I recently was over at Lasko Printing (one of my clients) and I was talking to Derek about his calendar promotions. I noticed that he was folding a newsletter and he said that the bank where his company does business wrote a feature article in their newsletter about Lasko Printing. I thought that was a wonderful touch by Lewis & Clark bank.

That is cool. . .especially to help out marketing for their small business clients (and they had them print it as well).

Currently, I have a personal account at a credit union that we have belonged to for 15 years and my business account is at another bank. My credit union has just started a small business program and I have thought about joining but have been dragging my heels (just because of the inconvenience).

But if they made it more attractive I would jump in a heartbeat. I am thinking that alot of others would do the same at my Credit Union. So I got a wild hair and sent a general email through their main site to talk to someone in the marketing department.

Joan replied with her email and phone number. I called her and told her that I had some great marketing ideas to promote their Small Business program. She acted very skeptical and said that they have a lot of people try to get the Credit Union's marketing business. I told her that I may be "barking up the wrong tree" but I had some ideas that could help a lot of other small businesses (like myself) make the change. These are some of the suggestions that I provided to her:

1. Create a local small business board that makes recommendations for the needs of the small business members.

2. Have monthly meetings that (a) presentation by a local businesses (b) give QuickBooks™ assistance (c) Tax preparation (d) creating business plan (e) creating line of credit, etc.

3. Have one office designated for small business. Have a staff member that specializes in that area run it.

4. Have a bulletin board with members business cards that the Credit Union endorses.

5. Have a small business website that has all information and it directed at the Credit Union clients. You can probably get members to volunteer creating and developing for exchange of ad space.

6. Have newsletters for small businesses printed that can also be formatted for the web.

Joan told me that she would run these ideas through management to see what they thought about this. It has been a week and Joan has not been in touch with me. Another great opportunity wasted away. . .