Ifitstuff are pleased to announce that we will be at the supporting the FCS Comms installer event on the 30th of May at the Hilton Hotel in Coventry. We will be exhibiting our revolutionary Ifit-Pro websites and answering any questions that you may have on them and how they could benefit your business. We support the drive for quality installations and are looking forward to hearing from Jason McComb about how he is driving forward the FITAS programme forward.

FCS Comms Installer 2012

Wednesday 30th May 2012

Hilton Coventry Hotel, Paradise Way, Walsgrave Triangle, Coventry, CV2 2ST

Over recent years the annual FCS Comms Installer event has become the key focus for all parts of the UK in-vehicle installations sector to come together. This includes manufacturers, distributors installers and users of mobile phone, radio and tracking equipment and accessories.

This year’s event – Comms Installer 12 – will offer a platform to market leading companies to provide the latest product and technical information – enabling installers to get up to date with all the latest developments in one hit.

Main event sponsors will be presenting on their products and plans for the future in a unique “technical exchange” event, which will also be supported by a wide range of other exhibitors showcasing their products and services. The programme will also feature speakers on a wide range of topical issues.

Comms Installer 12 offers unrivalled networking opportunities for everyone in the installations industry so make date in your diary and register today.

To Register Your Place Please Click Here

Programme

Welcome Speech & Session Intro – John Thomson, Panorama

Product Update – Peter Oughton & Nathan Kalaher, Armour Automotive

FITAS Update – Jason McComb

Refreshment Break

AutoDab – Connects 2

Digital Radio Switchover – Laurence Harrison, DRUK

Refreshment Break

‘Pet Regs’ Review – John Thomson, Panorama

Plenery/Sum Up – Panel Session

Lunch

Networking & Exhibitor Demos

Close

Comms Installer is a free event so make sure you secure your place today!

May 2012
Engineering for the Logistics and Transport Industries – Installation Engineer

c£38k Including overtime

Isotrak Limited is a market leader in the provision of transport management systems, and supplies services to many of the UK’s largest vehicle fleets. In order to cope with an increasing level of new business implementations, we now wish to recruit an additional Installation Engineer.

Reporting to the Installation Manager the person appointed will be required to work at customer premises spanning mainly Southern and Central England, the candidate would ideally be located in the Midlands.

The main tasks will include the installation and service of Isotrak equipment at our customer sites throughout the UK. The candidate will also be responsible for onsite technical support of sub-contractor installations, alongside Quality Assuring the installations carried out by subcontractors.

The role will also include duties such as identifying new technologies which can add value to the existing product, investigating and resolving any problems in the day-to-day operation of equipment.

Applicants must be qualified electrical engineers with thorough practical knowledge of vehicle electrical equipment, and ideally have mobile communications experience. Good communications skills and a substantial level of IT literacy are essential. The post will involve extensive periods working at customer’s premises throughout the UK including some unsociable hours and weekend work.

Isotrak offers good terms and conditions of employment, including a company vehicle, Laptop, Blackberry and contributory pension scheme. 25 days annual leave excluding statutory Bank Holidays.

Please apply in writing, giving full personal and career details, to jobs@isotrak.com reference: IE

Starting out episode 3 – Sole Trader or Limited Company

There is a number of things that you will need to do in order to start trading, but if you are not asking to borrow money from your bank then that will simplify it a bit. For my 1st business at 18 I produced a nice business plan to try and get some funding from the Prince’s trust or the bank and neither helped me, in truth I was just plucking numbers out of thin air as I didn’t have a clue what profit, turnover or expenses I would have at that stage. Since then if I need a loan for business I just get a personal loan (like for a new car) and tell the bank that I just want a current account and nothing else, no questions, no business plan, the APR is generally better on a personal loan anyway.

You will need to 1st decide what sort of business you will form, will you be a Sole Trader, a partner with a friend / colleague or husband / wife, will you start a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) or a Limited Company (LTD)? There are pros and cons to all of these with a Limited Company reducing the tax that you will pay (with clever accounting for example), but you then have to pay more to an accountant for the added paperwork!! With a Limited Company the debt of the business is limited to your business and so in theory you won’t lose your house or personal possessions if it all goes tits up! But then again if you want credit with anyone then you will almost certainly have to sign a Directors guarantee anyway which defeats the point really. Limited Companies are more complicated to fulfil all the paperwork obligations and the penalties are more severe if you fail to meet those obligations, winding the company up if you fail can also be costly too. You can change the business entity as it progresses over the years and since you are unlikely to have to worry about paying too much tax on profit in year 1 (as there is a good chance you won’t make much!). A Sole Proprietorship is the most likely one you will start with, your “Position” being the “Proprietor” and you will be a “Sole Trader”.

The next thing you will need is bank account, you can open a business bank account in the business name, but be aware that a business bank account will charge you for things that you have always had for free!!! Maybe £0.75 for every time you pay into your bank + £0.30 for every cheque + £0.85 per £100 cash and a monthly fee (£5.50 for my Barclays Business account). You are likely to get a free period for being new business to them maybe 12 or 18 months, but be sure the charges will eventually go out like clockwork. You can pay cash into a private account 1st and then transfer it via BACS to the business account to avoid some fees although it can make your banking more confusing. You might prefer to just use a personal account to run your business finances, although it would be worth opening a 2nd personal account and keeping that one for business only and not confusing your personal and business affairs in one account. One drawback of not having a business account is that you will have to explain to your customers to make cheques payable to you personally and not your company name as the bank will not accept a cheque in the name of your business if you don’t have an account in that name!

If you do want a business account then you will need the usual identification as you would need for a personal account with the addition of a business card and letter head (which you could do on your computer or online). I would suggest not to get thousands of business cards made at this stage as you will probably want to change something on the card very soon as it is difficult to get it right 1st time, particularly in new territory. I would also say to avoid the free ones as they give out the wrong impression.

You will have to notify the Inland Revenue that you are now self employed and that means that you will have to fill out a HMRC self assessment form each year before the 31st of January. You have time though as the dead line for this tax year 6th April 2011 to 5th April 2012 will be 31st January 2013. You will also have to start paying class 2 national insurance contributions which are cheap at less than £10 per month I think. There is a required time period to tell them when you start trading or you risk getting fined (fines are reasonable at around £100 or something small like that though so it’s not the end of the world if you are late in telling them).

View other Ifitstuff members points of view on this subject in the trade only section of the forum here http://www.ifitstuff.com/forum/index.php/board,1056.0.html . Thanks for reading and please do check back in next month for my advice on “Buying or leasing a van”.

Ifitstuff business advice – Choosing your company name.

Your business name is something that is very important and will reflect a great deal about you. Your business name is the cornerstone of your image and brand; it is also something that is likely to be mentioned in all telephone conversations with customers and suppliers too. It will hopefully be your web address, which is the key for existing and potential new customers to find you on Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, You Tube and other social media. You customers will hopefully use it when recommending your service to their friends and acquaintances, so I can’t express how important the choice is!

Your business name should be something that is easy to remember, I would also suggest that it is clear and spelled correctly, what I mean by that is that you should hopefully only have to say the name once when you are on the phone rather than having to repeat it 6 times and then spell it out as believe me it can be frustrating to repeat it thousands of times per year!!

When I first started trading my company name was Sussex Soundz with a “Z” at the end instead of an S. It was 2003 at the time and I thought that it was funky and some of my customers liked it too. After a while I realised that it was very 90’s and dated, then 2 years of explaining on the phone that it is Sussex Soundz with a Z at the end was enough for me to be sick of it and change the name to Sussex Sounds with an S. It is allot of work to make even a small change like that, all accounts with the bank, suppliers, customers need changing, DVLA documents, HMRC etc and then things like stationary and sign writing too.

In this day and age you must have a website, it is expected and it is an instrumental tool to be used by those who want to find you. Don’t worry about building a website at this stage as I will cover that in a later issue, as they say “Rome wasn’t built in a day”! What you should do now when deciding your business name is to consider if the domain name is available? So when you are throwing ideas of business names around you should check the domain names availability on the net. Go to www.123-reg.co.uk and type the name that you would like and check for free if it’s been taken already. You should find a business name that you can register the .co.uk and the .com, there are lots of other extensions but these are the 2 main ones you should aim to register.

Another factor to consider is that your search engine rankings can be higher on keywords that are contained in the web address. My website address is www.sussexsounds.co.uk and although there are many other SEO reasons why my website ranks so high on Google, the fact that Sussex is in the domain name does make a difference on search terms that include “Sussex”. So having a County or Town location included in your business name won’t hurt you unless you are targeting work further afield from that area? Your email address is something to think about also as you will have to give this out over the phone too and if it takes you 5 minutes to explain that your email address is susinsttem73481@sussexinstallationteam.co.uk and then spell every letter twice to them, then one of you might be ready to top yourself by the time they have it written down correctly!! There is no reason why you can’t register a smaller web address and have that one set up for email or for the main website as I have done by registering www.sit-ltd.co.uk and for email I give out either info@sit-ltd.co.uk or jeff@sit-ltd.co.uk. The truth is that all of them are forwarded to my Gmail account that goes to my Smartphone anyway and I just reply from the Gmail account anyway.

So to recap your business name will ideally be; something that you like, relevant to your business, snappy, clear, easy to remember, contain you target area, short and available to register on the web. Not too much to think about, LOL!

Please do join the discussion about this topic and view other Ifitstuff members points of view in the trade only section of the forum here http://www.ifitstuff.com/forum/index.php/board,1056.0.html . Thanks for reading and please do check back in next month for “Getting started”.

Field Installation and Service Engineers (Nationwide)

£21,000-25,000 + bonus salary OTE £40,000 Benefits Package including Company Vehicle, fuel card, laptop and I-phone and full uniform

As a Field Engineer, you will be responsible for installing and servicing, telematics devices and vehicle safety equipment and other vehicle products.

You will be working at client sites, in addition to installations you will be tasked with servicing products and dealing with any customer queries. Maintaining regular contact with the Installation Manager and office, you will provide reports as needed and train other engineers when required, unsociable hours maybe required at times to fit the client’s needs.

To be considered for this position, you must have proven experience of installing vehicle tracking systems coupled with an auto electrical qualification or proven time served record.

As a Field Engineer you should be a good communicator with an excellent attention to detail and good time management skills. The ability to work on your own initiative is also key.

To apply for the role of Field Engineer please simply send your CV to:

Steve@e-drivesolutions.com

Article “Passion is Power”

I have been out of the audio game for some time now, so I went along to the Vestatec / Rockford training day to see if anything is new?

The day started with a welcome from Steve Tookey (Products and Sales manager), then Steve had us introduce ourselves one by one, as I listened to the introductions I could feel the passion for audio from the dealers. Passion is something that is very infectious, passion and product knowledge are clearly the two main things that are required to sell audio or anything really. If you are not excited about something then how do you expect your customers to get excited about it? Why should your customer part with their hard earned cash to buy something that’s “alright” or “pretty good”? Why would they want to buy from you if they can get it cheaper online? Why would they want you to fit their audio system over a cheaper installation service offered by the internet company?

The answer has to be you, the experience that you give the customer in your shop (or on the phone if you are mobile), the passion and the knowledge that you have about the product, the passion and knowledge that you have about installing the product in a professionally way, the passion and knowledge that you will have in the all important setting up of the audio system afterwards.

After all what is the point in having £2000 worth of products in a car if:-

They are not suited to work with each other, or incorrect cabling etc?
They are thrown in with poor installation?
They are not set up afterwards?

Today I felt the passion for audio; I felt the passion from dealers, the passion from the Vestatec team and the passion from a very technical and enthusiastic Jake Braaten of Rockford who had travelled all the way from Arizona with his college Chris Trapp to give the presentation. The car audio products that I saw from Rockford have come a long way since I was involved in car audio, with processors that allow you to connect a laptop via USB or Bluetooth and adjust absolutely EVERYTHING and the advances in heat displacement and design that have allowed powerful amplifiers to be made tiny.

The slogan that I adopted for Ifitstuff some years ago is “Knowledge is Power”, but sitting here today I realise that “Passion is Power” and the combination of Knowledge and Passion can be a deadly sales tool. So I leave you with this question, do you use passion and knowledge in your sales?

Article by Jeff Scott, Director, Ifitstuff LTD