Le´ona
Comfort wear for Women
About a year and half ago my frustration got the better of me. I
kept getting aggravated with my thongs riding up on me. I personally
hate wearing thongs; but, I do not want underwear lines to show through
my pants. A simple solution to this problem would simply be to wear
no underwear at all; however, I find that I feel naked and I also
feel that this is unsanitary. I felt that there had to be a solution
to this problem.
I started cutting out the back of my regular underwear and I installed
them inside my pants with snaps and then Velcro. I had 3 snaps, one
around my right hip, one around my left hip and a third snap in my
crotch area. This way was more comfortable than a thong because I
had nothing going up my butt and my panty lines did not show through
my pants or bulge out at the top of the pants. After months of re-working
my original idea I finally came up with a prototype. I opted to use
buttons on the underwear that would attach to the inside of pants
with button holes. I also decided there had to be a way to adjust
the product in order to accommodate the woman's unique shape and form.
Therefore I installed 3 button holes in each area. Three buttonholes
in the crotch area and three button holes on each side (hips). This
enables the user to adjust the underwear to fit her more comfortably.
You are more than welcome to email me if you have any questions or
comments about my product at count.on.us@hotmail.com.
Roxane Lauzon
Inventor of Strapless Underwear for Women
Other Inventor Stories
  The inventing of Klpz (pronounced clips)
 As
a 25 year veteran in sales and marketing management, I was totally
enamored with the potential of "streaming media" to help sales people
when they prospected for new business. My entire career had one common
challenge: how to make my sales people be more productive when they
were "dialing for dollars". After all, the creation of new customers
is the single most important role of most sales forces.
I left my job to pursue my invention:
a way for sales people to send a short video describing their offering
to a suspect.
The little video would be
like a TV commercial the suspect would see from their
PC. This new way of delivering a message (via a link in an email)
would increase the number of suspects the sales person would talk
to and therefore increase the number of suspects that went into the
sales pipeline.
The invention was a flop.
In sorting through why it had failed in all five trial locations,
I discovered that there was a bigger obstacle to sales people being
successful when cold calling. One that I had thought would have already
been addressed, but with a little research discovered it had not.
The real challenge is that cold calling to set appointments, as a
business process, has three components that need
to be "operated" simultaneously in order to succeed.
Most importantly, the "operation" had to meet a standard long known
by sales managers: "if it's not easy, sales won't use it."
With this new enlightenment, it was back to the drawing boards to
design a software tool that would combine all the elements into the
easiest possible to use. And, we did it. Fast, easy, elegant, plus
automatically generating reports that management has only dreamed
about in the past. Armed with this invention, we founded the company,
raised some friends and family money and began to build the software
product we would name Klpz, a nod to our video roots.
Luckily for me, a neighbor asked if I was going to patent my invention.
Of course! So, he referred me to Steven
Leavitt. The really lucky part was learning from Steven
how the patent process worked; otherwise, I would have
mistimed my filing and lost my opportunity to patent my invention.
I barely made it in under the "going to market" rule.
We have continued to build out the product which addresses the entire
definition of the problem with cold call prospecting with a tool that
sales people can actually operate.
You start by recognizing that successful
prospecting is a combination of Art, Science & Best Practices.
Here's how everything comes together.
Art is converting a conversation into an appointment. As sales people,
we succeed at prospecting because we can master that specific Art.
We become good at Art, even if we don't like to perform the task.
Best Practices should take our game to ever higher levels of success.
Science is the mechanics to navigate and then record the steps in
our pursuit of a suspect to generate a conversation. The mechanics
of keeping up with the hundred or so suspects we need to pursue each
month is a "paperwork" mountain and pure drudgery to climb. We
fail because of the Science. Operating the ideal pursuit
plan for a single suspect is challenging; and even the most disciplined
of us find it hard to juggle multiple (sometimes 100's) of pursuits
in a quality way, day after day.
Prospecting is the first thing we need to do and the last thing we
want to do. It is certainly the most painful part of the sales profession.
SFA/CRM systems were not designed to automate this task; for many,
they become part of the problem.
Klpz is a Science built expressly for cold call prospecting. Klpz
does three things to improve prospecting performance. Klpz features Fast & Easy Navigation, it Thinks and Remembers so
you can focus on your Art, and it provides Metrics to let you know how you are doing. Klpz was built by sales people,
for sales people.
Fast & Easy Navigation
You navigate the Klpz application using only two
screens and a mouse. The only typing you do is comments.
With
Klpz, you simply login and prospect. It is the easiest approach to
prospecting ever designed. Using your mouse, Klpz guides you through
a pre-defined set of steps of the ideal prospecting process; which
you have designed. Navigation
without key-boarding!
But, the real payoff is speed. Klpz is the fastest
way to move from "conversation to conversation."
You can achieve the best and
highest use of the time you allocate for prospecting.
Let's face it; if we have to spend time calling, we should make it
as productive as we possibly can; practicing our Art and Best Practices,
not entering data for management reports.
Thinks and Remembers
Everything you have done and everything you need to do is packaged and presented to you in a clear, concise way.
With Klpz, you build a Cycle where you define the number of steps
in the ideal pursuit process, the actions to take in each step, the
messages to be delivered during each action and the timing between
the steps.
The correct approach to a solid prospecting pursuit; built to your specifications. Keep
the messaging consistent.
You can prospect dozens or hundreds of suspects at the same time
and never get lost. You don't have to keep up with what to do next;
Klpz does it for you.
Klpz also has a built-in messaging tool which uses video to help
deliver your story to the difficult to reach. Or, tell a hard to verbalize
story visually.
Metrics
The
old, but accurate chestnut "sales is a number's game" can now be easily
leveraged into higher revenue. There are only 5 numbers in the game,
and three are in the prospecting half of the sales cycle.
Peter Drucker said that whatever
you can measure, you can improve.
Reports to help you understand your prospecting numbers are a byproduct
of your activity, not an activity itself.
Klpz records your dials, conversations, appointments; and much more.
Klpz captures your mouse clicks and converts them to reports that
will help you monitor, measure and improve your plan.
Take the guesswork out of the most
critical numbers in the numbers game.
The ROI? The greatest leverage in the numbers game is found in the
prospecting half of the sales cycle. Each and every increase to any
of the three metrics will directly
and proportionally increase the top line. If you know
your current numbers, and especially if you don't, you will see immediate
improvement in performance. An ROI analysis is available from Contact
Science, upon request.

If cold calling controls
your destiny, use Klpz to control your cold calling.
  Milton Jacks invented a combination of a tree stand, blind
and hoist system that is totally self contained
My
name is Milton Jacks, and I invented a combination
of a tree stand, blind and hoist system that is totally self contained. The largest piece is only 24 inches long and all of it together weighs
(when made of steel) 40 pounds.
This multi-function device can be used to pull out a stuck four-wheeler,
as a deer stand or blind, and then transformed to either load a deer
into a truck or set up on the back of a four-wheeler or dress it out.
I first started in November, 2003, with a way to dress out a deer
with something that had a pulley on it. It attached to a tree and
used a four-wheeler to pull up a deer.
I then started thinking of a way to load up the deer or dress it
out, right there in the woods, so it would not tie up the four-wheeler
or truck. I wanted to create a device that would help with lifting
a heavy deer and would assist a lot of people with back or other problems
and increase their independence.
By the time I had worked out how my invention would work, someone
told me that they wished there was a way to fasten a comfortable seat
to a tree when out hunting. At this time, I also started thinking
of a way to not harm the tree while using such a device. When I had
it worked out how to make all these functions interchangable on the
same device and work properly, the next logical step was a framework
to hold up camo netting to camouflage a hunter while sitting on the
seat that was affixed to the tree.
Adding another function to the device, I came up with the idea of
how to use this to pull out a four-wheeler
with basically no change on the original design.
I also came up with the additional idea to use this device by hooking
it up as if to use the pulling out a stuck truck function, attach
it up to another tree and stretch a tarp over the line for protection
from bad weather.
After hundreds of cut-up pieces and many many hours of driving my
wife crazy, I finally had my invention the way I wanted it to work.
This was a simple idea, but one that grew to encompass
the many needs of the hunters of today.
On November 26, 2004, I contacted the offices of Steven B. Leavitt
and with their help I am now able to contact some manufacturers and
marketers without the worry of someone taking my idea. I wish to give
special thanks to Steven Leavitt and Associates for helping, (and
at times putting up with me).
Thank you,
Milton Jacks |