Getting information about your product to companies can be difficult. Here are some suggestions on what information to send, and how to send it.

After doing your market research, you should be aware of some companies that would be a good fit for your product. (They buy patents, they have manufacturing and distributing capabilities, and they are marketing to your product’s target end-user.) A briefing document on your product is a great way to generate interest in your product. It is short, concise, and full of solid, well-written information.

A good briefing document should explain the benefits of your patent, what you are looking to do with your patent, and why you are contacting the company or person. It should be clear and written in plain English. Through sending a briefing document, you are expressing the desire for someone to take over your patent.

When you contact a company for the first time about your product, the information sent should be well thought out. This is especially true if this company has never heard of you, or your product. It is important to provide quality information about your product, in a complete and concise manner. Think of it as a resume for your product. You wouldn’t send the biography of your life to a potential employer, just like you shouldn’t send a copy of your patent to a potential buyer. Very few people have the time or will take the time to read massive amounts of information from a complete stranger.

Here are the sections you should include in your briefing document:

• Purpose:
  • Explain why you are sending this document out to companies.

Many inventors are quick to TELL potential buyers that they SHOULD or will WANT to buy their patent. Honestly, no one wants to be TOLD what they are going to like. Similar to applying for a job: you would not write at the top of your resume “you will want to hire me” or “I am the best”. It could easily lead to your resume going straight into the trash.

Make the introduction to your product a pleasant, and non threatening experience.

Ex: This document is intended to inform you that the patent for PRODUCT X is for sale or license.

• Background:
  • Explain the basic benefits of the product.

It is important to note that a benefit of the product is something gained by the user. The seller of the product can also be benefitted financially by selling it.

• • What milestones have already been reached by the product?

This section should include the current status of the product. Questions to be answered should include:

• Is the product patented? For how long?
• Is there a working prototype? If so, is there more than one available?
• Is the product currently being sold? If so, what it the sales track record?
• Are there currently relationships with manufacturers, distributors, retailers, etc.?

• • Include a BRIEF history of the product.

A short explanation of the people or companies that have been involved with the product should suffice.

• Pertinent Details:
  • Details about the product and its function that have not already been described.
  • Include any market research findings that may have an impact on the level of interest. (More important for persons/ companies not involved with the market.)

Like a resume, this should explain the details about the product that would qualify it for a sale or license.

• Target Audience:
  • Based on your market research, explain your target end-user.

Do not use the exact target audience that the company may have on their website. Most likely, they will know if you have copied and pasted. Your market research should have given you a conclusion as to who the optimal end user is. A basic two-sentence explanation, will allow the reader to understand whether your product will fit with the products they already work with.

• Objective Explanation

At the beginning of your briefing document, you explained the purpose of sending the document to the reader. Now is where you explain, in greater detail, your objectives.

Ex: “I am looking to sell the rights to my patent exclusively.”

• Contact Information

Be certain to make sure that your document includes your contact information.  As said in other articles, be sure that your contact information is appropriate and professional. Email addresses such as, HotBlonde@email.com, will not be taken seriously.

After you have completed the written information, you may want to include a logo in the header of the document. Make sure that the document has been edited well, and then it will be ready for printing. A professional print job is always more impressive, and can cost as little as $.08 per page.
A briefing document is an inexpensive way to generate interest about your patent, and allows you to use it as an excuse to make contact via telephone with a company.

For companies interested in more information, send them a Pitchbook with a comprehensive analysis.

It’s time to generate interest in your patent!

If you are interested in having professional materials created for you, please contact Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

About the author of this article:

Lindsey Yeauger is the Product Marketing Director for Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property. The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email her at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

First Impressions are Everything

Last week’s focus was on conducting market research. This week, we will discuss the importance of quality presentations.

First impressions are extremely important. Psychologists say first impressions have a “primacy effect”. The “primacy effect” in essence is the base for all impressions moving forward. So, if you make a bad first impression, all future opinions will be influenced by the first negative impression.

Solomon Asch, a famous psychologist, performed an experiment in which he provided two groups of students with a list of character traits of a speaker prior to his arrival.

The first group was given a list that described the speaker with ‘cold’ traits while the second group was given a list describing the speaker with ‘warm’ traits.

Upon the completion of the speech, the students were asked to describe the speaker as either cold or warm. Overwhelmingly, the students of group one rated the speaker as “cold” and the second group overwhelmingly rated the speaker as “warm”.

The significance of the experiment was that each group had listened to the same speaker give the same speech. It demonstrated the impact that first impressions have on an individuals view whether it is a reference someone has made, a cold call, or a letter you have sent.

This factor is extremely important for inventors to realize. Keep it in mind throughout getting a product to market. Not setting a proper first impression can hinder your progress significantly.

For Example:

• A product development executive receives a hastily recorded and unplanned voicemail about a ‘great idea’ and never returns the call.
• A customer sees a poorly packaged product and questions its quality in a split second leading them not to buy. The packaging is later improved - the customer still questions the products quality.
• A potential buyer receives a package with unimpressive materials - she never opens the presentation.

These types of situations happen on a daily basis for many inventors. While a product may be of high quality, many inventors forget that their behavior and presentation has a large impact on whether that quality will ever even have the opportunity to be evaluated.

EVERY interaction is a presentation. You should have verbal ‘material’ prepped for plan phone calls and tangible materials for group and individual presentations.

Let’s use a man named “John” who has invented a new flat tire repair product as an example.

John calls a potential distributor and leaves a voicemail saying, “Hi, this is John. I found you online and I have a product you are really going to be interested in, call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx and I’ll talk to you more about it”. Do you think John will get a call back?

The chances are that he will not. Contrast that with a voicemail discussing the same product such as this, “Hi, This is John Williams from Tire Doctor. While conducting research, I found that your company is the largest distributor of fix a flat online. Our team recently received a patent on a new version of fix a flat which has shown to fix up to 50% larger holes and holds for 4x as long making it the strongest and longest lasting product on the market. Additionally, the product is produced at a fraction of the cost allowing for us to provide larger margins for our distributors. Please call me at your convenience at xxx-xxx-xxxx to further discuss a potential partnership”. Will John get a call back?

The chances that he now will get a call back will go up exponentially. He has, in his ‘first impression’, demonstrated higher value, intelligence, and courtesy.

Additionally, if you get a call back but have poor presentation materials it is likely you will be working uphill against a force you could have avoided. Presenting your product deserves a good amount of time and thought.

Your initial presentation should be no longer than 10 pages in length in size 14 font (people will not read what is hard to read). The presentation should talk about your products features and benefits and should ALSO emphasize the benefits to them whether it is a distributor or a direct retailer.

If you are interested in personal hands on services to help position your product for presentations to potential buyers, feel free to email me at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com for further consultation.

This week: The importance of quality presentation materials

Next week: How to get manufacturing quotes

About the author of this article:

Lindsey Yeauger is the Director of Communications for Idea Buyer LLC, a new product development company that owns and operates IdeaBuyer.com- The Online Marketplace for Intellectual Property. The site gives inventors the opportunity to showcase their intellectual property to consumer product companies, entrepreneurs, retailers, and manufacturers. You can email her at Lindsey@IdeaBuyer.com.

The centerpiece of any patent sale or licensing negotiation is a powerful presentation. In this presentation, you will be making the case for why this person or company should want your patent. Obviously, you will want to make this as compelling as possible to justify the time spent negotiating and get that patent sold. But how should you go about it? In this article, we’ll offer 10 tips for making your presentation sing.

1) Use numbers to make your presentation come alive

When it comes to selling intellectual property, nothing sweetens the deal like numbers promising future success. If you can quantify the size of the market your patent will serve, expected sales, profit margins, and the like, this will be an immense benefit. Numbers speak louder than words in this case because they make the prospects of success real for the person you are presenting to. For this reason, use numbers early and often – and be prepared to prove their validity.

2) Eliminate hype from your presentation

If numbers make a great presentation, hype kills it. There is simply no reason to “puff up” your presentation with words like “awesome”, “amazing”, or anything else you would picture a sleazy used car salesman saying. These tactics do not make your presentation more compelling. They just make anyone with common sense suspicious of what you are trying to put over on them. Therefore, avoid this method of organizing your presentation.

3) Deliver your presentation in order

As with anything else, it helps if you deliver your organization in a logical sequence, with each slide or point building upon earlier ones. Therefore, you do not want to start talking about projected sales and profit margins before explaining what the patent covers. While this sounds obvious, many patent holders overlook hierarchy in their zeal to make their patent look appealing. Do not make that mistake. Take the extra time to work out what should be said when, and you will be better off.

4) Avoid “happy talk”

In his landmark text “Don’t Make Me Think”, Steve Krug warns web designers against using what he calls “happy talk.”

“A lot of happy talk is the kind of self-congratulatory promotional writing that you find in badly written brochures. Unlike good promotional copy, it conveys no useful information, and it focuses on saying how great we are, as opposed to delineating what makes us great.”

This applies to patent presentations as well. Bombarding the other party with irrelevant information makes a sale or licensing less likely, because he has more information to process. Instead, you want to keep the other party focused only on what matters, which leads to tip number 5.

5) Focus on what matters

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? And yet, so many presentations veer off the path of relevancy into the blind alleys of pointlessness. The best way to define the difference in this case is to use an example. Here is an example of something you would want to focus on in your patent presentation.

“Our idea was featured in Time Magazine’s 100 Coolest Things of the Year special.”

This is worth focusing on because it demonstrates a genuine public interest in what your patent covers and has to offer. Now, by contrast, here is something you probably would not want to focus on in your patent presentation.

“It took six months for the patent to be approved.”

By staying laser-focused on the benefits of buying or licensing your patent, you give the other party less to think about. You can lead them down the road to a painless, mutually beneficial sale.

6) The shorter, the better

There will be some exceptions to this rule; for example, a patent covering a way to automate open heart surgery is going to take more than a few slides to cover. However, for most patents, you should strive to keep your presentation as short as you can. In addition to making sure you don’t lose the other party’s attention, a short presentation exudes confidence. It shows that you do not need to belabor the same old points over and over to prove that you have the goods.

7) Answer the tough questions

Smart negotiators can tell when a presentation has conveniently glossed over the tough questions. When it comes to selling or licensing a patent, those tough questions are likely to involve competition, costs, and similar concerns. You should take a proactive approach and anticipate the other party asking those questions. Do not wait for him to ask, though. Instead, answer them right in the presentation. How can X competitor be dealt with, or the worst-case scenario of Y cost going up? Doing this makes you come across as more honest, which helps the other party trust in everything else you are saying.

8) Rehearse your presentation before giving it

If you plan on narrating your presentation (if it’s in PowerPoint, for instance) it definitely pays to rehearse it on someone else first. This should be relatively simple; just ask your partner, spouse, or friend to sit down and listen to you give your pitch. Undoubtedly, you will make some mistakes, or think of something you wish you included in the presentation during this rehearsal. Fortunately, you will be able to go back and make changes then, when messing up doesn’t matter, instead of during the presentation when it could ruin the deal. The result will be a finely tuned and polished presentation that delivers the message you want it to.

9) Consult your patent attorney before delivering your presentation

This is just a precautionary step to make sure you do not make any legal guarantees or statements that could be held against you. A patent attorney can tell you point blank whether something you want to say constitutes a performance obligation, forward-looking statement, or the like. Generally, you want to avoid making these kinds of statements in the event that something goes wrong later on.

10) Close your presentation by explicitly stating what you want to happen

What is the point of your presentation? Whether it is to sell or license your patent, you should wrap things up by saying so. This can be stated in any way you want, so long as it gets that point across. Something like “For all the reasons given, we think it’s clear that buying/licensing this patent would benefit everyone involved” is what you want to shoot for. This integrates everything you said in your presentation toward the main goal that you have in mind – getting that deal done.

If you can implement these simple tips into your presentation, you will greatly increase your odds of selling or licensing your patent.