The reason many relationships personal and professional can fail is due to a breakdown in communication. The line of communication you choose to get your message across to potential customers is vital. Unlike other traditional methods of communication like telephone, fax and post mailing, new forms of communication are becoming even more important.

Email, Internet, text messaging, webinar, and online social sites are the new preferred choice in communication. The fascination with anyone of these communication services is the anticipation of receipt, not unlike getting a gift for your birthday. This can be illustrated by the fact that people can tell you how many spam email they receive. They know so because they are constantly checking it. It only makes sense to capitalize on these new forms of communication to reach your customers. Of the many networking possibilities online social sites like, Social-Media/Social-Bookmarking Sites, Professional-Networking Sites, Niche Social-Media Sites, General Social-Media Sites and Job Sites, are a good way to target your potential customers. The difficultly is in the message that you send and relating the information to the site you have a profile on, it might be an advantage to get a few employees on different sites that can promote your services. Here is a good listing of 50 Social Sites.

Webinars are a good way to do training and provide valuable information to potential clients or act as a refresher for existing clients and they can be used again and again for multiple users. Utilizing these new forms of communication can be very effective but without a well thought game plan you can harm more than you benefit. Tailoring your message to look organic and effortless can be time consuming and results may not be as quick as you like. Like with traditional communication lines there are no quick fixes.

As of June 27, 2006 the federal government announced it has put more on the case! The case of course is the SR&ED Tax Credit Program. Federal Budget Commitments have increased funding for the programs capacity and level of service to claimants. This is good news for claimants and consultants alike. There have been calls for changes to the overall program for a while now. The CRA admittedly by its’ actions have not done a great job in publicizing the program to Canadian business. Since the fall of 2007 they have been working on an action plan to make the SR&ED program more effective. The 3 big areas they targeted are a simplified guide and claim form, development of a self–assessment for eligibility and a review of policies and procedures. The goal is to improve consistency and predictability and quality of the claims process. This announcement is to follow up the changes to the SRED Program 2007-2008 from the beginning of the year. To see the status of the Small Business Action Plan go to http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/taxcredit/sred/whatsnew-e.html