Here is how I can help:

Listen & Recommend

Work with your executive staff and management to setup a patent program tailored to your company and aligned with your business goals. I can recommend specific goals, incentives, and budget, as well as help to identify your patent program manager.

Get Buy-in From Staff

Help to facilitate buy-in from management through highly focused in-house seminars tailored to busy managers.

Monitor Progress

Monitor the progress of your program and be a mentor to your patent program manager so that he or she becomes a true “patent champion."

Train Staff

Offer introductory and follow-up in-house highly interactive workshops with your innovators. Your engineers and product managers will learn how to identify potential patents, understand the patent process, write effective patent disclosures, and create a patent mind set throughout the product development process.

Prosecute Your Patent Applications

 

Why Choose Us

Value

Protecting your company’s ideas and innovations is important. It can mean the difference between being a market leader or one of the crowd. But these are tough economic times. Protecting your ideas through patents can be expensive and unpredictable, especially if you use a large or mid-sized law firm.

That is where I can help. I offer high quality patent services that include patent application writing, filing and patent prosecution in the U.S. Patent Office at an excellent value. The prices for these patent services are generally less than 50% of what you would pay at a large or medium law firm. But value does not mean you will compromise on quality. I provide friendly personalized service and treat every patent application as if it is my own.

Click here to see what my customers are saying about Stone Creek's excellent service.

Focus

My philosophy is simple. I focus on what I know and what I am passionate about in order to provide you with an efficient, quality, and cost effective experience.

Expertise

Frustrated with working with patent attorneys who don't understand your engineers or your business needs? Because of my experience at the executive level leading engineers, product managers, and product development teams, and my over 21 years experience as an electronics design engineer, I can work smoothly and efficiently with both your technical and management staff.

Predictable Pricing

Stop guessing what your patent services will cost. Fixed pricing for patent application filing and prosecution means that your patent program costs are both manageable and predictable.

Price, Cost and Money

Price is usually the first question asked by the prospect, and needs to be the last answered by the sales rep. The sales guy should sell on cost and close on price.

If that doesn’t sound like a customer friendly strategy I’ll understand. Refusing to answer customer questions is never a good idea, and especially when it comes to what the cost will be. A sales guy who won’t talk about pricing will risk the customer losing trust.

On the other hand the customer is never going to be happy with the first price offered – that’s just an upper limit, a ceiling to whats s/he might need to pay. The sales process will offer lots of opportunity to get discounts.

So the challenge for the sales professional is satisfying the customer’s need for an indication of cost – the money – without finalising how much s/he’ll end up paying – the deal.

My mantra is we should never discuss pricing in detail until the customer is ready to sign. I’ll talk about money (as in cost appetite and budget) early and actual price right at the end.  I’ll sell on cost and close on price.

Our Challenge

Some buyers seem to have a natural talent for taking advantage of poor sales technique. Professional buyers are trained in a tactic they call Salami – it means “one slice at a time”. It describes the way the buyer will keep asking for more discount, or more services after the price has been set. Each request is for something quite insignificant but by the end of the process the seller will have conceded much more than would have been the case in a single negotiation.

In Always Be Prepared to Walk Away we looked at ways we could respond to customers who are just about to sign and can do the deal, if only they had a little bit more. These customers are in the Salami role, whether they know it or not. This can be very difficult for the seller when it seems the only response available is walking away from the deal, or at least threatening to. That’s not an attractive option for anybody. Better if we never get in this situation in the first place, but avoiding it requires us to have laid the proper groundwork, very early in the campaign.

A professional buyer will persuade us to declare early in the campaign, our terms – price, payment, services, guarantees – all the things it’s easy to include when we’re probably not going to get the deal. In fact the buyer may understate our qualifications for the project, just to make us declare our best price. When the buyer tells us at the first meeting we need to do something with our pricing if we’re to make the short list, he’s planning the Salami. We’re in for a hard time later. Whatever we quote at this point is going to be the maximum we’ll get. We’re likely to get a lot less.

Our Strategy

My preference is to get an indication of cost on the table very early in the sales process, and probably at the first sales call. For example:

“We obviously won’t be able to give you a fixed price until the requirements, and all the alternative options, have been fully considered. However, our customers in similar situations have paid between $10,000 and $20,000″.

• “We will offer an acceptable price, when we understand the bounds of the requirement.”
• “We won’t lose the business on price alone”
• “But we won’t commit to our best price until you are ready to sign a contract.”

How We Win This Way

The benefits of this strategy are plenty, but the main wins are:

1. We satisfy the customer’s need for pricing right up front.
2. We get to include that cost in our qualification and retire gracefully if our range is outside the buyers expectations.
3. We let the customer know the most important aspect to us is getting the requirement 100% right.
4. We let the customer know we’re flexible people s/he can do business with.

Now we can use any flexibility in pricing to close the deal, maybe with the conditional close. Once the issue of price has been put on ice we can get on with winning the prospects trust, after which the actual negotiation will be much simpler. The emotional decision will have already been made.

You Might Also Enjoy

• Where’s The Money
• Professionals Never Sell On Price
• What Is The Right Price
• Learn to Love Your Price

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A funny thing has happened since I wrote the post that spawned the expression “third tribe,” which eventually led to our developing an entire community around the idea.

Some people think that “Third Tribe” is synonymous with what some people call “kumbaya.”

In other words, a very idealistic view of social media, that’s much more about community than it is about commerce.

They define Third Tribe as “not like those terrible internet marketers.”

• No yellow highlighter in the ad copy.
• No “buy now, before this package goes away forever.”
• No 18-page long sales letter.

But being a Third Triber doesn’t mean you’re not an aggressive marketer.

It just means you’re a little smarter about it.

The yellow highlighter brigade is known for very aggressive, attention-grabbing tactics. That’s why they use that yellow highlighter in the first place — to capture and focus your attention.

Why so much jumping up and down for attention? Because they’re working with relatively cold traffic. They don’t have the relationships we talk about building in Internet Marketing for Smart People.

But it’s very important to realize that just because
you build a strong relationship with your audience,
it doesn’t mean you don’t sell.

When you’ve got something that’s genuinely valuable to offer (which is always the first step for a Third Tribe business), you need to make sure the right people hear your message. And you need to make sure you’re making a strong case for it.

So here are 5 selling “rules” for those who want to take a Third Tribe approach.

Rule #1. Don’t sell from your heels

“Selling from your heels” means leaning back when you deliver your sales message. It’s qualifying your copy with a lot of:

Gee, I don’t know, if you feel like it and you have time and you’re not doing anything more important, it might be cool if you clicked here and ordered my thing. If you’re into it. Which I realize you probably aren’t.

This is why I like to sell with copy rather than in person. I can edit out all this wimpy baloney.

You have something of value to offer. You worked hard to make it great. Be proud of it. Offer it without apology.

Rule #2. Don’t get thrown off by complaints

Trust me, you could offer a pill that actually gives eternal life for one dollar, and people will despise you for “just trying to make a buck.”

The same people will get angry no matter how hard or soft your sell. And the people you really care about — the ones who will become your customers — need you to communicate clearly and without a lot of apology.

So sell the benefits, make your case, and tune out the negativity and the whiners. If someone crosses the line and gets nasty, go in and manually unsubscribe them. You don’t need that nonsense.

Rule #3. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself

I could do a better job with this one myself. People are busy! Not everyone is breathlessly awaiting your promotional email. They might miss your first message. They might even miss your first two messages.

Again, if what you’ve got is great, make sure people see it. Make sure they know that you have something awesome for them. You probably need to tell them more than once. You might have to tell them in multiple venues (say your email newsletter, a blog post or two, and your Twitter stream).

If you’re committed to providing value in your regular content (which obviously you are, or you wouldn’t be subscribed to this series), you’ve bought enough good will to repeat yourself a few times. Yes, you’ll get a few folks who become annoyed, but see Rule #2 above.

Rule #4. Don’t be afraid of scarcity

“Scarcity” is the marketing technique where you limit something in order to motivate your prospect to act today, rather than putting the purchase off forever.

So, “we only printed 1000 t-shirts,” or “only 350 students can be accepted for this round,” or “the price goes up on Friday” are all scarcity elements.

Now you definitely don’t want to do fake scarcity, where you say you’ll only sell until June 1, and then every day a little piece of computer script on the page advances the date.

That’s lying, and it’s lame. And it doesn’t work at all when you base a business on relationships and reputation, which is what the Third Tribe is all about.

But real scarcity, followed by keeping your word, is a legitimate and effective way to get prospects off the fence. Don’t be afraid of it.

Rule #5. Make enough offers

Not everything you offer will be right for every person. And not everyone is ready to buy today.

It’s scary to make an offer. We can be rejected. We can get complaints. Someone might not like our sales copy. Someone might not like our product.

So when you get up the courage to make one offer, it’s tempting to scuttle back into your shell and not make any more.

But again, what you offer is valuable. If you’re not putting it out there, no one can benefit from it.

So while I always advocate giving lots of great content, I also don’t want you to be scared to pitch. Don’t build a “community” that you’re afraid to sell to.

I want you to play a much stronger game with your business

And because I want that, I co-founded (with Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan) a community that’s completely dedicated to helping you do that.

Dedicated to making you a better salesperson. A smarter businessperson. A more savvy marketer. To helping you build the connections that every business needs. To introduce you to the business models that work today. To connect you with a broader vision for your business, paired with the specific tactics to put your vision into action.

Brian, Darren, Chris and I work hard every month to make the community great. We believe in overdelivering as a way of life.

Our community is called Inside the Third Tribe, and I consider it indispensible to anyone who’s serious about making a good living online. We designed it to be an indispensible resource for you.

We’ve created a ton of valuable how-to content for you, with some of the sharpest minds in online business, ranging from blogger Leo Babauta to launch specialist Jeff Walker, from veteran John Jantsch to 21-year-old wunderkind Glenn Allsopp.

And we’ve designed the site to let you move beyond theory and into the specifics of your market, your business, your situation.

We’re also raising the price on June 1

So if you’ve been considering joining us inside the Third Tribe, this is a great time to do that. It’s still going to be a great value on June 2, but why not get all of the benefits for the best possible price?

Click here to learn all the details

Looking forward to seeing you inside the Tribe!

P.S.

Get here from a link from a friend, or Twitter? This lesson is a bonus in a 20-part free email course on the essential pillars of internet marketing that works, without the hype and sleaze. Learn more about it and sign up here.

Day 13: Is PageRank Important?

Just Enough Knowledge to be Dangerous

One of the bigger problems with learning in the field of SEO is that there are a lot of people who have a nugget of information. And they spread it far and wide without the proper context needed to evaluate the potential risks and rewards of any given strategy. So new SEOs end up thinking topic x is the most important, then topic y, then topic z. And then someone debunks one of those. Many false facts are taken as truths when the people with a nugget of information (that they found from some source) spread it as fact.

Accurate Answers Need Context

As the structure of the web changes and search engine relevancy algorithms change then so must the field of SEO. This means that the right answer to questions can change frequently, and information from many years ago may not be correct. Does PageRank matter? When I first got in SEO it was crucially important, but over the years other pieces of the relevancy algorithms (like domain age, domain name, domain trust, domain extension, link anchor text, searcher location, search query chains, word relationships, search personalization, other user data, result re-ranking based on local inter-connectivity, input from 10,000+ remote quality raters, and even a wide array of penalties & filters) have been layered over the top of the core relevancy algorithm.

If that sounds like a lot, it is because it is!

Yes, PageRank is important to driving indexing, but for rankings it is nowhere near as important as it once was. SEO has become a much more refined art. In an October 2009 interview, Google's Amit Singal stated:

No one should feel, if I dismantle the current search system, someone will get upset. That’s the wrong environment. When I came, I dismantled [Google cofounders] Larry and Sergey’s whole ranking system. That was the whole idea. I just said, That’s how I think it should be done, and Sergey said, Great!

Great SEO Service is Interactive

Search keeps innovating - as it must. Each layer of innovation creates new challenges and new opportunities.

Not only does SEO strategy change over time, but it also varies from site to site. A large corporate site has a different set of strengths and weaknesses than a small local business website. The best SEO advice must incorporate all of the following

• where you are
• where you want to be
• the resources you have to bridge the gap between the above 2 (domain names, brand, social relations, public relations, capital, etc.)
• what the competition is doing
• your strengths and weaknesses relative to your market

That is why having an interactive SEO Community is so important. It allows us to look for competitive strengths and weaknesses, and offer useful tips that fit your market, your website, and your business.

Even Search Engineers Don't Know All the Search Algorithms

The algorithms are so complex that sometimes even leading search engineers working for Google are uncertain of what is going on. Search engineers can't know every bit of code because Google has made over 450 algorithm changes in a single year.

When I first wrote about a new algorithmic anomaly that I (and others) saw, I got flamed with some pretty nasty words on public SEO sites...a few of which are highlighted below:

The above people were:

• confident
• rude
• wrong

And that is part of the reason I stopped sharing as much research publicly. Sharing publicly meant...

• spending long hours of research and writing (for free)
• creating more competition for myself (from the people who listen to my tips and advice)
• watching my brand get dragged through the mud by people who didn't have the experience or capacity needed to understand and evaluate what I was writing about (but who had enough time to hang out in a free forum and blast me).

Whereas if we share that sort of information in our exclusive member forums we...

• help our customers
• get to share information and learn from each other's experiences
• don't get blasted by the trolls hanging out on the public forums

Google's Matt Cutts Confirmed I Was Right

In early 2008 Google's Matt Cutts (one of the top 4 search engineers working at Google) wrote about the above issue that he did not know existed (even AFTER he was alerted to it).

But take notice that Matt would not confirm the issue until he claimed it had been corrected. So if you wanted to research that issue to better learn the relevancy algorithms it was already gone.

SEO professionals either captured the opportunity early or missed it. And, if they waited for the official word from Google, they missed it.

Back to PageRank

So PageRank...is it important? Yes, primarily for

• determining the original source of content when duplicates of a page exist
• selecting the initial set of results (before re-ranking them based on other factors)
• establishing the crawl priority and crawl depth of a site

But when determining which site ranks better than the next, link diversity is typically far more important than raw PageRank. And even though PageRank is supposed to be query independent, Google warps their view of the web graph where necessary to improve relevancy, like when locaizing search results:

Q: Anything you’ve focused on more recently than freshness?

A: Localization. We were not local enough in multiple countries, especially in countries where there are multiple languages or in countries whose language is the same as the majority country.

So in Austria, where they speak German, they were getting many more German results because the German Web is bigger, the German linkage is bigger. Or in the U.K., they were getting American results, or in India or New Zealand. So we built a team around it and we have made great strides in localization. And we have had a lot of success internationally.

The above quote shows how they look at far more than PageRank and links when trying to determine relevancy.

3 Common SEO Approaches

There are 3 basic ways to approach search engine optimization

• a mechanical strategy, where you try to outsmart the search engines and stay ahead of their relevancy algorithms
• a marketing-based approach, where you try to meet ranking criteria by creating the types of content that other people value and making sure you push market it aggressively
• a hybrid approach, where you take the easy mechanical wins and study general algorithmic shifts...but are primarily driving your decisions based on fundamental marketing principals

Comparing the 3 Strategies

For most people the first approach is simply too complex, risky, and uncertain to be worth the effort. Not only do the sites get burned to the ground, but it happens over and over again, so it is quite hard to build momentum and a real business that keeps growing. In fact, most of the top "black hat" SEOs have "white hat" sites that help provide stable income in case anything happens to their riskier sites. Some people are great at coming up with clever hacks, but most people would be better off focusing on building their business using more traditional means.

If search engineers have access to the source code and still don't know everything then how can people outside the company know everything? They can't. Which is why we take a hybrid approach to SEO.

The approach we teach is the hybrid approach - a marketing-based strategy with some easy mechanical wins mixed in. Our customers take some of these easy wins to help differentiate their strategy from uninformed competitors, and then use marketing principals to build off of early success.

The Paradox of SEO

In using a marketing based approach you build up many signals of trust and many rankings as a side effect of doing traditional marketing. If people are talking about you and like your products then you are probably going to get some free high-quality links. And this leads us to the paradox of SEO: "the less reliant your site is on Google the more Google will want to rely on your site."

If you want good information to find out what is working and what is not, you can use our site search to find answers to most common SEO questions, and know you are getting answers from a trust-worthy source. The information we give away is of higher value than what most people sell.

If you still have specific questions about your site, and would like our opinions we recommend joining our online training program - which will give you immediate access to bounce your questions off of hundreds of the top SEOs from around the world. Here is your link to fast-track ranking success: http://www.seobook.com/4973.html

Selling B2B is never simple – there are too many influences on the decision. But the sales guy who focuses on selling to the people rather than the business in B2B can maximise the opportunity of winning, and minimise the threat of being out played by the competition. Businesses may buy what we offer, but it’s people who decide what to buy, and who from.

Selling B2B is ultimately about people – empathy, influence, leadership, support- all these are people centric dimensions of the sale. There are four B2B selling strategies we can use, to make this work in our favour.

Find the Personal Agenda

What do the people want out of the investment. This can be really hard to uncover, but we need to do that if we’re going to control the sale.
A simple example of this dimension is the company buying new premises. The business agenda is easy if the existing lease about to run out. The business case is easy, for example lower property taxes. The personal agenda probably won’t get talked about – the Operations Manager wants the premises on the south side of town, because that will cut thirty minutes off his commute.
This personal agenda isn’t going to be talked about openly. Of course everybody wants the best possible premises, at the lowest possible cost. But is the Operations Manager, who is already going to reduce his budget, thinking of adding an hour to his travel time everyday just to save the business a little bit more? Probably not. If we can come up with some arguments for our south side units, the OPS Manager will coach us into winning the sale, even if the cost is higher than the competitions’ north side units.

Focus on Consultative Selling

Generally, people would much rather be “helped to buy” than “be sold to”.
When we get to understand both the business imperative and the personal agendas we can begin to explain how our offer is the most beneficial. However we may be in danger of missing some secondary considerations which have never been discussed. We can uncover these hidden influences by becoming consultants. We’re experts in our field after all. We work in our market/sector/product all of the time whereas our prospect is rarely involved in it. Every time we get told something we can ask if alternatives have been considered, point out the upside and downside of different solutions. We can add value to our sales proposition by helping the prospect to know more of what we know. When selling B2B our ability to help the people make the right business decision is a competitive advantage.

Be trusted not liked

Amateur sales people rely on their personal charisma. If the prospect likes them, maybe they’ll buy because they like them. But sales people from the top performing companies aren’t charismatic and easy going, they’re process oriented and disciplined. So why do people buy from them – because they’re professional, direct and honest. Customers may not like what they hear, but believe it. They know they’re not in control, but are going to get what they want. Of course, they also have to pay for it – that’s selling B2B of course.

Stand in the customers shoes

Sell to your prospect as you would like to be sold to. If we can put ourselves in the buyers shoes, we have a much better chance of understanding how to make him come in our direction. The competition isn’t doing that, we can stand out because we do.

You Might Also Enjoy

• Engaged Customers Lead the Deal
• Integrity is the Sales Guys Only Asset
• Secret Health Food You Wont Believe
• Always be prepared to walk away.

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In qualifying a sales deal WHEN a decision will be made is just as important as HOW that decision will be made, WHO will make it and WHY they’ll make it. If the prospect doesn’t have a time frame planned it probably isn’t going to happen, for anybody.

So these are 4 of my main sales qualification questions: Why, Who, How, When?

If the prospect doesn’t have a plan for implementation I need to invest my selling time elsewhere, and if s/he does but it’s in 6 months time, the deal will go on the backburner. As a sales guy with a family to feed I need to preserve my time, so as to be really on top of deals which are closing now. And that means asking the hard questions, early and often.

Businesses don’t buy things the way consumers do. This is particularly true for the larger organizations. Purchase decisions by businesses are much more complex. They aren’t much influenced by fashion or what outsiders will think. Price is important and return on investment a pre-requisite. They don’t get made unless

• The management’s defined them as part of strategy
• They’ll improve bottom line performance
• There is a general consensus supporting the changes.

When qualifying sales opportunities sales people ask some pretty direct questions.

The junior salesman knows there needs to be a budget. The senior salesman understands there also needs to be the business imperative, a reason. The sales professional wants to understand the decision process.

Only the sales ninja looks for the fourth factor – the time frame. Even if there is management support and a budget, it won’t be a deal for anybody until there’s a time-frame.

No time frame suggests no consensus, and without consensus, it won’t happen. Businesses only make decisions in groups and those groups guard all of the vested interests in the organisation. Any one faction can and will protect its vested interest by delaying the implementation of the decision and the best sign of that delay can be spotted in the absence of time frame.

So I’ll always ask WHEN early in the sale and keep asking WHEN throughout the process. Even a slipping delivery date is a sign of problems with the decision process and I want to know about those problems, so I can do something about them. That’s why I’ll keep asking the questions.

If any of this makes sense you might enjoy some of our other sales qualification articles in which we focus on asking the right questions.

You Might Also Enjoy

• Qualifying Sales Deals With On-Line Forms
• Questions to Qualify the Sale
• The Worst Problem When Selling
• Sales Qualification in Pipeline Management

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To prevent taxpayers from footing the bill for bailing out collapsing banks, the European Commission will propose today (26 May) that banks set up "preventive" funds, primarily financed from their liabilities and possibly their profits.

Background

The idea of making banks and other financial institutions pay for failings in the sector is not new.

The Group of the Twenty most industrialised countries worldwide (G20) has already called for a framework to prevent and cope with future financial crises on several occasions, with which the private sector would be actively involved.

EU Internal Market and Financial Services Commissioner Michel Barnier has made clear that he will not refrain from taking a tough stance against the private sector if necessary.

Unlike his predecessor, Irish free-market champion Charlie McCreevy, Barnier has already stated that he does not believe in self-regulation (EurActiv 19/03/10).

More on this topic

News:EU plans tax on bank capital

News:EU: Bank levy could raise up to 50 billion a year

Interview:Jeffrey Sachs: Banking tax to plug budget deficits

The Commission's proposal is based on the so-called 'polluter pays' principle. It is designed to establish "a system which ensures that the financial sector will pay the cost of banking crises in the future," according to the EU commissioner responsible for financial services, Michel Barnier.

"It is not acceptable that taxpayers should continue to bear the heavy cost of rescuing the banking sector," reads a statement from the commissioner to be delivered today. To address this possibility, banks will be forced to put extra money aside as a sort of levy to finance resolution funds.

The proposals must still be approved by member states, possibly at the next summit of EU leaders, set to take place in Brussels in mid-June.

Should the leaders give the proposals their green light, the European Union will be in a position to present the plan at the next G20 summit in Toronto at the end of June, paving the way for global bank resolution funds.

How large will the funds be?

Brussels underlines that it is still too early to define the actual amount of money needed to set up a bank resolution fund or, as is more likely, many such national funds.

However, the draft Commission proposal makes clear that funds "will need to be sufficiently resourced to cope with different resolution costs, and the approach taken will need to be tailored to entities of different sizes and nature".

In the beginning, banks are likely to be the only financial actors affected by the new funds. "At this stage, it does not seem appropriate to extend resolution funds to other financial institutions, such as investment funds or insurance institutions," reads the EU document.

Preventive action

Funding a preventive tool rather than making ex-post payments is preferable for the Commission, because it is a more effective means of avoiding wider economic turmoil in the event of bank failure, argues the EU document.

"The Commission takes the view that resolution funds should be built up on the basis of contributions from banks ex ante. Fully ex post-funded schemes may imply upfront taxpayer funding and therefore increase the risk that banking failures would be accompanied by broader negative economic impacts," explains the paper.

However, Brussels acknowledges the risk of moral hazard, which is governed by the implicit idea that if there is a resolution fund, then risk will be lower. To prevent resolution funds from encouraging risk-taking rather than preventing risks, the Commission makes clear that "resolution funds must not be used as an insurance against failure or to bail out failing banks, but rather to facilitate an orderly failure".

How can banks' risk be calculated?

The Commission is keeping its options open regarding the criteria for assessing the risk of bank failure, but it already tends to favour the use of liabilities rather than assets to establish the fair price to be paid by a bank versus its possible failure.

"Banks' assets are good indicators of their risk" but they "are already subject to risk-weighted prudential capital requirements in the form of capital charges," the Commission paper reads. "Imposing a levy based on assets could therefore amount to an additional capital requirement and would have to be considered carefully."

Banks' liabilities appear to be "the most appropriate indicators of the amounts that might be needed when facing the need to resolve a bank," although they could prove less effective at calculating the degree of risk, the document argues.

As an alternative or complementary solution, "levies could be related to profits and bonuses as an indicator of a bank's size and more reflective of the 'polluter pays' principle," the paper suggests. However, they "may not be closely correlated to the amount of resolution financing a bank might require or the probability of its failure," it adds.

Public finance temptations

Since the size of a bank resolution fund is likely to be significant in most economies, Brussels recognises that "some member states could find it attractive to use these contributions to reduce their public deficit".

In other words, the Commission assumes that the money put aside by banks could be used to temporary tackle public imbalances. However, in the longer term, this "may further reinforce the moral hazard problem associated with 'too big to fail' institutions," the paper stresses.

"The Commission therefore takes the view that bank resolution funds should remain separate from the national budget and dedicated only to resolution costs," concludes the document.

How Clients are different to Customers and can they become Clowns is a case study worth understanding. It’s a story illustrating how consultants can find themselves drawn into circumstances they’d rather avoid but somehow can’t. Business can often work out to be much tougher than it should be, simply because the other guys are idiots. Here’s what’s happened to us recently.

In our consulting business we built a relationship with a local software company. The CEO was an intelligent but fallible man with great ideas but no backbone. His partner was the sort of intellectual who didn’t want to be measured but insisted on heading Sales. This is a combination made in hell, but we got drawn into it without really understanding the background.

Merely proposing different ways to do things wasn’t going to work. Neither were capable of learning or changing. They were actually clowns in their own business, in terms of sales and marketing. So we proposed they become partners. We would do the work and share in the value – a proper business partnership.

The client turned partner really liked this idea (until the value sharing kicked in) but the deal turned very bad for us. These guys were incapable of delivering what we sold. At this point the Partners turned into clowns.

So we then proposed they become customers. We’d won a particularly interesting project for them which needed business development as a deliverable from them. They weren’t capable to fill the role so we offered to do it for them.

Subsequently the two employed a general manager who ultimately decided he would like the project for himself, despite knowing nothing about the requirement or how to deliver on it. And he decided to cancel our contract, taking on the role himself, after we’d done most of the work.

Incapable of reading contracts with the ultimate customer, or us he ploughed ahead and screwed everything up. He was the ultimate clown, preferring to torpedo the project just so he could be in charge.

Now he has a legal action from us coming down the track and is in serious breach of contract with a party much bigger, and demanding than he realises, but being a clown has no idea of the damage he’s done.

We did everything possible to avoid the project going pear shaped but failed because a client turned into a partner who turned into a customer who turned into a clown.

I guess that’s what life is like as a consultant these days.

Where did we go wrong?

Would you have done it differently?

C’est la vie. Next time we’ll do a better job for ourselves.