AlwaysOn Network has an article by Carmine Gallo, author of " 10 Simple Secrets of the World's Greatest Business Communicators."

he best stand out by crafting a lead that answers the following four questions in thirty seconds or less:

1. What is my service, product, company, or cause?
2. What problem do I solve (or what demand do I meet)?
3. How am I different?
4. Why should you care?

Answering these questions will help you start strong while giving the rest of your presentation a direction.

[via Shrikant Patil] Stanford Graduate Scool of Business writes about a talk given by John Doerr:

What makes a great entrepreneur? According to Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, the best ones "are missionaries, not mercenaries."

"Mercenaries have a lot of drive, they're opportunistic and always pitching their latest deal," he told a packed house of business students March 3, "whereas missionaries are more passionate and strategic. Mercenaries are sprinting and often have in their organizations an aristocracy of founders, whereas the missionaries are in it for the long run, obsessing on customers, not competition. They try to build a meritocracy—a loud, noisy place where the best ideas can get on the table."

Doerr closed with some "unsolicited advice" to the under-35 crowd in Bishop Auditorium. "Always, always network," he said. Keep business cards. Call somebody you weren't going to call every day and talk for at least 10 minutes. Call your mom once a week whether you need to or not. Take your first assignment based on the opportunity to learn and grow, not on the compensation.

"And please, please, please," he told the students, "in your drive to become great leaders, don't forget the fundamentals: learning about recruiting, hiring, firing, inspiring, managing, developing, and motivating others with the kind of tough love that makes leaders very effective.

Dave Pollard writes about Cliff Atkinson's new book "Beyond Bullet Points."

What this book does is provide a process to supply the pictures to go along with the story, so your presentation becomes "a blend of movie and live performance".

The process has three steps: Writing a script to focus your ideas, storyboarding the script to clarify the ideas, and producing the script to engage the audience. My previous posts have told you about the art of crafting a good story. The storyboard for a movie script is actually sketches of visuals, but for purposes of this book it's merely parsing of the critical parts of the story onto successive slides. Then you use graphics -- and few words -- to reinforce the key points of the story with memorable images.

Dina Mehta writes: "The future of Indian blogging lies in more and more connectors, mavens and salesmen entering this field. The blogging epidemic may not follow all of Gladwell's laws, but may focus on any one of these laws with significant impact on the rise or the fall of this epidemic. Indian blogs have evolved from personal diaries of youth or a techie's ramblings into a more pervasive space for conversations. Individuals and groups are gaining from this social phenomenon. Journalists are using this new media to air their views and draw reader responses. Restaurateurs are having conversations through blogs with people and customers. One man's no-holds barred views on Indian media is very widely read in advertising and marketing circles. A group of bloggers interested in the BPO industry has set up a community built on a blog platform. Many more communities are thriving. I have landed a couple of paying projects from Clients worldwide as a result of visibility and because my blog says much more about me than a cold website would."