There are times in the careers of most professionals, when you will feel if the job you are doing is going the way you wanted it. Even when we take up new jobs, we assume somethings rather than discuss them upfront – which also leads to issues sometimes. These are very common situations, and happen across career stages and industries.
This latest podcast from Harvard Law School features an article from the November 2007 issue of their “Negotiation newsletter”. It talks about how thinking broadly about your career goals can increase your value and opportunities both inside and outside a hiring organization.
Our thoughts: Is Facebook 10 times the value of YouTube (which definitely is growing as the largest media and information sharing community online)? This looks more like wanting to stay in the “online social-site play” than business value. Microsoft will of course like to believe otherwise because they have already bought it.
Microsoft is quoting the 50 million users of today (and projected 300 million in 2-3 years) as the source of value. With $240m, you can create similar user communities on CNN and BBC – potentially getting over 100 million on its own – and with majority stake. Wonder if these alternatives were explored at all.
Microsoft also got exclusive rights to sell ads on Facebook outside of the US as part of the investment (60% of Facebook users are outside US)
This is the real benefit. Its similar to how Google bought ad rights for MySpace for $900 million in August last year. Now MySpace was supposed to have 100 million users, but analysis revealed 43 million. Along similar lines, its possible that Facebook has about 25 million real users (or about 15 million non-US users).
MSN Ad Network (similar to Google’s ad network) will benefit with a captive demand – and will keep MSN Ad Network alive (maybe this was the real thought behind the deal – and also the reason why Google didn’t push it hard – as they already have what Micorsoft wanted most). Without considering any additional deals by Microsoft into Facbook, it will need $120 million of ad sales to break-even on this investment. We’ll keep an eye on this.
PowerPoint has become the “default group communication mechanism”, and there’s a very high chance that if you are reading this, you use PowerPoint reasonably often. Now, anyone who has done a PowerPoint presentation or is going to do one should watch this video by Don McMillan. Its simple, but there’s a lot of truth in it.
If you have worked in a corporate, then you have surely been ‘trained’ a few times – ranging from technical skills on how to use the new email gadget, to people skills like team management and negotiation, and business skills for sales and profitability. If you searched the market for trainers, you will be amazed at how many there are. A simple Google search for ‘corporate training’ gives back 162 million search results. Is that a lot? Well, a search for ‘viagra’ the super popular Internet product gives 42 million search results. The point is – corporate training is a very popular business expense.
Corporates seem to like making training investments, but do they pay-off? In this video prepared by Canada AM, Jim Clemmer explains why corporate training usually doesn’t work because the training is so far removed from the “real” work environment. One of his useful suggestions is about how the effective training is usually the one delivered by senior management – and as you can feel, its also the most difficult to achieve! His website is: www.Clemmer.net
If you are involved in any form of sales, client engagement, pre-sales, or business management, this is a must watch video. It’s one of the best videos on the Internet on how to prepare a good sales proposal. Thanks very much to Bill Dotson for sharing his experience along with numerous real-life examples. This is a very practical video that you can use right after watching it.
Often, there is so much rework at the last stages of proposal development just because some team members involved in the proposal were not aware of the full picture and customer business needs. If you are the manager, you have probably been giving your tips to the team every time you have a proposal.
In fact most companies, and that includes some very large companies, don’t have a clear business proposal checklist. It’s very much left for the sales manager to train his team — again and again. If you have been there, you will know exactly how it is like.
So make a note of this page and use it the next time you are submitting any business proposal. And more importantly — share it with all your team members who are involved in making your business proposal.