How to Start and End a Professional Blog

I hope you agree with this statement, at least by the time you finish reading this post. Most professionals who begin a blog deliver a shameful mess rather than a true contribution to the business world, their profession or their industry. Please do not follow the herd. Instead, consider the following seven disciplines. If you can stick to these disciplines, you are ready to blog professionally.

Dealing with the Too-Early Price Negotiator

Price is obviously an important part of any enterprise sales package. Prices need to be fair, competitive and most importantly deliver a high ROI to customers. In most enterprise sales situations, price is discussed twice. The first discussion takes place early in the sales process. I call this first discussion the sanity check. The customer needs to verify that your price falls within expectations. I like to communicate whatever price I give at this stage as a ballpark number and ideally not put the price in writing. I also like to verify that my ballpark price is in line with my customer’s ballpark budget. The second discussion takes place toward the end of the sales process. The customer wants the best price possible in exchange for the entire package required. At this stage the customer may make a serious effort using a virtual toolbox of negotiating skills to bring the price significantly below your ballpark price. Such high-pressure negotiations are normal at the end of the sales process. However, every so often a potential customer will want to aggressively negotiate down the price at the beginning of the sales cycle. With little information about the customer’s actual need or situation, such aggressive negotiation tactics can be difficult for the sales executive. Here’s how I deal with such situations.

How to Master Today's Hidden Job Market

Most people know how to find, apply for and manage one’s candidacy with published opportunities and those that come from recruiters. Many people have also stumbled upon opportunities in the hidden job market that have led to a new position. But few follow a proactive process to maximize the value of the hidden job market. This is unfortunate since the hidden job market contains some of the very best opportunities. You can find yourself hired without any other candidates even being considered. And the role you can secure may even be tailor-built based upon your specific skills and experience, not merely the skills and experience your new employer had been seeking. In an earlier post, I provided a playbook for students looking to secure an internship in the hidden market. This guidance is for those of us who are no longer students.

Why Publish Blog Posts on LinkedIn

Many top professionals rightfully treat their LinkedIn profile as a continuous work of fine art. This work of art paints and sculpts one’s professional image to the world. When researching a company, people typically view the company website first. When researching a professional, these same people first visit that professional’s LinkedIn profile. When people research you, what do they see in the Articles and Activities section? And is this how you want others to perceive you as a thought leader and a professional? This post focuses on how to exploit the benefits of publishing blog posts on LinkedIn.

References are Now a Two Way Street

This post will be available soon.

How to Maximize the Value of Your Internship

This post will be available soon.

The Rolodex with a Long Tail

At the time of this writing, LinkedIn is one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley with over 300 Million users with 90 Million users active in the most recent quarter. For me and for many others, LinkedIn is the digital age’s Rolodex. But it is so much more powerful than a conventional Rolodex, because of the long tail.

The Four Enemies of Excellence

Assuming the sales executive has qualified a strong business case, calculated a high ROI using conservative estimates, determined the target company has the funding and even outflanked all the competition, why wouldn’t a sale that has progressed this far be a shoe-in for a close? There can be any number of reasons, of course. But the most common are what I call the Four Enemies of Excellence.

The Power of Business Casual (Especially for Men)

Long ago, as I prepared to graduate from college and enter the business world, I purchased John T. Molloy’s Dress for Success and sought to apply what Molloy had advocated. I particularly appreciated the fact that Molloy’s conclusions were based upon research, rather than opinion. When I relocated to Silicon Valley from New York ten years later, I knew that my business attire needed to change. But for a long time I had little more than my gut instinct and the opinion of others to guide me. While my instincts proved reasonably reliable, I was curious to understand the power of Steve Jobs’ signature jeans and black mock turtleneck or more recently Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie. So when it came time to purchase some new business attire recently, I sought out more recent research.

Eight Tips for Getting an Awesome Internship

The 2014 summer intern recruiting season is rapidly drawing to a close, but its lessons will not soon be forgotten. A Junior Economics major I was working with through my college’s alumni mentoring program emailed to tell me he had received an offer from Facebook. This email came on the heels of my son—a Freshman Biomedical Engineering major—getting an offer from a hot medical device startup.

Experience in meaningful internships give newly-minted college graduates a huge competitive advantage in both the job market and graduate school admissions. But most students (as well as the parents advising them) know almost nothing about securing an internship beyond taking advantage of what is offered by their University’s career office. Below are eight tips to get you on the right track.

Getting a Great Reference from a Top Professor

As a recent college graduate living in the Boston area, I had the opportunity to take a Computer Science class at Harvard University. The professor held a PhD from Oxford University and was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at one of the Boston area’s hot technology companies. This long-time member of the Harvard Adjunct Faculty had made a reputation for himself and his class by regularly hiring the top students from the classes he taught at Harvard. The class I took had at least five hundred other students with me in the large auditorium. Graduate Assistants provided weekly section meetings and graded all the work, except for a final project which was optional but required to earn a top grade in the class. I chose to do a final project and completed the class with an A minus. Two years later, I managed to get a reference from this popular professor to secure what was then my dream job.

Doing an MBA without Getting an MBA

With the rise of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and rumblings about the decline of all but the most elite MBA programs, people are now genuinely asking if it is both possible and advisable to do an MBA without getting an MBA. You will save tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands in tuition not paid and income earned, and you will have the freedom to customize your studies. The obviously missing component is the pedigree. You will also miss out on University resources, the benefit of classmates and the future benefit of an alumni network. The credential-free MOOC MBA is neither an easy option, nor one with a proven track record. So here are five thoughts to ponder for those considering this new, non-conventional form of business education.