Excel Tip

This is a good one. Let's say you've brought over some spreadsheets of contacts from your old job, but don't know how long it has been since you've made a sales call. You can just use the DATEDIF function in Excel.

Identify the cells with the last date a sales call was made, like in A1, and then write this formula in the next cell, like in B1, to calculate the time: =DATEDIF(A1,NOW(),"y")

You can than use Excel's IF function -- for example, =IF(A2>Y) -- to identify all the days that are greater than a certain amount. This way you can follow up with your clients after two weeks and just touch base with them on any ongoing transactions.