies in technology, processes, and people skills that will weaken your infrastructure stability, hamper operational efficiency, and reduce profitability. Alignment begins at the foundation, reviewing up business plan to understand overall corporate strategy. Then, collaborating with your business’s key stakeholders to understand primary business drivers allows you to establish a baseline of technologies, processes, and people that impact your business and IT infrastructure. Aligning your business needs and goals with your organization’s IT infrastructure will improve operational efficiencies, reduce costs, enhances security, and help ensure regulatory compliance.

User Experience

You’re late for work and you’re stuck in rush-hour traffic. You feel stressed, angry, frustrated. You may feel exactly the same way when using a poorly built and/or maintained infrastructure. Assess your overall satisfaction of your IT services, including whether your networks, systems, applications, process, facilities and people are working well. What’s the true experience of you the user (and other users)?

Poorly educated or trained technology users combined with weak support systems cause artificial business bottlenecks that can disable your practice. Understanding all users’ experiences will allow you to eliminate potential obstacles that would be present regardless of how much money you have spent on technology. Technology should unleash the power of you and your people, not hold them back.

Technology and Operational Disciplines

Finally, examine the architecture, design, implementation and management of your technology. Many firms review the age of their hardware platforms, the level of their software revisions, available features, functionality of existing devices and so forth. But in doing so they neglect to examine the interrelated disciplines that must be well managed. Technology must be coupled with operational disciplines such as vendor management, security, problem reporting and escalation, system recovery, configuration management and change management.

So your assessment should provide a candid evaluation of how well your IT infrastructure supports your practice overall and what specific actions should be taken to improve the alignment, performance, and cost of your IT infrastructure. By focusing on root causes, not just symptoms, your assessment will include specific recommendations resulting in significant and measurable improvements. This will unlock IT’s promise of improved productivity, increased efficiency, and a stronger bottom line. By creating such an “always-on” infrastructure, you’ll watch your business surge forward into the information superhighway fast lane.

Tim Hebert is Chief Executive Officer with Atrion Networking Corporation, in Warwick, R.I., a systems integrator and network services provider. He can be contacted at thebert@atrion.net or 401-736-6400 or by visiting www.atrion.net.