LET'S FACE IT. Business today is becoming increasingly impersonal. When was the last time you called your phone company, cable company, power company, bank or any one of thousands of companies and actually got a living, breathing person on the line? You probably got an automated answering system, right?

Well, although it isn't a fix to an impersonal automated answering system, John Wolfe, a marketing representative at Lincare's Fort Collins, Colo., branch, has found a way to bring big business down to a more personal level. Wolfe has started Lincare Connection, a supplement to Lincare's quarterly corporate newsletter. Nothing big, nothing outrageously ornate, but nonetheless functional in its purpose-to give patients and referral sources more information about what's happening at their Lincare facility.

"Although they do receive Lincare's national quarterly newsletter," says Wolfe, "it contains mostly generic news and information that applies more to Lincare on a national level. This gives us a good opportunity to address certain things that are specific to our center. It helps people feel more connected to the center."

Wolfe, who has been producing the supplement for two years now, is careful not to cross the line into making the supplement a sales brochure. "We typically don't want to use this as a direct sales tool," he says. "It's more of a communications tool than anything else."

Because he wants to keep the supplement from being considered junk mail, he includes information that readers can actually use or may find interesting. Subject matter also varies from quarter to quarter. Sometimes, if the center has gotten a lot of calls or questions about a certain topic, Wolfe will run a Q&A feature that answers those questions in detail. Other times, he will profile an employee at the center even though some of his employees are "a little modest and shy about the whole idea." As he points out to them, such profiles help readers outside the center to put a face with an employee's name.

Wolfe also uses the supplement to highlight the center's community involvement and to establish good working relationships with local nonprofit and charity organizations. Recently, he ran an article originally published by the local American Lung Association regarding children who wear clothes that advertise the use of tobacco products. The benefit of running such articles and working with local community groups is twofold, according to Wolfe. Not only do you help educate the local community about community concerns, he says, but you establish a connection between local associations and community groups and the center.

"We use the supplement to honk our own horn sometimes," Wolfe says, "but mainly we want our patients and referral base to know we're active in the community and to be informed about what's happening at our center."

And that, he says, is what helps makes his business feel a little more personal.