Archive for the ‘10 Quick Tips’ Category

Many of us take some time off work at this time of year – late December and early January there are the Christmas and New Years holidays. During the months of January and February a lot of people take some time off to head somewhere warm. So, when it’s time for you to get back to work, what are some ways that you can get back on schedule and motivated for work again?

1. Focus on what you like about your job. By reminding yourself about why exactly you like your job, you will feel more excited to get back to it.
2. Plan something to do in your free time or on your next holiday. Having something fun to look forward to can often help us get through the unexciting parts of our day-to-day lives.
3. Make a list of what needs to get done. Knowing what it is that you need to do to get caught up will help – and the feeling accomplishment when you can cross something off your list will motivate you to work on more items.
4. Set some (realistic) goals. 30 day, 60 day and 90 days goals will give you something to work towards when you first get back to work.
5. Take a couple of breaks. Don’t forget to get up from your desk a couple of times a day, whether it’s to make coffee, or to stop by and say “hello” to a coworker.
6. Eat lunch away from your desk. Eat with your coworkers – in a lunchroom or at a restaurant. You need to take a break from work for a period of time in order get back more energetically than you left it.
7. Delegate. The first few days back at work after holidays can sometimes result in being overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done – delegate to other people on your team if you can’t handle it all on your own.
8. Take one day at a time. Thinking too far in advance can get overwhelming when you’re first getting back into the swing of things. Work on focusing only on what you have to do today – tomorrow, focus only on what you need to get done tomorrow, and so on.
9. Revisit business plans. Taking some time off has distanced you from the day-to-day happenings of your business. Now is a great time to take an objective look at any sales plans, marketing plants, etc. to see whether they are still in line with where you want your business to go.
10. Spend the first day back doing the small tasks, and tackle the larger ones once you’ve adjusted to being back at work. Organize your email box. Spend time tackling that pile of papers on your desk. Doing the little items first will help prepare you for the next few days when you start to work on the larger items.

Getting feedback from your customers is important for many reasons. One of the biggest is that you definitely want to make your customers happy, and how can you know what makes them happy if you don’t hear what they like and dislike about your current clients? Another very important reason is because getting feedback from your clients can spur on innovation – whether it is improving current products, or improving brand new ones. Sometimes by talking with your customers you’ll see how your current products aren’t functioning as you had intended, other times you will see a new need that your products can fulfill.

So how can you get that important feedback from your customers?

1. Build a relationship with those who sell your products. Whether your company sells directly to the customer, or whether you sell to a middle-man who is then in contact with your customers, these are the people who are first in line to hear what your customers have to say about your products. Take the time to speak with these people – they’ll be more than happy to tell you what the customers have been telling them.
2. Build a relationship with your customers. More and more companies are turning to social media to help with their marketing efforts – and for good reason. Social media is to be used as a dialogue between two parties, to create conversation – and through this conversation, you’ll be able to get feedback on your products.
3. Give products to your customers. Try giving one of your products to a customer (existing or potential) for free. Ask them to try it out and give you honest feedback of what they think about the product.
4. Create a focus group.
5. Create a survey with an incentive to filling it out. There are some people who will automatically fill out a survey when given one. Most people, however, won’t. To help increase the number of people filling out surveys, try offering them a discount on your products next time they purchase something from you.
6. Get testimonials from customers. Not only can this be used as a marketing tool, getting testimonials from customers can be beneficial when you want to know what it is that people like about your products.
7. Provide your phone number and email address. A lot of times, if there is something that isn’t quite right with a product, your customer will want to speak with you about it. What better way to learn about how you can improve your products? But if you don’t provide a way for your customers to contact you, then you will be missing out on this important information.
8. Work with an outside customer feedback professional. There are outside contractors who specialize in gathering customer feedback – working with one of these professionals will mean that you will hear what the results are without having to do the legwork to get those results.
9. Keep track of what customers are already telling you. A lot of times, we hear from customers, but don’t have a way to track what they are telling us. If you have more than one person answering phone calls or emails, you may be missing out on a pattern of what your customers are saying – by keeping track of what these calls and emails are about, you can easily go back at a convenient time for you to see what items people keep commenting about.
10. Create a Google alert. Consumers are often talking online about products they purchased – whether through reviews on store websites (such as Amazon) or on blogs or discussion boards. These reviews can give you a huge insight as to what customers are happy or unhappy about regarding your product. Setting up a Google alert allows you to be notified whenever Google finds something new posted about your product, allowing you to read what others have posted about your products.

1. Invest in a digital camera and use it to take pictures of any modifications you make to your products. Dated photographs especially are invaluable to your claim.
2. Keep hard copies of electronic files. Don’t forget to keep hard copies of any and all important emails and documents – a lot of companies only store emails and other files on servers for less than a year, and these files can be essential to putting your claim together.
3. Use your existing tracking. Take your existing tracking method for the work you do, and modify it so that it counts the labour spent on SR&ED as well. If you don’t have any tracking yet, consider putting some in place. Remember, if you get reviewed, you will need to defend the work and time spent on any project.
4. Educate your team. Any employees that could potentially be involved in SR&ED projects should be familiar with the SR&ED program – what it is, what make a project eligible, etc.
5. If you can, file your claim with your taxes. Filing your claim within six months of your year end sends your claim on the fast track to be reviewed – typically, if you file after six months (but before the 18 month deadline) your claim will take longer to be reviewed.
6. Keep meeting minutes. Whether they are meetings in-person or over the phone, keep track of what was discussed, and what date this meeting occurred on. This evidence can be essential if you have an SR&ED review.
7. Don’t forget converting dollar amounts. Remember to convert all US dollar amounts to Canadian dollar amounts using the daily exchange rate, especially if the conversion is not specifically detailed in your documentation.
8. Keep SR&ED in mind when establishing contracts. Be mindful of the level of ‘risk’ assigned to each party involved. By committing the contractor to a fixed price without exclusion, the contractor inherits the right to claim SR&ED incentives on the work performed.
9. Keep all financial documents together. Any documents that will be used to put together the financial portion of your SR&ED claim (invoices, contracts, T4′s, time sheets, etc) should be kept in the same location, to prevent misplacing or losing the documents when it is time to prepare your claim.
10. Spend 5-10 minutes per week summarizing SR&ED activities. Spending time every week is preferable than leaving this portion until you need to prepare your claim for two reasons. First, it guarantees that you’re not going to forget some of the SR&ED projects that you’re working on (which could happen if your claim was prepared a year after you were working on it); second, it will seem like a lot less time spent on summarizing activities if you do it in small pieces, as opposed to doing a years-worth of summarizing all at one time.