Considering a Do It Yourself Solar Power System for Your Home?

Evaluating a do it yourself solar power system on your home? Imagine converting freely available solar power into electricity that can be used to power your home. The amount of electricity that will be generated depends on the number and wattage of the solar panels and the number of direct sun light the solar panels receive.

If the solar panels are producing more electricity that what is needed to run your home the excess solar power can be sold to the electric company. This is a great situation to be in, be selling electricity back to the utility district.

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There are a few things that you need to consider before deciding on installing a solar power system on your house.

In order to recoup the initial investment you need to determine how long it will take. You don't want to move out of the house before having recouped your investment.

Do you have a large enough space on your roof where the solar panels can be installed on that receives at least six hours of direct sun light each day? Solar cells work best in direct sunlight. If most of the south facing roof space is covered by nice large trees a photovoltaic system is not going to produce much electricity.

Pitch of your roof. Are you comfortable walking on your roof? Is it too steep for you? When installing a do it yourself solar power system you will be spending some time on the roof installing the solar panels and wiring them together. If you are not comfortable working on the roof for a day or two you might want to consider hiring someone to install the solar panels for you.

How to find do it yourself solar power retailers that you can work with. Start with the yellow pages and contact the local solar retailers in your area. Check out each retailer with the local BBB.

Another option is to search for solar retailer sites with the search phrase 'do it yourself solar power system'. Check out the result sites. Be sure to verify that the site is reputable and secure.

Before purchasing a do it yourself solar power system from a retailer be they local or online there are a few questions you should ask them. Will they help you determine the load of your home and size the solar power system to your home's electrical needs?

Will they allow you to review the installation instructions before purchasing the solar power system? Since this is a

Do they offer telephone technical support?

How long is the warranty on the equipment?

Who do you contact for warranty work?

You are now ready to find the right retail outlet that will provide you with the best do it yourself solar power system and great customer service. Even if you decide not to install a solar power system yourself, consider hiring a local company that specializes in installing solar power systems in homes. It will be more expensive, but in the long run the cost savings will be well worth it.

Considering a Do It Yourself Solar Power System for Your Home?

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Using a CRM System to Grow Your Business

In order to secure a steady income stream from your business, you have to track and maintain a client base that includes not only your current clients and prospects that are already in your sales funnel, but also a healthy list of future prospects. See it a little like feeding a plant, you need to feed your business constantly to keep it growing or else it's going to get sick and die.

That's why I always recommend using a CRM system. It's amazing to hear how entrepreneurs are still using Excel spreadsheets to keep track of their clients and prospects. I'm a strong believer in using systems and technology to improve the effectiveness of the daily management of a business.

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For those of you who don't know, CRM stands for Customer Relationships Management. CRM systems can improve client satisfaction, increase productivity and boost profits. Remember that you always have to be in your client's mind for them to think of doing business with you.

Here's a great definition of CRM from Wikipedia:

...is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company's interactions with customers and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes-principally sales related activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new customers, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former customers back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and customer service.

Some of the reasons why you should be using a CRM system:

1. Consolidated and automation of sales and marketing processes.

2. By being able to store and access client/prospect personal information, activities, correspondence, etc. you can work in a team environment using the same up to date or live data about your clients and prospects.

3. Schedule of activities, reminders and calendar sharing for a group.

4. Increased cross-selling opportunities.

5. Segregate and categories contacts according to specific criteria (A, B, C clients, per company, industry, interests, etc.) which will allow for a higher client profiling and targeting.

6. Improved client service, loyalty and retention. Since you're keeping track of all activities and important information about your clients and their business, it will allow you to be proactive instead of reactive with your business.

7. Higher overall profitability.

There are many different great products you can use and I would recommend taking advantage of any free trial offers to try to figure out which CRM system is right for your business.

Using a CRM System to Grow Your Business

Grow Calendar 2011

12 Month Marketing Calendar - Your Turn-By-Turn Navigation System To Business Success

As every smart business owner knows, marketing your business should be a CONSTANT effort. It's something you need to continuously doing in order to keep your pipeline full of interested and qualified prospects.

However, for many, life simply gets in the way, obstacles arise, and all the good intentions seem to fade. As a result, you come to your senses one day and realize your pipeline's dry as a bone and you're struggling just to survive.

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One way to make sure this doesn't happen is to create a detailed day-by-day calendar of marketing tasks and activities to be completed over the next 12 months.

Creating this calendar acts very much like the GPS turn-by-turn navigation system in your new car. You tell it where to go (writing out your goals) and as you move along the journey (going through the year) the system tells you where to turn (the marketing activities to complete) in order to arrive safely at your final destination.

In order to help you create a magical marketing calendar, here are 7 key steps to keep in mind:

1. Plan out the entire 12 months in advance.

By laying out the full 12 months ahead of time, you lay out the entire year's journey ahead of you. This is what gives you the turn-by-turn direction needed to achieve the goals you've laid out for your business.

2. Plan a 'campaign' every month.

As you plan the full 12 months, it's important to create an 'activity' or 'campaign' for each and every month of the year. This does a couple of things for you.

First, it gets you in the marketing mindset. Doing something each and every month forces you to think about marketing more consistently and it should encourage you to study and learn good marketing principles.

Second, it helps develop name recognition with your target market. While small businesses should NEVER waste money on branding type marketing, developing some name recognition as a side benefit of good direct response marketing is a good thing. Being consistent with your marketing helps make this happen.

3. Pick a theme for each campaign.

One of the biggest sins of marketing is being boring. With as much advertising as your prospects are subjected to, it's important to be interesting and picking a theme for each month's campaign helps generate interest.

To create an interesting theme use current events in the local or national media, holidays, movies, or anything else that you can create a character or story around.

4. Target your efforts at prospects, customers, and partners.

To create a pipeline that's always full, you need to tap as many resources as possible. It's impossible to rely on just one method to create a steady stream of interested, qualified prospects and by directing your activities at generating new business via prospects, your existing customers, and joint venture partners, your chance of filling your pipeline increase substantially.

5. Be flexible.

Now, even though your plan is for a full 12 months, there may be obstacles or detours in the road the cause you to adjust your course. Be flexible enough with your plan to accommodate these changes. Doing so will ensure you the ability to make the necessary adjustments that will allow you to reach your destination.

6. Schedule periodic checkups.

A big key to success with your plan is the ability to check your progress and make changes as needed. To make sure these periodic check ups occur, schedule appointments in order to make sure they happen.

7. Stick to your plan!

This is quite possible the BIGGEST key to success with your 12 month marketing calendar. After going through the time and effort required to create your calendar, it would be a shame to not put it to use.

So, as soon as you finish creating your step-by-step marketing roadmap, make the resolution to STICK TO IT! Don't allow life's ups and downs deter you from carrying out your plan.

If you know where you want to take your business in the next year, the only way to ensure your safe arrival at the final destination is to clearly map out your path. Creating this 12 month magical marketing calendar will give you the direction you need to achieve some phenomenal results.

12 Month Marketing Calendar - Your Turn-By-Turn Navigation System To Business Success

Grow Calendar 2011