There are many companies who are allowed to call citizens even though there are Telemarketing Laws against such calls. Have you ever wondered how they are able to do this? Well it is simple you see if a company has done business with you in the last 6 months or is currently doing business with you, then they are allowed to call you even at dinner time.

In fact they can also give your phone number to other companies who are vendor partners who may call you. Companies you may not even know.

These companies know that if you are already a customer that there is 10 times more likelihood that you will buy from them than a cold call non-customer. They also know that you pay your bills if you are recent or current customer. Further, upgrade phone calls are indeed an easy sales tactic that they use to make more money from you.

Often they will present themselves as if they are a customer service representative and ask if you are happy or have any questions and if you say yes then they work a sales routine into the conversation to sell you more stuff. If you say no they suggest another service they offer, which usually costs more to make you happy. You see, Selling Customer Service Upgrades by Phone is big business.

The number of legislative loopholes in the telemarketing act are completely unfair to consumers. When the United States citizens voted and told their representatives in Congress and the Senate that they no longer wanted to be harassed while eating dinner or at home from pesky telephone salespeople they meant it.

However, politicians due to all the lobbying saw things a different way. Did you know that politicians are allowed to call you for a donation anytime they want? Whereas a small business person is not allowed to call you on the phone. But a large corporation who you may have done business with in the past six months who has you in their customer database may call you and even give your phone number out to other partners of theirs. Even if you are on the DO NOT CALL LIST?

In fact this happens quite often with credit card companies and American Express where they give your phone number out to vendor partners, who are allowed to call you and try to get you to buy something. The telemarketing act was never supposed to be like this, but now we have legislative loopholes, which are a sham and the telephone sales keep going.

Is it OK to be rude to those who call you on the phone trying to sell you something? Absolutely, they are wasting your time and abusing the privilege and it does not matter if it's legal or not, they are bothering you and that is unacceptable and that is not what the law intended so the whole thing is a fraud.

Most all large corporations have events and need catering services from time to time, this is why catering services need to be on the approved list of vendors for all local corporations. This of course requires some up front work.

The catering company must be on the approved vendor list for the corporation and be recognized by the purchasing or procurement offices of the company. The catering service must have the required insurance and additional insured certificates for the corporation, as well as prove to the company that they can perform once they are hired.

Of course none of this can happen until the catering service calls the corporation on the telephone and sets up an appointment to meet with the human resource director and probably the purchasing department. The best way to get the phone numbers of these people in the corporation is to go to the Chamber of Commerce and get a chamber of commerce directory and also by a Book of Lists.

The catering company should also have a prepared fax datasheet about their company that they can fax to the person after they get off the phone with them. Selling catering services by telephone to corporations is not difficult, but rather the first step in the sales process. If you own a catering service you need to consider all this and make sure you are up for the performance that will be required in the future.

Most car washes make money by washing cars for individuals, but what some of the car washes do not realize is there is quite a bit of fleet business out there that they are probably not tapping into. Consider if you will such companies as;

• Rent-A-Car Agencies
• Municipality Fleet Vehicles
• Shuttle Rideshare Vans
• Pizza Co. Delivery Vehicles
• Auto Parts Delivery Vehicles
• Limousine Companies
• Taxicab Companies
• Security Guard Companies

There are hundreds and hundreds of types of businesses that have small fleet of vehicles and a carwash business should tap into this market. Often carwash owners do not tap into this market, but it is very easy to do and it starts with a simple phone call to such businesses.

The best way to do this is to get the yellow page phone book out and make lists of names of companies that have fleets of vehicles and the phone numbers. I also recommend that you get a Chamber of Commerce directory and buy a Book of Lists.

Next, it makes sense to find the decision maker and invite them into the carwash for a free car wash on a company vehicle or their personal car and schedule an appointment. When they come in the carwash owner should advance that car to the front line and talk with the customer as the car's been washed.

Then offer them a low-priced fleet discount based on carwash coupons, which they can buy in advance. This is how I recommend selling Fleet services for a carwash and it all starts with a simple phone call.

Implementing a bar-coding system can be difficult without the care and discipline any serious undertaking requires. That means preparing yourself and your staff for the job at hand and setting aside the time to properly implement the barcode systems that will become an integral part of your overall business information system.

When designing any business process it's always best to start out with a plan that outlines the steps involved. To start, your team needs to develop a list of requirements. Requirements are statements that define the action or result you want the system to do for you.

To find your requirements ask yourself and your staff questions such as:

• What are my bottle necks? (Every business has bottlenecks)
• How long does my raw material sit around?
• How long does inventory sit in the warehouse?
• Is any part of my inventory increasing? If so, why?
• How much time is spent looking for things?
• What don't I know about my business?
• What are my customers biggest complaints
• What departments or processes are consistently slow, inconsistent, or have quality problems?

You get the idea. These kinds of questions will lead to opportunities to improve your business information systems and will help you develop your barcode system requirements which are a critical part of most information systems today.

After you list your requirements you then need to develop 'use cases'. These define the actions that might be taken to accomplish the goal set by the requirement. An example of some use cases might be:

• The receiving clerk scans incoming material into your database system
• The order database is updated so the material order status reflects the receiving of goods
• Labels are printed and made available to receiving

Most likely your barcode equipment requirements and use cases will grow as you work through this important analysis phase. Spending time up front defining exactly what your company needs, who will do it, and how it will be done will save you lots of headaches and money down the road. In all likelihood you have been doing this already with some of your non-technical business processes. So don't be put off because you're dealing with technology.

You or an assigned coordinator need to be directly involved in this process if you expect any kind of real success. Technical expertise is not necessary, though having someone involved that understands the technology will bring you benefits upfront and help you through the process, but the priority must stay on the requirements of the business and not the technology itself.

• Assign someone to be the barcode coordinator.
• Talk to people in your industry that have barcode systems. They will be happy to discuss what they did and you will benefit from their mistakes.
• Learn your industry bar coding standards
• Find out what your suppliers already have in place as far as barcode scanners, printers and systems.

Over the years I have observed and worked with numerous managers, business owners and executives in a variety of industries worldwide and I have made a number of observations. There tend to be common consistent management mistakes and errors that are made routinely.

My latest sales book, You Call That Selling, 91 Mistakes Smart Salespeople Make, looks like it is headed for best seller status. It was recently picked up by a major publisher after several thousand copies have been sold in less than four months. As a result I am now working on a new book, 81 Challenges Managers Face. It will be in the bookstores in early 2007. Until then, I thought I would share a few of the most frequent mistakes managers make that can have a tremendous negative impact on their organization’s productivity and effectiveness.

The idea for this book was as a result of seeing continuous management mistakes that are made over and over again by the same managers that cost their organization’s time, resources, market share and profits.

No one is perfect. Show me a manager that never makes mistakes and I’ll show you a manager that is not trying to improve or reach their full potential as a leader or manager. No one makes right decisions every time. No one is infallible. No one has all negative or all positive traits. No one exercises good judgment one hundred percent of the time. The following list represents what I feel are the most common management mistakes that if ignored over time will have significant negative consequences on the performance of a department or organization.

1. A greater concern with WHO says it or doesn’t say it or who did it or who didn’t do it rather than with

WHAT is best for the organization and its future health and welfare.

2. Not really listening to employees or caring about their issues, concerns, needs or frustrations.

3. Letting their ego get in the way of good decisions, actions, choices or behaviors.

4. Arrogance (This one should be self explanatory).

5. Personal agendas that get in the way of overall the success of the organization or sabotage the effectiveness of employee performance.

6. Seeing people who deliver bad news as negative, poor team players or trouble makers.

7. Seeking only information that supports their own views, positions, values, perceptions opinions.

8. Seeing disagreement as disloyalty or tot encouraging disagreement.

9. Not talking with those who will be affected by decisions or who must carry them out before making them.

10. Taking the credit and giving the blame.

11. Lack of open, honest, clear and consistent communication.

12. Not communicating organizational direction and goals clearly and consistently.

13. Giving inadequate or inconsistent positive appreciation, feedback or reinforcement.

14. Inadequate or poor coaching.

15. Giving responsibility without authority.

16. Playing favorites with certain employees.

17. A lack of well-timed and effectively delivered negative feedback.

18. A lack of understanding that negative feedback is not to punish employees but to change behavior.

19. Inadequate or inconsistent training.

20. Not hiring strong candidates that can one day could be your replacement.

Obviously there are many more. The book will have 99. And yes there are more than 99 but generally speaking most of the critical management errors that cost sales, profits or productivity will fall within the above 20.

Construction equipment range from the very heavy equipment to the portable and mobile lighter equipment, some of them with a precise description of their functions are detailed below.

Engineering equipment with a front bucket/shovel and a small backhoe in the rear combined with a tractor is known as backhoe loader. It is mostly used in small construction sites and in urban engineering such as fixing city roads.

A crawler, which is very powerful and attached with a blade, is called a bulldozer. Even though any heavy engineering vehicle is known as bulldozer, it is actually a tractor with a dozer blade.

Combat engineering vehicles are used for engineering work in the battlefield and for transporting sappers. They are mostly armoured vehicles.

A compact excavator is a wheeled or tracked vehicle with a backfill blade and swing boom. It is also known as mini excavator. The functions and movements of the machines are carried out by transferring hydraulic fluid. This makes a compact hydraulic excavator different from other construction equipment. Find more info at www.construction-equipment4u.info

To compact gravel, dirt, asphalt and concrete in construction work and road laying a road roller which is also known as roller-compactor would be used.

A motorized cultivator with a rotating blade to work in the soil is known as rotary tiller. They are either drawn behind a tractor or self-propelled.

A crane is a derrick or tower equipped with pulleys and cables for lowering and lifting materials. The cranes used in construction industry are mostly temporary structures.

Dragline excavation systems are heavy equipment mostly used in surface mining and civil engineering. The smaller type of dragline excavator is used for port and road construction. The larger type dragline excavator is used in strip-mining operations for coal extraction.

In the building industry, to make foundations, a drilling machine is used. It is also used in oil wells and water wells.

An excavator commonly known as a digger is an engineering vehicle, with a cab mounted on a rotating platform or pivot, and a backhoe on top of an undercarriage with wheels or tracks. In untamed regions which are being reclaimed for construction, a feller buncher, a machine having an attachment, which fells trees, is used.

A forklift, lift truck or forklift truck is an industrial truck used to pick up and transport heavy material using steel forks under the material to be lifted. The most common usage of a forklift is to move materials stored on pallets.

A loader also known as a bucket loader, front-end loader, scoop loader, shovel, or front loader is a type of tractor using buckets, which can be tilted to lift and move material. A paver is used to spread asphalt on roadways.

As a self-proclaimed industry analyst spanning many sub-sectors of our economy I always find it fascinating to study Industry Surveys although I never seem to quite trust the data. Why you ask? Because it always seems that I will read one research paper or survey, which says one thing and another, which says something different.

Occasionally, I will find that all the surveys say the same thing and at that point generally one would assume that such particular data is indeed correct right? Not necessarily and let me tell you why. Well if the data is a little bit different at least you know whoever was doing a survey or research actually did collect data sets. But when all the surveys say exactly the same thing you have to wonder if they have been copying each other.

Scientific research and data being plagiarized? Well, when it comes to industry surveys yes I see a lot of that actually. Even worse when all of the data seems to point to a particular exactness from all the different researchers and surveys one has to ask why? That is when I really get suspicious especially when I consider that the data looks incorrect.

Let me take a case study that I recently found in the car wash industry. To exact studies done by two different groups. Both of them were equipment manufacturers. The question in this survey is how many locations does the average car wash owner own?

One survey said that 61% owned only one car wash and the other survey said that 64% owned only one car wash. When it came to three or more locations one survey said 5% and the other was 6%. Now then someone has to ask the question why is there discrepancy and who is right and who is wrong? Well, another survey said that the percentages were 68% and 4%. And perhaps no one is right, they are all wrong?

Now then someone could say this is within the margin of error. But there should not be any margin of error because there are 49,000 car washes in the United States of America and there is an exact number that can be known, but apparently no one wants to dig deep enough to find out what it is. Instead these companies and researchers are using limited data sets and getting skewed results.

As an industry analyst of the car wash industry among other industries how can I trust any of the data out there? The fact is you can't and if you think you can then you'll most likely make a mistake. Now then with that said the answer that can be known without doing your own survey would be that there is a margin of which is 10 to 15% (quite high) and that is the best you can know even when you talk to all the experts.