James Wong

I would consider myself a gadget freak. One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that buying gadgets that are used for business purposes is tax deductible. However, getting the latest cool gadget, the iPhone 3GS-for free-is even better. Here's how I did it.

A guaranteed way to increase your company's sales is to have a system in place to manage your sales activities. Having a custom relationship management (CRM) system that is easy and gets used by the sales team is a great step towards that goal.

I just finished listening to the audio CD of Outliers, the new book by Malcolm Gladwell. He makes a point that success takes more than just being ambitious, extremely smart, or working hard. We all know plenty of ambitious people who don't make it very far in life, or the hard-working person who makes just $10 an hour.

I just attended a geeky conference on search engine strategies in New York. I met a lot of good people, learned a lot from the sessions and got a bunch of swag from the booths. However, my biggest takeaway is the to-do list I drafted after listening to the speakers. If I complete just half of my action items, it should more than pay for the costs of conference (the conference fees, the time away from work, the travel costs). More importantly, it can have a huge impact on my business.

So to ensure that I get the most bang from my buck, I've put together a list of the top five things I'm going to do to make sure that I execute on what I learned at the conference.

Many of us have a love-hate relationship with Outlook--yes we hate it because sometimes it crashes unexpectedly, or it takes an extra three to ten seconds to do something that we didn't expect. But I believe for the most part many of us do like Outlook and its intuitive nature. Web mail applications just don't feel as rich or fluid as Outlook.

There is a huge general fallacy out there that you have to be a talker to be a good salesperson. Too often I've heard people say, "I can't be a sales person. I'm not much of a talker." Or worse yet, some say, "I won't ever be a good sales person, I am too honest."

Sales and selling is not a bad word. Sales is the lifeblood of any company. If you are the owner of a small or growing business, you are and must commit to being the best sales person in your company. If you have a sales team, you are still selling all day long. It's not only to your prospect that you're selling--you must also sell to your employees, your vendors, your suppliers, your bankers and everyone else you come across.

In today's struggling economy, maintaining strong sales growth can pose a big challenge. It's OK to sulk for a little while, but you'll soon have to take action. One of the most efficient and least expensive solutions to this problem is to focus on creating better processes and leverage the existing tools you already have. Here are six tips to help grow your sales using resources you already have.

Be More Organized

Know who your current customers are, who your prospects are and how you became aware of them. Keep all information regarding customers and prospects up-to-date so that you have accurate data available when needed. If you are an Outlook user, you can be more organized by leveraging Outlook's contact, calendar and tasks features. You can also keep an Excel spreadsheet of contact information, but maintaining that list that can get arduous if you have many contacts.

As one of the new bloggers on Peer-to-Peer, I'm excited about teaming up with PC World to share my experiences as an entrepreneur. I've started several technology companies with an idea jotted on a napkin. From there, I moved to writing out a business plan and developing the products and services. That in turn led to mass-marketing my companies and building them into multimillion-dollar businesses, after which I sold them. I will probably share more of what not to do and the mistakes I've made over the years rather focus on the glorious parts.

With Avidian, which is the third company I've built from scratch, I figure if I make half the mistakes I made with my other companies, I will be millions of dollars ahead.