Many businesses have implemented energy efficiency measures in their facilities over the past several years to help decrease operating expenses and aid the local and global environment. What a lot of these companies do not know is that sizeable federal tax deductions are available to them and also that time may be running out.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) provides generous, immediate tax deductions to businesses for making energy efficiency improvements to their buildings. The federal tax incentives center mainly on efficiency improvements to lighting, HVAC and building envelopes and can be as large as $1.80 per square foot.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 extended Section 179D and EPAct 2005 so the act will not expire until December 31, 2013. However, that does not mean that time may not be running out for some companies.

For businesses that implemented energy efficiency projects in 2006 it is probable they filed their tax returns before April 15, 2007. If they were unaware of the deductions at that time, they are now at risk of losing those tax deductions forever since the IRS only allows a three year period to amend tax returns.

That means if you have not yet amended your 2006 tax return you have only a few months left to do so!

As an electrical contractor working with commercial and industrial customers you certainly have been thinking about ways to increase your sales and likely how to better utilize your current book of business to that end. You have also most likely been approached by your current customers asking what they can do to reduce their energy costs.

Have you thought about a strategic partnership with an experienced engineering firm that specializes solely in turnkey, energy cost reduction projects on a national level? One that can bring whole facility energy solutions to the table for you and your customers? A company that can provide a fast payback and increase cash flow for your customer?

Bringing in such a company will grow your business as you will be the one who is sub-contracted by the engineering firm to provide the installation services under their management and direction. You can use this approach over and over again with all of your customers and doing so will not only increase your revenues exponentially, it will also transform your customers’ impression of you from simply another vendor to that of a valued consultant.

Save Money On Your Company’s Energy Bill, visit Energy Edge Technologies site for strategies on saving a tremendous amount of capital on your Corporate Energy Bill or call 888-729-5722 Ext. 100.

Are you as a eBay seller maximizing your listings? There are a many eBay buyers who will not buy an item on eBay if they haven’t seen a picture. In fact, many eBay buyers like to see more than one picture. The only problem with this is that posting a number of pictures on eBay can get expensive, especially overtime. However, there is a way that you can give your potential customers what they want, more pictures, without having to go broke while doing so.

If you are looking for a way to have multiple pictures appear in your eBay auction listings, but you are urged to examine websites that are known as photo sharing sites, if you haven’t already done so. Photo sharing websites are sites that allow you to post digital photographs online and sometimes even videos. There are a large number of internet users who use photo sharing sites to upload and share pictures with friends and family members over the internet, but many internet users are also starting to use photo sharing websites to help combat their eBay seller fees, particularly the fees associated with having multiple pictures in an eBay auction.

If you are interested in giving photo sharing websites a try, to help you save money when selling on eBay, you will need to find a photo sharing website to use. To find a number of photo sharing websites, you may want to perform a standard internet search. Your standard internet search results will likely include PhotoBucket, which is a free, well-known photo sharing website. Of course, you can use just about any photo sharing website you want, but you are advised to look into PhotoBucket, as it is free and easy to use.

Speaking of using PhotoBucket and many other online photo sharing websites, you will need to create an account. You should be required to fill out a small form, which may request a little bit of information about yourself, like your full name or your email address. You will also need to create login information for yourself, including a screen name and a safe password. Once you have that finished, you should be able to use the photo sharing website in question, whether it be PhotoBucket or not, to help you start saving money.

When using a photo sharing site, you will see that different sites have different instructions that need to be followed, but the first step will be taking pictures of your eBay items. Then you will need to upload them to your computer and then follow the photo sharing website’s instructions on how to upload your photos to their site. In most cases, this is a relatively simple process, which tends to involve selecting a few pictures from your computer’s hard drive and then hitting an upload button.

Once your pictures have been uploaded, you should see thumbnails or smaller versions of them. With PhotoBucket there are little boxes underneath each thumbnail that can be used to select the picture or pictures of you choice. You will want to select all of the pictures that you want listed in a particular eBay listing. Then, you should be able to find a link that allows you to generate an HTML code. This will lead you to another page with a lot of information on it, particularly HTML links. Many photo sharing websites outright tell you which HTML code links you should use for eBay. Copy the code and paste it in the description of your eBay auction listings and you are good to go; your pictures should appear.

Using a photo sharing site is optional, but it is definitely something to look into. As an eBay seller, you want to profit as much as you can and this also involves eliminating unnecessary expenses. Ebay Selling Tips Site is another great eBay selling tips resource.

Learn more about keyword #1. Stop by Todd Manter’s site where you can find out all about how to sell on eBay.

Cloud computing driven sales force automation has pulled way ahead of traditional on-premise sales tools in recent years. Why? Simple. Sales force automation is easier to learn and use, more affordable, globally accessible on demand and frees companies from the upfront investment of server-based sales software.

The Most Comprehensive of Sales Tools

Sales force automation is the ideal sales tool, optimizing the full spectrum of sales activities. With the renowned ease-of-use, reps become productive much faster than with traditional sales software. It all adds up to rapid, universal adoption, torrid sales productivity, and skyrocketing revenue growth.

Lead Management. With sales force automation, you can manage and distribute prospects to the right reps, so leads and opportunities are followed up with quickly.

Manage Opportunities. Smarter collaboration means higher productivity and the ability to close more deals faster. And because it?s Web-based, it’s always securely accessible by everyone who needs it. From any continent and time zone, your entire team can instantly communicate and collaborate in real time.

Account and Contact Management. Sales force automation provides a 360-degree view of each customer and contact. Everyone gains deep knowledge of every prospect and account, enabling better collaboration and fostering strong, long-lasting customer relationships.

Simple Activity Management. Reps need to speed the closing of sales. With automation sales tools such as activity scheduling, and real-time alerts, your teams stay on track and on schedule.

Forcasting & Analytics. Sales force SaaS software gives you an up-to-the-minute perspective on your entire business. Easy-to-customize dashboards that provide consolidated views of real-time data on sales let you make better business decisions. Tools for sophisticated analytics let managers and executives evaluate pipelines, assess win-loss metrics.

Better Sales Forecasts. Gain real-time forecasting capabilities far beyond those of traditional sales software. Sales force automation software leapfrogs outdated software.

Data Quality Management. Sales automation lets you eliminate errors such as duplicate contacts, accounts, and leads that can mar analysis, impair forecasts, and delay sales. Tools and utilities are provided for quickly cleaning and clearing your CRM database, including account merge, contact merge, lead search and merge, and data validation.

Customization. Sales automation is designed for tailoring to any business model. Business professionals can customize their sales force automation experience with ease, and developers have coding-level tools for deeper development.

Integration. Conventional sales software is difficult to integrate together with other systems. But with software as a service (SaaS), sales software headaches and limitations become things of the past.

Workflow. Tools inside sales force automation software let you create custom triggers that can be quickly and easily modified. You can quickly and easily streamline routine activities, eliminate redundant tasks, and speed approvals.

Sales Automation Software In Summary:

Installed Sales Automation Software. Outdated client-server deployed Sales Automation software requires you to invest a boatload of cash on networks and servers, and hire an expensive team of IT professionals to install, deploy, and run the software just to keep up with releases.

Sales Automation Online. Hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) Sales Automation?a new method for accelerating sales. With this popular type of Sales Automation offered by Sendside, there?s no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade. It’s the smarter choice for business.

Discover more about sales automation software, visit Sendside.com to discover sales automation software for your sales team.

There are numerous types of businesses that you can start as a minority. You could start a service-oriented business, or a product-oriented business. We’ll look at some examples of each in further detail.

Service-Oriented Business Ideas

Here are some examples of several service-based businesses you can start with little to no cash: – consulting – typist – graphic designer – freelance web developer – personal assistant

When you are first starting out, you can locate projects by either responding to existing posts that others have placed, or submit your own posting or resume. For example, job postings for typists and virtual assistants are often posted on craigslist.org.

As an example, if you are a web programmer, you may want to check out elance.com for projects. Elance actually has tons of other project types spanning all types of industries, so it is worth checking out regardless. If you are a graphic designer, 99designs.com is a site where people can post graphic design projects and graphic designers can submit their sample work.

An often overlooked type of business is one where you provide services to the government and Corporate America. These deep pockets buy nearly any type of service you can imagine, from janitorial services, to training, to typing, etc. In fact, you can obtain a MBE certification to certify that you are a minority owned business. Such a certification can increase your chances of getting work from these deep pockets due to special mandates.

That should give you a few ideas on the type of service business you could start from home. Now let’s look at some ideas you could consider for starting a product-based business.

Product-Oriented Business Ideas

There are thousands of different products that you could sell as a minority-owned business.

Here are some examples of product-based businesses that take little to no capital to start: – Selling an information product that you create based upon some topic that is in demand (like an ebook, training product, videos, etc.) – Selling products on eBay or other auction sites – Becoming an affiliate and selling products offered by third parties. You can find such products through affiliate programs such as Commission Junction or Clickbank.

As was described above, the government and Corporate America also buy nearly every type of product or service you can even think of. Yes, they buy toilet paper too!

Once you determine what type of product or service to sell with your minority owned business, if it is the type of product or service that the government and large corporations buy, then you should consider an MBE certification. An MBE certification can greatly increase your chances of getting work from the government and large corporations (but would be a waste of time if you are not planning on selling to them).

So you want to start an online business or you want to use the internet for an exiting offline business? While the decision to do so may stem from many reasons, the internet is a wonderful to conduct business and can be very profitable if you do things the right way.

When you are in the planning stages of staring an internet business, aside from understanding the needs of your market, the first thing you want to take to heart is the way your website is designed. The cookie cutter approach does not work in all instances. You want your site to stand out as unique. This means you will have to learn how to build your own site or farm it out.

If you decide to hire a professional website developer, be prepared to pay no less than $1000 for a basic design. You can save a lot of money by learning the skills of the trade. It may take you much longer to launch, but the skills you learn will serve your well for a long time.

There are a lot of benefits in learning basic website design. First, you will always be able to design the layout and core components of your website the way you want it. When you are depending on others to do it for you, you will never get exactly want you want. However, you do have the option to tweak things once you receive the finished product.

If you learn the basic skills of website creation, this will serve you for the rest of your life. These skills alone open new doors of opportunities that you would not otherwise have. Not only will you have the ability to design your own site and make necessary changes in the future, but you will be able to create new sites in other markets too.

When you are planning the look and fell of your site, always keep in mind that the customer or visitor is the most important thing. The site should not be about you, but about your customers. This means your website will address the needs, wants and desires of the customers by providing answers and solutions that will help them.

By building a site that speaks to your visitors, they will gain confidence in your ability to help them solve their problems and achieve their goals. Too often, this is not the case and people wonder why their websites are not converting into new leads and generating sales.

When a person comes to your website looking for a specific solution, they don’t want to hear all about you. They want to know if what you offer can really help them. They may be looking for answers to specific problems or may have a strong desire to accomplish something. Either way, how you positions your website will make all the difference in the world.

As a rule of thumb, use the AIDA formula when you are planning out your site design and copy. The acronym AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action and should be the guiding principle for your success. You want your site to get a visitors attention, keep their interest, build a desire for your solution and get them to take action. This is how you succeed.

Far too often, people put up a website, sit back and wait for offers and money to start rolling in. Others invest a ton of money into advertising before truly learning the ins and outs of website development.

What many of these internet entrepreneurs fail to understand is that cultivating a web presence is only half of the battle. First and foremost is to make the website appeal to the audience you are seeking. This means you will have to create something that works as intended, namely, draws in potential customers.

A Website is a Marketing Tool

A professional website is one of many items in an advertising arsenal that can help plead your case to a buying public. In many ways, it is the first impression that many people will have of your business.

Make that first impression count by making sure your site aligns with your business objective and goals.

A couple of ways to do this is by observing few simple rules, namely:

1. Check for grammatical errors and typos – how can you instill confidence in a consumer if your own website if full of errors. While you could argue that the average person may be unaware of these mistakes, many are and they have money to spend too. Besides, it simply looks sloppy and makes potential customers feel as if you don’t care. If you don’t care, why should they?

2. Make sure pictures, inserts and query boxes are properly aligned – sometimes an error in coding can offset photos, images, inserts and things like comment boxes. The offence is forgivable if this happens on a rare occasion, but too often and it looks extremely unprofessional. One aspect of web development is to make sure that the page loads up the right way every time. Check your site periodically to ensure it is working properly.

3. Forgo or minimize the flash – While flash animation can look cool, it may not have a place on a truly professional website. One reason why is the fact that not every potential customer is going to have a computer that has the ability to handle a ton of animated graphics. Some computers could even crash because of it. This could put off customers who may have wanted to utilize your services or purchase your products.

4. Keep it plain and simple – the language as well as the graphics should be straightforward, clean and free of frills. When at all possible try not to use ALL CAPS as it can appears if you are screaming at people. Keep info in small, bite sized paragraphs and when possible, make sure the site is free of pop up ads and other forms of advertising.

Another hallmark of a professional website is that it is easy to navigate. Sites that get too fancy with graphics and colors may be visually appealing on one level, but it does visitors no good if they can’t easily locate the about us, contact us or services button.

Keep Your Objective in Focus

In the end, your goal is to try to reach out to a buying public that wants what you have to sell. Your ability to achieve that goal will depend on how well you present yourself on the web. This makes maintaining and developing a professional website extremely important, as it can make all the difference between e-commerce success or failure.

Bear this in mind as you create your website and, if feasible, utilize the services of an established website developer to produce a quality, user friendly webpage.

The business of getting more clients is something that every independent consultant needs to take very seriously. It would be foolish for any consultant to think that it can be left until later.

But there can hardly be a short answer even for a starting point. Ask the internet search engine Google for “Independent Consultants” and it lists 232,000,000 websites. Both Yahoo and Alta Vista list 133,000,000 sites when asked the same question. It is inescapable that many of all these millions, if not most, will have settled for different approaches to the “how-do-I-get-my-clients?” question.

Some elements of some solutions will suit some peoples’ circumstances and intentions (and geographical location); some quite-different elements of quite-different solutions will be the right way to go for others. (But it does have to be said that many good business plans are likely to have many things in common.)

Even the basic matter of where you live could influence the way you get clients. If you intend to become a business consultant and you live in, or within easy reach of a busy commercial centre, it is quite likely that you will have a good prospective client base waiting for you to tap into it and you would create a client-acquisition plan to suit such circumstances.

But if all your training and experience and enthusiasms are leading you towards a consultancy in factory layout, the design of manufacturing systems and productivity improvement and you live in a remote and deeply rural area of the countryside with no significant industry (other than milking cows) within easy reach, you are going to have a very different agenda of things to think about. You even may need to add “would it be sensible to move home?” to the business-plan issues you should be considering. You are, after all, perhaps looking-at the whole of your future life.

The question, “How many clients will I need?” is one that every consultant will consider, along with the matter of whether you want them to be long-term, low-turn-over clients, or to have a regularly-changing turn-over of the clients you work with is another.

Many experienced independent consultants, from various niches, will often share the view that you need five, six, seven or eight clients at any one time, if that is possible. Then if you lose a client you still have income from the others coming in, to enable you to keep paying your bills and not suffer sleepless nights.

So why not have 10, 20 or even 30? – It all depends on the nature of the consultancy business in question. But as the client-consultant relationship grows, it is likely that the client will ask for more and more diverse inputs, and the consultant’s workload will grow. Every client will expect to be the absolute number one on your list of priorities and while having a full schedule of paying clients may have a certain amount of comfort to it, when it turns into a situation where your personal bandwidth is exceeded, you could find yourself in a tight situation.

Working very long hours can be almost the least of your problems. It is likely to be a conflict of priorities that become the nightmare to resolve. Two top-tier clients wanting you to be with them over the same weekend. It does happen!

A good Adword campaign starts with a good headline. A great Adword campaign starts with a great headline. And knowing how to write great headlines is a very valuable skill in any business. The failure to understand how critical this skill can be is a huge mistake that we see from both Adwords newbies and professional Adword management companies.

Good keyword research and bidding skills may get your ad shown in a top ad position when someone does a search, but if you don’t have a compelling headline, you may be wasting a lot of money. On the other hand, you can have poor ad placement, ranking near the bottom of the page, but if your headline sticks out, then you will end up “stealing” clicks from your higher-ranking competitors.

So if you don’t know how to write good headlines, where can you start? Start by looking at some of the ads that appear when you search for your keywords in Google. Now, if you are a student of mine, you already know my philosophy about the top ad position. Hint: “The top ad position is not always the place you want to be, and the company advertising there, does not necessarily know what they are doing.” But there ARE instances when the top ads will have the best headlines. Look at those ads and pay attention.

Another method that I like is to use a research tool, such as Spyfu or Keyword Spy to see which ads of a competitor have consistently been in positions #4-6. Many times you will find that your competitor affords to rank lower because they have strong headlines that out-convert higher-ranking ads. Read those headlines and learn from them as well.

Also, it may be beneficial to look OUTSIDE of your industry for Adword headline ideas. How about a real (at the time of this writing) live example?

Let’s say I am writing an ad for an attorney and need an inspiring headline. I will now search for a babysitter to get ideas. So I just typed “need a babysitter” into Google and here is an incredible idea from an ad whose headline is: “Need a Local Babysitter?” I love the word “local”. I can now use the headline “Need a Local Attorney?” or write another headline that includes the word “local”. At the time of this writing, a quick search on “need an attorney” showed no ads on the first page using the word “local.” My ad would definitely stand out!

You may be wondering, “Can I steal headlines? Is that plagiarism?” There is no rule that says you cannot use the same headline your competitor is using. But you must remember, 99% of the time the advertiser is doing SOMETHING wrong. So if you are going to copy a competitor, I suggest you copy only what works. Sure, I like to look at competitors’ ads and take notes. I even recommend starting a digital “swipe” file, where you take headlines that you really like and copy them to a document and keep adding to that file for future reference.

There are many free resources on the web that can train you to write good headlines and we will cover some great headline-writing techniques in a later article, but the most important thing is that you recognize your return for investing time into learning how to write a great headline. If you can’t afford to invest your time, then hire a copywriter who knows how to write headlines and ad copy for search marketing ads. Many Adwords management companies also have specialists who are experts in writing headlines and ad copy that can turn otherwise so-so advertising into highly successful Google Adwords campaigns.

Trying the vast number of mediocre scripts for cold calling that can be found out there will leave you dizzy.

According to the recommendation of a various scripts for cold calling, you may be directed to spend the initial seconds of your call forging a friendship or personal link, as though long-lasting bonds can be forged within such a short time period.

Alternatively, various other scripts for cold calling will try to persuade you that providing the prospective client with a complete corporate biography will in some way excuse the fact that you have without invitation cut into their busy calendar.

Yet other scripts for cold calling will try to persuade you to begin your call with this unbelievable statement. “I am in no way attempting to get you to purchase anything today.” Puhleeeze!! Does anyone believe this statement will trick even the most gullible prospect?

By the same token you and I both know that the power of any sales presentation is in the words.

Face-to-face you have all sorts of visual cues that let you know whether or not you and your prospect are strolling down the primrose path together.

When speaking face-to-face, you have the advantage of quickly being able to spot when a prospect is drifting off or has a negative reaction to a proposal point allowing you to without much difficulty redirect the emphasis of your presentation.

On the other hand, when using scripts for cold calling you are largely dependent upon utilizing your sense of hearing only for cues as to how the prospect is receiving your pitch.

Being in control of yourself and your presentation is crucial in order to continue on track.

Executive assistants will sorely test your discipline. Should you give excessive information, the executive assistant may brush you off with, “I will ensure that you receive a call back if he’s interested.” On the other hand, should you give not enough information, the executive assistant my keep questioning you until she is satisfied that she knows the score and may then attempt to get rid of you with no further recourse for you.

As most salesman are gifted with the talent of waxing poetic on their subject of choice, they tend to flourish when interacting with prospects in the flesh. Although they love the aforementioned type of interaction chances are they most likely equally despise cold calling. Hence, they run the chance of losing their self-discipline by being too slick or fast talking thereby also losing the sell more often than not causing an adverse reaction to the prospect of cold calling.

Successful sales professionals turn aversion to attraction by using scripts for cold calling that are in essence a sophisticated sales presentation. Scripts for cold calling that are stripped down to the essential words; not too many, and not too few words that make the sale in their 90-seconds of time on the phone with an executive or executive assistant.

Yes! Scripts for cold calling can be that good and yield results of 6-8 appointments out of every 10 calls.

How do I create these winning scripts for cold calling? You may ask… Simply draft a script that includes each of elements of a winning presentation that allows visual cues (i.e. a meeting in the flesh). Next, simplify the script to make a successful conversion to a presentation dependent upon audible cues only (i.e. a phone meeting).

See below for an example of a winning cold calling script structure:

1. Use the prospects name, in the form of a question as your opening line.

2. Identify who you are or who you represent

3. State the purpose of your call

4. Put together an advantage statement which informs the person exactly what the benefits of meeting with you are–using end result statistics.

5. Maintain self-control by knowing what you want out of the call and asking the questions you need to ask to get there.

A sample of a successful script is shown below:

Am I speaking with Tom? My name is Leslie. I’m touching base from ColdCallingExecutives.com to ascertain if I can increase George’s profits by 100% in three months or less. When would be the most advantageous time for him to meet in the upcoming weeks? I welcome your assistance in this matter. Thank you.

Even the greatest cold callers are struck by how much effort it takes to relax during cold calls to executives; how few words actually need to spoken during a structured sales call, and the power of a carefully crafted sales call.

Most of you have heard the well-known phrase KISS — Keep It Simple, Stupid! Well we have modified this statement to help you with your winning script creation. KISS or Keep It Simple and Structured. If you follow this basic structure you should be wallowing in your success in no time. Good Luck!