In many of our past Silkin Management Group blog postings, we’ve presented a variety of articles concerning various legal issues on dealing with employees. Most of this information was written by a Southern California law firm (The Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.) that we and many of our clients have used over the years for Human Resource issues.

Probably the issue that most Silkin Management Group clients have the most difficulty with and the most potential liability exposure to concerns handling difficult employees up to and including dismissing them. Therefore we will offer several articles over the next few days from Mr. Bowles firm concerning this issue in order to help Silkin clients and any other readers of our Silkin Management Group blog sites. Below is Part 1.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

For more information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

THE ANNOYING AND INCOMPETENT HAVE NO RIGHTS
Terminating Failing Employees Properly

One of the least enviable tasks for a manager or human resources director is terminating workers. There is little more important and stabilizing to an individual than his or her job. Letting a person go can trigger a whole range of unpleasant emotions and reactions.

Managers and directors faced with terminating an employee must of course also be aware of their legal obligations to preserve rights against unlawful discrimination and retaliation.

However, obnoxious and/or unproductive employees have no such protections. Mercifully, we have yet to see a workplace movement in this country to “hire the incompetent!” or to “respect the unruly!”

Yet, the frivolous whiner is probably the one sort of candidate for termination for whom managers and directors need to take particular care in making the transition. The one who nonsensically complains about the color of the furniture today could well be the next frivolous finger-pointer in an employment suit tomorrow.

If a business must fire a failing individual, it is vital that it do so properly. While this law office regularly and successfully guides managers through the process, some of what we commonly recommend in these situations may be counter intuitive for some.

Sincerely,

Tim Bowles
Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.
One South Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 301
Pasadena, CA 91105
626-583-6600
email: information@bowleslaw.com

We have presented many marketing tips on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites simply because our clients and potential clients are always interested in learning more about marketing.

In today’s world, marketing strategy must include the internet if you want to be effective. Silkin clients often ask us about the best way to go about this. Although we are not internet technical experts, we do know marketing technology and we do work with people who know their stuff about using that technology on the internet. To that end we are going to present 3 articles that we think Silkin Management Group clients and anyone else reading our blog sites will find useful in learning more about this area.

Today we will cover some key points that are vital relative to a website.

1. Make sure you have a web site (www.CompanyName.com or something similar)
2. Make sure your email addresses are @companyName.com, not a generic email address like @gmail.com or hotmail.com
3. Your web site should be easily updateable.
4. Your web site should then be kept up to date
5. Your should have a clear web site design that easily directs visitors to get the desired result
6. Your web site should have useful information to give users a reason to come to the site
7. You should have a means to track statistics on web site visitors.
8. See if your web site is showing up in search results.
If not, you’ll need to research the proper key word/s that need to be in your web site and then fix the content using the proper words.

You will likely need to hire a professional to help design a good website and have it “optimized” for search engines but, if you keep the above points in mind, you will be able to get the type of site you need from that professional.

Silkin Management Group has helped private practices with marketing techniques for nearly 30 years to great results. If you’d like to find out more about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Bill Hickey
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Here’s two more tips you can use, whether a Silkin Management Group client or not.

1. When promoting by mail, encourage response by enclosing a postage-paid return envelope or reply card. If needed, mailing lists can be purchased to target specific groups you want to attract. Make sure you promotion is based on good solid surveys to find out what people need and want from your office.

2. Set aside time to work with your staff on getting referrals from patients. The best way to get referrals is simply to ASK FOR THEM. Your staff will be more comfortable in making this a part of their daily routine if they get a chance to practice during staff training sessions. Silkin Management Group has scripts and training programs for staff that make it easy to greatly increase your new patients from referrals.

For more information about how Silkin Management Group goes about helping our clients with successful marketing, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or contact us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Gary Crawshaw
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Marketing is a key area for our clients and prospective Silkin clients, and one that few of them are trained in. Therefore we like to present useful tips for anyone to use.

Here’s one you can put to use right away.

Use phone surveys to get back in touch with inactive patients. Ask them questions designed to find out what you and your staff can do to reactivate them. They will appreciate the personal contact and you’ll have an opportunity to interest them in returning to your practice for services.

Silkin Management Group has a variety of scripts that you can use when doing these surveys as well as workshops to train your staff on reactivating patients/clients.

For more information about how Silkin Management Group accomplishes this, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Eric Korb
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Over the last year we’ve written numerous articles on our various Silkin Management Group blog sites about the new health care legislation. One thing that we’ve seen more and more of in reading about this legislation is that there are many undefined ambiguities in the law that will be decided and clarified by administration rules and regulations yet to come out.

Although the authors of the legislation promised lower premiums and greater service, we have already seen increased premiums throughout the country since the legislation was passed.

Today I read an article in the New York Times (you can access this article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/health/policy/15health.html?th&emc=th) which discussed the latest health care “rule” issued by the White House. This rule requires health insurance companies to provide “free” coverage for a large list of screenings and laboratory tests that fit into a preventative care category. The list includes tests for blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, AIDS, and depression as well as counseling for obesity and smoking. There may be more services included such as services for contraceptives as well as additional rules mandating frequency of various tests.

As consultants to private practice health care owners for over 30 years, Silkin Management Group has helped thousands of doctors better manage their practices. But now, with these rules being issued by the government on what you must do for free, we see only greater and greater government control and running of the health care industry.

Any person in business knows that nothing is for free. Who do these “rule-makers” think is going to pay for these “free” services? As the article points out, these new rules will raise premiums in order to pay for the “free”services. Gosh, I thought the new legislation was supposed to reduce premiums.

I suggest that all Silkin Management Group clients as well as any other health care practice owner read this article and all information associated with it in order to stay abreast of what is going on with the increasing government control of this industry. We have always agreed that reforms were and are needed but mandating free service is not, in our opinion, a needed reform.

Bill Hickey
Silkin Management Group Consultant

If you would like more information about Silkin Management Group visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com. You can also contact Silkin Management Group at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

We hope you enjoy this article as well as the previous and future articles we will post on our various Silkin Management Group sites.

For more information about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

You’ll excuse me if I make a racist observation.

Or maybe you won’t.

But a review of several top weekly magazines reveals an all too visible truth: the ads in Ebony Magazine communicate better, faster and with more impact than those of several of its more well established competitors.

This doesn’t mean the magazine is better…or worse, just that, on the whole, their advertisements deliver their messages with more communication value.

The reason for this is not to be found in a Wharton MBA thesis on the successful strategies of ethnic advertising.

It is simpler than that: their ads are more visual than those of the other weekly magazines we reviewed (Time, Forbes, Fortune).

Most people think the familiar adage, “One picture is worth a thousand words,” is an old Chinese proverb. In fact, it is often attributed to that all time Oriental homeboy, Confucius. But alas, the C-man missed this one: the phrase was created by ad man Fred R. Barnard, for an advertisement he placed in the industry journal, Printer’s Ink in 1921.

And Fred’s observation was beyond prophetic, because today almost a century later, we live in a culture so driven by image that cosmetic surgery is now a rite of passage along other ornamentations of the flesh such as piercing and tattoos.

We are talking marketing here and the use of images to attract consumer attention has turned the world of commerce into an orgy of the visual. In case you died in the seventies and are just returning, it’s not just movies and television anymore. The arsenal in the assault on our senses – in what positioning gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout called The Battle for Your Mind – has exploded like the set of a Madonna concert. A stroll through Times Square in Manhattan or down Sunset Blvd in Hollywood with their towering, electronic advertisements seems more like a scene from Blade Runner than a walk in a modern American City.

And YouTube has two billion video views per day….
Yes. Per day. Think about it.

Five hundred channel cable, TiVo, DVDs, digital video the Internet, email, cell phones, iPods and iPads have been added to old line communication channels like magazines, newspapers, billboards, and that life blood of the US postal service, direct mail.

So why, as obvious as this seems, are untold millions spent every year on text only ads by corporations whose advertising budgets could retire the national debt of several third world countries? Or, if there are images, why do they do everything but communicate the message the advertiser should be seeking to convey?

It’s not just magazines. An all too telling example appeared in The Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago.

You may have stopped at Starbucks to grab a latte and missed it, but there are only three players still standing in the U.S Wireless wars: Verizon, Sprint (Nextel’s new dad) and Cingular (which, despite a bit of lingering indigestion, devoured AT&T wireless for breakfast a short while ago – they have since returned to the AT&T brand).

Sprint, for reasons we will leave to their strategic marketing people, has decided to go head to head with Cingular / AT&T. They’ll get no gripe from me on this, as this kind of competition can drive pricing down and service up.

But if they are going to engage in marketing warfare, why in the name of Alexander Graham Bell would they print two ads in the nation’s leading business Journal with no visuals, and text that reads like a petulant third-grader.

Speaking of the Cingular wireless product, Edge, one ad says, “If Cingular’s EDGE is ‘high-speed,’ then Sprint’s broadband is high-high-high-high speed.”

The other says, “Sprint mobile Broadband is 5x faster than Cingular’s EDGE.”

Oh Yeah? My dad’s stronger than your dad.

What a missed opportunity for some instant visual positioning.

We are not a design and graphics house – we do research and surveys that help create market positions – but Dude, they could have done, what?… A tie-in with the release of a new Batman movie – Sprint is the Batmobile, Cingular the hobbling penguin. Or any number of visual positionings, which would have shown the difference in speed at a glance, instead of trying to tell it in words – The Starship Enterprise and an old DC 10; a Daytona racing car and a Model T; one of those Miami Vice muscle boats and a row boat….

The great American author, editor and publisher, Sol Stein makes note of this change as it has affected the literary culture in the last half of the twentieth century in his superlative Stein on Writing. His comments here are for writers, who, incidentally, do not have the opportunity of showing a picture as an ad man does, but note the shift in importance to the visual he points out here:

“In the nineteenth century, novels and stories were filled with summations of off stage events, past or present, almost always told to the reader in summary form.
….
In the mid-century, the advent of television brought a visual medium into homes. Television and movies are full of immediate scenes, visible to the eye, ready to be experienced firsthand. This has influenced stories and novels more than we realize. Twentieth-century audiences now insist on seeing what they are reading.”

Try to make the prospect read it and you may lose him. If you attract him with a visual image then you may be able to tell your story. But the more communication in the image, the better.

The key word here, however, is communication. Just showing any old image is not the answer either. The image must tell the story. There are some skin care advertisements in the issue of Ebony mentioned above that communicate in a flash. It is not just that the women are beautiful. In the world of models, that is a given. No, there are pictures here of African American women with skin so lustrous you can feel it.

No question of what the product is or what it does, or that it is desirable.

Compare that to a full-page ad in a recent issue of Forbes. On a dark gray background are written the words:

WE’RE WITHIN
THE THINGS

YOU CAN’T
DO WITHOUT

Eh…..?

At the bottom of the page there is some fine print that I assumed was mandated by the firm’s legal department. Maybe it’s a drug ad, I think, and they are listing the ubiquitous litany of side effects. But because I was writing this newsletter, I squinted mightily and read it.

Surprise. Here we get the actual message (that I would never have bothered to even try to read under ordinary circumstances) that,

“…we provide the software that enables designers to create the electronics inside your PDA and mobile phone.”

In the bottom right hand corner of the page, in a box that makes me think of a child playing hooky from school and hiding from the truant officer, is the company’s name: the brand, which happens to be Cadence.

Later, looking again at the ad, I see a fogged-over image in the middle of the page behind the words above. It’s so hazy that I hadn’t actually seen it on first glance. It’s like an apparition.

I look at it for some time before I realize that it is a hazy picture of a cell phone— at least I think that’s what it is.

I checked the company out on the Internet. They are apparently a very successful software firm. Kudos. But guys, come on… you’re intelligent engineers. Why would you spend the money for a full paged in a page ad in a national magazine and not SHOW what you do rather than running a page of copy which seems to have as its main purpose making the reader guess at it.

Do the people who created this ad really think that the busy business executives that thumb through Forbes are going to grok the message on this page, or that they are actually going to read the micro- print at the bottom?

Here’s another.

There is a full-page ad in Time by one of the drug company behemoths (aren’t they all). At the top of the page is a headline: “If you have COPD associated with chronic bronchitis, ADVAIR ® helps you breathe easier.*”

Below that is a picture of an older woman and a child. The woman appears to be singing to the little boy who is smiling. But at first glance, it is a little confusing as to exactly what they are doing.

A closer look gives you the idea that the older woman is breathing on the glass and the child is playing tic tac toe on the frosted pane. But you have to study it for a few moments to figure this out.

Besides the lack of clarity in the visuals, I want everyone in the room who has ever heard of COPD or has any idea what COPD is, to raise your hand.

I thought so.

Unbelievably, nowhere on the page – nowhere – does it explain or even define what COPD is (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.)

Compare this to another ad in the health care category in Forbes. The first thing that attracts your attention is a large, very detailed four-color picture of a heart on a visual screen. You can clearly see the many veins and arteries running through the heart. There are two doctors looking at the picture of the heart on the screen talking.

The headline?

“Who is accelerating the diagnosis of HEART DISEASE?”

“WE ARE.”

A bit of text is followed by “SIEMENS” in large bold print.

A quick glance at the heart, the doctors and the brand and…boom, you got it: Siemens makes equipment that provides clear, detailed pictures of the human heart so that diagnoses can be rapid and accurate.

So where does this leave us?

It leaves us raising our glasses in toast to the simple wisdom of Fred Barnes, because a picture is worth a thousand words.

But it also leaves us with the understanding that it must be the right picture that communicates the right message.

And that – determining the right image to communicate your message – is a unique survey service we have been providing to our clients for many years. Because at On Target Research, we conduct surveys that drive sales.

Best,

Bruce
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO

On Target Research
PO Box 6160
Altadena, Ca 91003
www.ontargetresearch.com
818-397-1401

If you’d like more information about how Silkin Management Group can help you increase your number of new patients and office productivity, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or email us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Here’s two tips for today:

Collect and tabulate information such as age, occupation, gender, income and location from your current patient records to get a profile of your typical patients. Then tailor your promotion and public relation events to target this majority group. There are specific ways to tailor your promotional activities to the results of this tabulation. But the first step is to tabulate. “Know before you go” is the motto.

Conduct a Referral Survey to find out if your patients are referring. Discover why they do or do not feel comfortable referring others to your practice. The information you get will help you develop your internal marketing programs and referral activities so that they get results, generate more referrals and give you more control over your internal marketing.

Gary Crawshaw
Silkin Management Group Consultant

Silkin Management Group has a 400 page Office Policy and Job Description handbook that is easily adapted for any health care office. It comes with our management consulting and training program. If you are interested in finding out more about what Silkin Management Group can do to help you with employee management, including hiring the right people, training them, improving their skills and effectively monitoring their production, visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com or write us at info@silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

Workplace Flap Control

Why are stop-lights red and go-lights green? How come you never get a second chance to make a first impression? Who decided days would be divided into 24 hours and not 48 hours half as long? Why do so many employers wind up entangled in gnarly, avoidable disputes over the handling of crummy, incompetent employees?

If you have arguably plausible answers to any of the first three questions, please let me know and I may pass them on.

Commonly, employers become enmeshed in stressed-out, messy, and distracting confrontations with failing workers for lack of clearly written, distributed and regularly utilized employee policy. Written guidelines, written rules, written procedures, written confirmations of problems encountered and addressed. Written, man.

Even just a written policy for “reporting of misconduct,” spelling out the employee’s duties, well-understood and followed by the workforce, can prevent small production and conduct problems from blowing sky high.

“Workplace flap prevention and handling” might be this firm’s (really long) middle name. We can help. Please also see our blog article: “Why Written Policy is Good Policy.”

Sincerely,
Tim Bowles

Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.
One South Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 301
Pasadena, CA 91105

Phone: 626-583-6600
Fax: 626-583-6605
Email: information@bowleslaw.com

The management of any business requires excellent marketing skills to be succesfull. That’s why we, at Silkin Management Group, constantly teach our clients the basics of marketing and provide them with marketing programs to fit their specific situation.

If you would like to find out more about Silkin Management Group, visit our website at: www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Dave McKevitt
Silkin Management Group Consultant

MARKETING AND “THE LAW OF CONTRACTION”

BY Bruce Wisemen

What’s your favorite Clint Eastwood film – as an actor, not a director?

What about Sean Connery? What’s your favorite Sean Connery film?

And Gene Hackman?

Movie junkie that I am, I begin to sweat as I roll through Connery’s filmography at IMDB.com. There are so many films, and he remains the best James Bond of all time. But I finally settle on The Hunt for Red October. A great film and Connery is superb.

The Eastwood selection is equally daunting. I agonize over the choices like a child at Baskin Robbins picking out the second scoop of ice cream for his cone. I am a romantic and captivated by my remembrance of The Bridges of Madison County. But Million Dollar Baby was mesmerizing, and Eastwood was as brilliant and that gets my vote.

Hackman was easier. If you didn’t answer The French Connection, we have some medication for you.

But here’s the bonus question: What do these three leading men have in common? See if you can answer the question before you look at the answer below.

They were all born in 1930 and are eighty years old this year.

Dudes!

There is a certain majesty in endurance, particularly at the top – something true for each of these men. There was another birth in 1930 that also remains at the top; Advertising Age began publication that year.

It is an uber-cliché to say that Advertising Age is the bible of the advertising industry. If you want to know something about the world of advertising or marketing, anything at all, Ad Age is your baby –and has been for decades.

Of interest is the recent survey they conducted to find the best media and marketing books of all time. Surprising to some, I suppose, the list reassures me that all is right in the world.

As you can see, the Positioning The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout was voted the best marketing book of all time by hundreds of Ad Age readers. Ries is also the co-author, with his daughter Laura, of the number three book on the list, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. I have read the three winners, (the Ries books several times), and I can tell you that Al Ries is among the foremost marketing minds of all time.

1. “POSITIONING: THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND”
Al Ries and Jack Trout

2. “OGILVY ON ADVERTISING”
David Ogilvy

3. “THE 22 IMMUTABLE LAWS OF BRANDING”
Al Ries and Laura Ries

Positioning, the Battle for Your Mind was an instant classic when published some thirty years ago and remains so today. But the branding book has nuances of application that are also enormously useful for businesses of all sizes in this age of zeros and ones.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding provides uncommon wisdom for marketers looking to expand sales and market share. Let me share a couple of my favorite branding “laws” from the book with you.

Law #2 is, The Law of Contraction: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

“Charles Lazarus owned one store, called Children’s Supermart, which sold two things: children’s furniture and toys. But he wanted to grow.

“What is the conventional way to grow? Adding more things to sell. Sure he could have added bicycles, baby food, diapers, and children’s clothing to the store. But he didn’t.

“Lazarus actually threw out the furniture and focused on the toys.

“Good things happen when you contract your brand rather than expand it. First he filled the empty half of the store with more toys, giving the buyer a greater selection and more reason to visit the store. Then, instead of calling it Children’s Supermart, Lazarus called his place Toys ‘R’ Us.”

The authors go on to explain how Toys “R” Us became a model for retail chains with a narrow focus and, consequently, strong brands: Home Depot in home supplies, Victoria’s Secret in ladies’ lingerie, PetsMart in pet supplies, and Foot Locker in athletic shoes, to name a few.

A bank I worked for years ago, narrowed the focus of their brand to healthcare. Customers from other industry sectors would approach us with handsome deposit balances and loan requests, and they would be politely turned away. The bank focused virtually all marketing efforts on doctors, medical groups, hospitals, etc. It did not take long for this bank to become the leading health care bank in the United States.

The Law of Contraction goes hand in glove with law #5, which is The Law of the Word: A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the consumer.

Kleenex, owns the word tissue in the mind. “You know your brand owns the category name when people use your brand name generically.”

“Please pass me a Kleenex.”

Q-Tip and Scotch Tape are other examples of brands that “own” the product word in their category.

“Nor is it any secret how these brands managed to own the category word. They were first, plain and simple.”

….
“ So what do you do if you weren’t first in a category? Quite often you can create a new category by simply narrowing the focus.”

….
“Look what Prego did to Ragu’. For years Ragu’ was the leading brand of spaghetti sauce with a market share in excess of 50%….Ragu’ had many different varieties.

“So what did Prego do? The brand narrowed its focus to one variety, ‘thick’ spaghetti sauce. With this one type of sauce Prego won 27 percent of the market. Prego owns the word ‘thick’ in the mind of the spaghetti sauce buyer.”

….

“So you can forget about the laundry list of wonderful attributes your product has. You can’t possibly associate them all with your brand name in a human mind. To get into the consumer’s mind you have to sacrifice. You have to reduce the essence of your brand to a single thought or attribute. An attribute that nobody else already owns in your category.”

….

“Ask not what percentage of an existing market your brand can achieve, ask how large a market your brand can create by narrowing its focus and owning a word in the mind.”

Can you strengthen your brand by narrowing its focus?

Surveys of your customers and prospects can help create a position that will narrow the focus and strengthen your brand.

It’s something we at On Target Research have been doing for clients for almost 25 years. If you would like to strengthen your brand…and your business, give us a call or click a mouse.

Best,

Bruce

Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
Bruce@ontargetresearch.com
www.ontargetresearch.com
818-397-1401

As noted in our May 19th, 2010 blog site which you can link to here: There Are Some Good Lawyers Around! we have a successful relationship with several attorneys who we have used for our own business and who we have referred Silkin Management Group clients to. One of them is Timothy Bowles who specializes in employment law. Below is an article that he wrote that may be of use to Silkin Management Group clients and any other business owner reading this blog site.

If you are having any employment issues, I highly recommend his services.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group.

Visit our website at www.silkinmanagementgroup.com.

Arbitration Nation

Most employment agreements typically contain an arbitration clause. This requires that any employment-related dispute that cannot be resolved by direct communication or other informal means is to be arbitrated instead of going to court. Arbitration is a form of private dispute resolution that takes the place of a lawsuit and court trial.

Arbitration has many business-related advantages, including a process much more efficient than the often-prolonged procedures of the courts. Thus, employers naturally favor this alternative. The key is ensuring the terms of the arbitration are enforceable.

Many employers make the mistake of providing an “arbitration clause” in employment applications or contracts without attention to the very specific requirements of California and/or other applicable law. If a court finds that the arbitration agreement is so one-sided in favor of the employer as to be “unconscionable” (i.e., there is no equal bargaining power, no meaningful choice and the terms are grossly unfair to the employee), the court can refuse to enforce the arbitration clause.

Moreover, the applicable California law on unconscionable arbitration agreements continues to change, with major Supreme Court decisions on the subject over the last several years.

Law Offices of Timothy Bowles, P.C.
One South Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 301
Pasadena, CA 91105

Phone: 626-583-6600
Fax: 626-583-6605
Email: information@bowleslaw.com