It is so important that you create a budget for your business. Quickbooks allows you to easily set up a budget for the year. I want to preface this by saying that before you can create a budget, you need to make sure your books are in order. Make sure you itemize everything correctly and list as many expenses as you can think of without overkill. For instance, if you do email advertising, just create a category under marketing called “advertising” and put these transactions in there. Then in the notes you can indicate that you sent it on an email campaign.

When your books are in order, get your managers or department heads to send you a detailed document listing all of the expenses they will incur for the rest of the year. Have them point out what the expenses are (like SF tradeshow), have them give you the category it would fall under (like marketing – tradeshows), and have them give you the total cost and the date the cost starts and stops.

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Use these four sales techniques to get deals done–or piss people off along the way.

1. Call someone by the wrong name on purpose: This one has worked for me a few times. If you are really having trouble getting someone to respond to you, call him or her by a totally different name, and try to make it completely strange. For instance, let’s say you are trying to get Mary, the VP of Marketing, to return your call or email. Your first sentence should be, “Hi Smithsonian, I have been trying to get a hold of you for a while now.” Sometimes this will make her laugh or get her angry; either way, you will get a rise out of her and she might write you back just to find out what the hell you are thinking. What have you got to lose? She hasn’t responded to any of your other emails.

2. Send the wrong proposal: Once in a while, if I feel I am going to run into a price issue with a customer, I will send a proposal that is much more expensive than he would expect. I will wait until he looks at it and says, “Wow, this is way more than I expected.” I will say, “Really, I thought I gave you a good price.” I will then admit that I had sent the wrong one. When he gets the new, lowered proposal, he will be happy that it is a lot less and will psychologically be happier with my price. And once in a rare while, someone doesn’t blink at the more expensive proposal.

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Usually I write longer posts but this is a little trick that you should definitely use. I hear it time and time again from my sales people. They set up an appointment with a client and when the time comes they cannot track the client down. There are 3 things you should do to ensure the client will make your meeting.

1. Send them an outlook invite: This is the most important thing, because by doing so, they have to accept the meeting request. You get notified that they accepted it plus they will get alerted when the meeting is only 15 minutes away (or whatever time you set the alert for).
2. Send them an email the day before: A simple follow up email reminding them of the appointment goes a long way. Take the time in this email to give them something to prepare for the meeting. Maybe send your proposal, a good article, or some info on your company.
3. Have someone call to confirm: If you have the ability have someone call on your behalf. Have them ask the client if the meeting is still on with you (Mr. Johnson) and the client at the proposed time.

With sales you need to be very aggressive. Making sure your prospect doesn’t miss the meeting is a great first step.

If you travel a lot, then you need to make sure you have products that make your life easier and better. Every corporate exec should be rolling with these goods, or ones like them. Next time you’re running out the door, make sure you have the necessities.

1. The bag: I own the Tumi Alpha Travel & Business large screen leather computer brief. There are a few great features that really make this a great traveling bag. For starters you can quickly take your laptop out at the security check point (I still can’t believe we have to do this, dumb). You can purchase an umbrella that fits nicely in the front pocket and there is a little drain even so you can stick the umbrella back into the case and not worry about mildew. This really comes in handy when I go to my San Francisco office as it’s always raining up there. Another nice feature is there is a toll free number on the bag that someone can call if they find your bag and Tumi will get it back to you. Course the right type of person has to find the bag, or you won’t see it again. I l also recommended purchasing their USB cell phone/PDA charger kit. It has adapters for every type of device and works great when traveling internationally.

2. The sounds: I don’t remember what life was like before the Bose noise cancelling headset. You have to have these. There is something about that white noise on an airplane that just wears you down. I kid you not, as long as I get some sleep on the plane, drink lots of water and wear these things, and I do not get jet lagged anymore, no matter how far I travel. Might I suggest the Quiet Comfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling head phones model. I had the 2’s before I left them on the damn plane, and you get hot with the 2’s because they cover your whole ear. The 3’s are more comfortable. Also always bring with you a back up headset that doesn’t require battery power, I recommend the Bose In-Ear headphones.

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If you own a business, there is no such thing as an “out of office” autoresponder. You know, that little message you can set up that bounces back to people when they try to email you and you are on vacation?

If you own a business, I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a vacation. Ok, maybe that’s a bit harsh. I take vacations. Actually, I get to travel quite a bit and love doing so. However, as a business owner there is no such thing as leaving the laptop at home or putting down the “crackberry.” You need to watch your business like a hawk. I must get at least 30 emails per day from people inquiring about this and that. A lot of these emails need to be fielded and forwarded to employees. You can’t stop being the quarterback. I just figured out that I get about 200 emails per day (including spam). If I go three days without checking email, that is 600 emails! There is no way I can just create my “out of the office” autoresponder and worry about emails when I get home.

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In this vlog, I talk about my blogging schedule and why it is so important to grow your database, especially in a recession.

Here is the 3rd episode of the show. I do a great job in making a fool out of myself when I do a rap, but it’s the ridiculous stuff that gets views right? Bad press is still press right? Here important rules I follow when creating these videos:

1. I will not be afraid to take risks
2. I will be as confident as I can at all times
3. I will take constructive criticism as something constructive
4. I will always make fun of myself
5. I will stick to a rigorous schedule and always hit my deadlines. Persistence is the key to success!

Sorry people, between having a newborn and launching my new weekly Internet show “Outside the Inbox”, I have let my blogging schedule for jaredreitzin.com go by the wayside. I didn’t leave ya! I still plan to continue to address important situations and subjects that all of us budding entrepreneurs must face. This week I want to talk about delegation. As easy as it sometimes seems to just say, “Hey, John, I want you to take this project over,” it’s not. Here are the four main reasons why this isn’t as easy as it seems:

Scenario 1: If you are a business owner, you realize that nobody in your company can do a job as well as you can. As a result, you never delegate and will always assign yourself the task at hand.

Scenario 2: You are so busy that you don’t have time to train someone to do it, and because of your attitude (see #1 above), you would just rather get it done quickly by yourself.

Scenario 3: You don’t have any project management procedures in place, coupled with follow-through habits, so even if you delegate a task to someone, you haven’t put any milestones or deadlines in place, and things will eventually slip through the cracks.

Scenario 4: You don’t have a lot of people you can delegate to because you are small and are just starting out.

Scenario 5: Is there a 5th one you can think of?

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I finally got my act together and created a weekly Internet show. Think Daily Show meets Talk soup, but about all things digital marketing, and no where near the production quality. Course we are all about doing things guerilla style. I would love to get your feedback. Any thing you want me to discuss? Any ideas you have to make it better? Wanna come on the show for an interview? Send me your thoughts, I am all ears.

We outdid ourselves. Check out commercial 3 of 3 promoting our upcoming white paper “Digital Messaging Best Practices for Geniuses” and tell me what you think. I would love your feedback.