Applications will be reviewed by our panel of judges. During the selection process, you may be contacted by an Inc.com reporter. The final list will be made public at the end of May.

One individual (or four) may embody these characteristics. In one way or another, you need these three traits to make your business thrive.

Having partners can be a tremendous asset or a terrible liability. If you choose correctly and get the right mix, your team can be unstoppable. Pick wrong and your business can be torn apart.

So how do you find partners with the right skills and personalities to make it work? Check your prospective partners against these three criteria to find out if your team has the secret sauce or is a disaster waiting to happen.

#1 The Visionary

In any good business, there is a big-picture thinker, a visionary. The visionary has the ability to identify how all parts of the business fit together, and comes up with strategic ideas and big directives. Big problems land on his desk as well. The visionary often makes decisions more on instinct than on research. He is indispensable because he can put his finger in the wind and feel which way the business should move, even if he cannot always explain why. The visionary is constantly re-thinking how things get done, and advocating for change that will make the company better and more nimble. He is not afraid to demand and make people uncomfortable when necessary. He is the force that dreams the impossible for the company and refuses to accept anything less.

#2 The Middleman

The middleman is the force that grounds the business and charts its path.

Without the middleman, the vision is no more than an interesting idea. The middleman is crucial because he dares to criticize the vision, and irreplaceable because he is the most innovative when it comes to bringing the vision to life. The middleman questions, plays devil's advocate, and troubleshoots. He is the first to punch holes in the vision, but then figures out how to fill them—ultimately making the vision clearer. The middleman understands the vision, and is able to translate it into an action plan, to transfer it from the realm of ideas to the real world. He is supple and looks for options. The rest of the company knows its role in developing and implementing the vision only thanks to the middleman's interpreting skills.

#3 The Detail Guy

The detail guy owns the action plan, and insures that the business moves forward, one task, one project, and one objective at a time. The detail guy takes the road map designed by the middleman, and carefully navigates the company from point A to point Z, passing by each checkpoint laid out in the vision. He doesn't skip steps, doesn't lose track, and doesn't pay attention to outside influences. He executes, scrutinizes, and reports. The detail guy sends back confirmation that the road ahead can be traveled as the map indicates, and he raises the first warning flag when a detour must be drawn. He gathers feedback, which can then be used to restructure the action plan or reshape the vision. The detail guy is the force that keeps the business moving and insures it stays the course.

Whether you have a team of people who each embody one of the three ingredients, or one person who embodies them all is not important—the important factor is that all the ingredients are present. Indeed, I've found most business owners have some of each ingredient within them, and over time, they learn to cultivate the ingredients they possess less innately. What is non-negotiable is that each partner must recognize the category to which he belongs. Herein lies the greatest danger: If there is a disconnection between the category to which someone thinks he belongs and the one in which he actually operates, the partnership will not last—and neither will the business.

When your business is built around talent, you cant afford to skimp on healthcare and other employee benefits.

As a rapidly growing business, one of the last things we were focused on was our employee benefits plan. Not a great approach, since providing a world-class benefits package can be a relatively inexpensive way to reward and retain key people.

We recently revamped our health and benefits plan to more accurately reflect our growth and our commitment to our employees. We’re a small, growing professional services firm, which means our biggest asset–in fact our only asset–is our team. Relative to other small businesses, this team is highly educated, with impressive experience with larger consulting and financial companies. They are accustomed to the compensation and benefits packages of large, established companies, yet they have chosen to join a small, growing business.

When we first chose a benefits plan three years ago, we only had five employees. Anticipating growth, we knew we needed a strong benefits plan, but our size at the time restricted us to what amounted to glorified individual policies for small businesses. We worked with an extremely competent benefits advisor and got the best plan we could for our five employees.

Three years later, we have 22 employees and are hiring aggressively; in this context, our benefits package was looking fairly weak.

We chose to shop our policies around and worked with a few new advisors. Much to our surprise, our 22 employees made us fairly attractive to all of the providers. We were offered traditional health plans, as well as high-deductable plans with a health savings account (HSA), which allowed our highly compensated employees to access a tax-advantaged health benefit.

The biggest benefit: no matter what plan or provider we chose, we would see a 25 percent to 30 percent savings over our existing plan. The impact of moving from a five-person shop to a 22-person business made all the difference. In addition, the benefits of these plans, such as lower co-pays, drug benefits, and higher life insurance maximums, were vastly superior to our current plan–we truly were getting more for less.

Attracting and retaining the best people is absolutely critical to the success of our business. We have a young, healthy team, and we realized that providing a world-class benefits package would help us reward and retain our key people.

We wanted to provide a clearly superior plan without increasing premiums for our employees; the last thing we wanted was to take a 25 percent to 30 percent savings while asking employees have to pay more for their healthcare.

The key to us were the benefits provided by an HSA. Given the attractiveness of this option, we were able to reinvest the savings we received in switching employee benefit plans into employees’ new HSA accounts. This would cover the full amount of their deductible while giving them a way to save money for a future health event.

The result was a clear win-win–we provided better benefits to employees at no additional cost to the business. This will help us continue to attract and retain quality talent. Plus, we found a great benefits advisor that we will undoubtedly use in the future (thanks Robin!).

Please share your experiences on the growing pains of building a successful business with us at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com.

We all want more time. But how do you get it? The answer is to become a master of efficiency.

Let’s face it, one of the most valuable commodities in any busy person’s life is time. No matter how much we may wish for it, making more of it is simply outside the reaches of modern science. The myth of the 25-hour day, for the foreseeable future, will remain just that, a myth.

So how do you stretch more time out of your finite resource of the same? Efficiency. In short, we may not be able to create more time, but we can turbo-charge the limited time we have. Here’s how:

1. Set Daily Goals. One of the best ways to ramp up your efficiency is to set daily goals. Each morning, before your work day begins, make a list of the top things that you want or need to accomplish during the work day. Rank them in order of importance. Depending upon how long each task will take you, your list may contain two items or ten. Once constructed, use the list as your guide to keep you focused throughout the day to work towards completing those goals. Keep the list readily accessible and in plain sight on your workspace so that it will act as a constant reminder for those tasks that you want to complete in a given day. As you complete each of your predetermined objectives, check them off. If you do not complete a given goal, move it forward into the next day. This simple task of setting and monitoring daily goals is amazingly effective at increasing your productivity.

2. Delegate. If you are in a position to delegate make sure to do so. Too often we are saddled with a belief that we are the only person that can do a specific task or do it well enough. Throughout my career I have been particularly afflicted with this mistaken belief. There was a time in my career that I would type all of my own letters even though I had a secretary whose job it was to handle this task for me. I would think, it is going to take me longer to explain to her what needs to go into the letter than it would if I just go ahead and write it myself, which I then proceeded to do.

Learning to delegate is an acquired art form, one everyone should try to master. Believing that a task cannot be delegated is truly more about control issues and less about whether or not it truly can be assigned to someone else. Why spend two hours on a task yourself if instead through crafting 10 minutes of detailed instructions, you can delegate the project to another? Accordingly, if you have someone to whom you can delegate, learn how to delegate and learn how to do it well.

3. Let the Phone Ring. Let E-mails go Unanswered. You’re in the middle of solving an issue relating to one of your goals for the day. The phone rings. You answer. On the other end of the phone is someone who needs to speak with you about something that is important but not related to the task at hand. The conversation only lasts three minutes and then ends. However, when you go to pick up where you left off you need to quickly review where you were, get your brain back on track and then finally pick up and keep moving on the same.

Do not assume that picking up that quick call only cost you three minutes of being off task. It cost you your focus, the three minutes, and ultimately the review time of thinking about where you left off and the time it takes to re-engage your brain on the specific project you were working on before you were interrupted. All in all that three minute call, depending upon the complexity of the issues being dealt with, may cost you six, seven, even 10 minutes!

If your job allows, keep focused. Turn the phone (off?) ringer volume down so as not to disturb you or simply do not answer the same if the caller on the caller id is not calling about an urgent matter. You would be amazed at how simply allowing callers to leave a voice mail and then responding later in the day, in bulk, to all of your messages can truly amplify your efficiency.

However, it doesn’t have to end there. The same policy should be employed in regard to e-mails. How many e-mails do you really get that need to be viewed or read almost instantaneously? So don’t. Let them sit. They’ll still be there when you complete the task at hand. Like your calls just designate a time during the day, or two if you prefer, to answer all of your e-mails. Once again, by not allowing these constant interruptions, the efficiency with which you can accomplish the goals on your list will be increased exponentially.

4. Close the Door. The phone and e-mails are not the only distractions in modern office life. Your co-workers can really drag down your efficiency as well. Back when I worked in a large law firm in Washington, D.C. I would routinely need to go see one of the head partners in his big corner office. Almost without exception every time I walked into his office he would sigh, roll his eyes, and growl “Yes, what is it?” For the first year or so I worked there I simply chalked it up to the fact that he was personality-challenged and sadistically enjoyed degrading others, in other words, a lawyer. But one day I was standing down the hall from his office and it hit me as to why he was consistently grumpy. I was not the only associate that was constantly demanding attention from the big cheese. While I stood there speaking with other lawyers in the hallway I witnessed a veritable conga line of associate attorneys strolling through his office to ask him questions here, decisions there. No wonder he was so upset every time I would come into his office. Although I did not realize it, someone else had been in there two minutes before and again five minutes before that. If the man had seven minutes in a row to think to himself and get his own work done he would consider it a good day.

Why do I mention all of this? If you have the capability, sometimes you just need to close the door. If you work in an open workspace, hang a sign. Open-door policies are great, but they can often lead to an erosion of efficiency that is disturbing. Don’t be afraid to shut the door and politely let people know this is my efficient time. If they need to speak with you they can come back later or, better yet, set up daily pre-scheduled times in which they will have your undivided attention. By moving away from constant interruptions you will be able to stay on task and, consequently, move more efficiently through the goals you set every day.

5. Facebook, Twitter, and Instant Messaging. The secret time killers. Let’s say you spend 10 minutes on Facebook a day. For the majority of us that is being conservative. Let’s further say you use Twitter. Chalk up another 10 minutes. By the way, did you IM any of your friends today while at work? Come on, you know you did. Maybe the wife or the hubby had a funny story to share with you or Madonna just announced her latest concert dates and everyone had to BUZZ each other over it. Another ten minutes. So how much did we spend? Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty? Wrong. It was more like 130 hours. Over three 40-hour work weeks.

Huh? You might be asking yourself. What you talkin’ about Willis?

It’s simple. If you spend 30 minutes a day on social media and instant messaging that adds up to two and a half hours per week. There are 52 weeks in a year. Fifty-two times two and a half is 130 hours. One hundred and thirty hours equates to over three 40-hour work weeks you are spending on social media and chatting online per year. It’s like a whole other vacation.

Is this overly dramatic? Maybe a little. But recognize what spending time on these sites does to your productivity. Thirty minutes a day, on average, equates to a loss of up to three plus weeks of work per year. So if you are just spending 10 minutes a day doing the same, that’s like one entire lost week of work. Wow.

I’m not saying don’t do it. I am just saying recognize how the numbers add up. Once you see how they do, if you want to ramp up your efficiency limit the social chats to only designated times during the day when you are already taking a break. Trust me, that wicked awesome zinger you’ve been waiting to post on Facebook can wait.

6. Intellischedule. For those of you with spell-checker (yes, I have heard you are out there) this word will not come up anywhere. Why? I coined it. What does it mean? In brief, know thy self, know thy efficiency.

Long ago, I figured out that I am most productive for matters which involve a more detailed thought process in the morning. Matters such as complex legal briefs, legal research, reviewing complex contracts, etc. Afternoons, I prefer to just pound through matters that take a little less thought process but may be far more numerous to deal with such as quick e-mail questions and returning phone calls.

The point is, know when you are most productive in consideration of what you have to do in a given day. Then schedule your goals during those times given your particular strengths or weaknesses throughout the day. Intellischedule.

7. Focus. Do Not Multi-Task. Lastly, we hear a lot about people who can multitask. Who can do three things at once. But there is a growing consensus that multi-tasking actually destroys efficiency. In short, while you are multi-tasking your focus is split between two or more tasks. This erodes the efficiency with which you can accomplish either task. Don’t believe me?

Try this simple test. Find a few things in your schedule you have to do every day. Perhaps it is to get your phone messages at the beginning of the day and check your e-mails to see what needs an immediate response and what can wait. Take note of how long each task normally takes independently. Now do this. Check one e-mail and stop. Check one voice mail and stop. Go back and check the next e-mail and stop. Go back and check the next voice mail and stop and so on and so forth. Which took more time? The time it took to accomplish the two independent tasks by themselves or the time it took to multitask through both of them together. I’d be willing to bet focusing on one at a time was faster.

But this is just an example. By focusing on one thing at a time you will typically be able to accomplish that goal more quickly than if you are multitasking two or three things at once. Focus on an individual goal, accomplish it, and move on to the next goal on your daily list.

Like Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, women are driven to do business better and more flexibly, and make work better for everyone.

Every businesswoman who acquires any public profile has her family life raked over: How does she do it? What are the trade offs? What are the social and personal costs of her success? Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg is just the latest victim of this too-familiar trope, with other women and entrepreneurs prying into her childcare arrangements and wringing their hands with self-righteous disapproval. Some of this is good old- fashioned misogyny; after all, men don't get such scrutiny and few people have asked how much time Bill Gates spends with his kids. But female leaders get a lot of attention too because there is a real hunger—felt by men and women—to understand how to combine business and family successfully. We all face this challenge and we're eager for inspiration.

Let's get a few facts straight first.

1. Most women work. Most mothers work. Most parents work. How families balance the needs of work, children and, often, their own parents, is not a female issue: it's a human issue. Even singletons have parents who, as they age, will need care. As everyone lives longer and as kids stay home longer, integrating family and work becomes a permanent, not temporary, challenge.

2. Family demands don't make it less likely that women will become entrepreneurs; it may make it more likely. The fact that more than 10 million private companies are owned or controlled by women shows that we aren't rarities. Why do women start their own businesses? Because they hope that they will find in their own companies the kind of flexibility so often denied them by more conventional corporations. Or as the fabulous Doreen Marks of Otis Technology once said to me: "When you own the company, it doesn't matter which 80 hours a week you work." Parents don't mind working hard. They do mind working in rigid environments that won't accept that there is a life beyond the job.

3. Everyone needs support. Sheryl Sandberg has nannies. I had a nanny. I now have family and friends. No parent thrives without a network of supporters and backup. My own experience is that often it is those without the money for paid help who have the most reliable, emotionally-rich relationships. What parents do not need is the intrusive criticism of others who claim to know best. Every family is different and creates its own solutions.

In my study of female entrepreneurs, I never encountered a lack of ambition or any kind of trade-off that implied that driven businesswomen loved their children less. What I did find was an energetic determination to prove that business could be done better, that companies could be more flexible, and that the resulting engagement and commitment made life and work better for everyone: both men and women.

So I don't buy a lot of the you-can't-have-it-all criticism and envy that surrounds Sandberg. Having it all is hard, sure. All entrepreneurship is hard; that is why so many of us love it: because when we succeed, we know we've achieved something meaningful. If it were easy, it wouldn't be nearly so much fun and everyone would be doing it.

The traditional way to hire is to decide what Mr. or Ms. Right is like and then go find the closest match. There's a better way.

If you want to innovate, you have to be willing to make mistakes. I take that as a given. In my new book Brilliant Mistakes, I chronicled scores of missteps and supposedly doomed experiments by the likes of the Wright Brothers, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and J.K. Rowling—all of which led to great breakthroughs.

But “brilliant mistakes” aren’t limited to iPods, science, and flying machines. They can also be useful in the curious mating ritual known as hiring new staff. The basic challenge in hiring, as in dating, is to find a suitable match efficiently in an ocean of possibilities. It’s all about knowing what you want – right?

Well, only up to a point.

Whether they care to admit it or not, hiring managers, like most people, suffer from tunnel vision, unconscious prejudices, and a far narrower range of experience than they realize. Thinking they know what they want, they shut themselves off to innovative possibilities. For that reason, a smart approach to hiring would be to sample widely, beyond your usual selection criteria.

Maria Dahvana Headley, a 20-year-old NYU drama student, took this notion to the extreme in the dating game. After too many fruitless forays into New York’s night scene, she decided to try a bold and outrageous experiment. She resolved to say “yes” to any man who asked her out on a date (except convicted felons). Her memoir, The Year of Yes, describes how this policy led to dates with her building’s maintenance head, a homeless man, a Microsoft millionaire who still lived with his mother, and a career woman. She finally accepted a date with a playwright, divorced, many years her senior with kids, whom she fell in love with and married. She never would have given him a second glance before this experiment.

This is a great example of a brilliant mistake. Surely dating at random sounds like an idea doomed to failure, but setting a narrow filter is perhaps even more so. Her approach is the opposite of searching with strong preset criteria: in evolutionary terms, she pursued a strategy equivalent to random mutation.

By permitting many mistakes in dating, Headley created more variance and was able to learn faster about what she truly wanted in a partner. What Headley realized is that our typical way of experimenting—developing a preconceived idea of Mr. or Ms. Right and finding someone to fit the part—does not always lead to the best decisions. Making more mistakes, as Headley did in her “year of yes,” can really speed the process of learning.

Although few companies would embrace hiring anyone who applied, many have benefited from expanding their approach beyond the ordinary. The former CEO of Philips in Holland would take senior prospects on challenging hunting trips to see how they managed adversity. Nordstrom hires sales people from a wide spectrum and then quickly separates the wheat from the chaff. Mark Fidelo, the creative director of Young & Rubicam, took a risk hiring Festus Mbuimwe from Kenya who responded to a job opening he was clearly was under qualified for. But Fidelo liked the draft advertisement Mbuimwe submitted and hired him for a five-month internship. Mbuimwe, now an editor at a Nairobi-based website, brought a perspective that Y&R could never have obtained from the standard candidate.

So, how might you do likewise?

Do you have the nerve to try searching beyond your narrow filters? It takes smart mistakes to survive in the business jungle, especially if your strategy is all about innovation. My contrarian advice is to induce variance in your hiring process rather than reduce it. Do that, and evolution will be on your side. Good luck.

Yes, start-up life is hard on families. But do you have to be willing to give up a real bond with your kids to be an entrepreneur?

The likes of Apple and Facebook were once scrappy start-ups battling to transform how we communicate and handle information. Now, between the outpouring of grief following the death of Steve Jobs, Facebook's impending IPO, and the fact that nearly every pocket or bag in the land contains these firms' products, they're more institutions than insurgents. So perhaps now that the dream these firms were selling has become the ubiquitous present, it's time to look at what we've actually got.

This comes in the form of hand-wringing about what our digital lifestyles do to our relationships. (Here's a college kid who went Luddite for three months, deactivating his cell phone, e-mail, and social networks. Chalk, notes, and stopping by made a resurgence.) But it also comes in the form of a more critical examination of the start-up mania that these firms' astounding success have ushered in. How many young people are inspired to dream of founding businesses by the incredible success of seemingly normal(ish) Mark Zuckerberg? Do these start-up dreams have under-discussed costs?

That's what three entrepreneurs whose views were rounded up by Jason Kottke started to wonder after reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs. The short post is well worth a read in full, but the gist is encapsulated in the words of Jeff Atwood, a co-founder of Stack Exchange:

Start-up life is hard on families. We just welcomed two new members into our family, and running as fast as you can isn't sustainable for parents of multiple small children. The death of Steve Jobs, and his subsequent posthumous biography, highlighted the risks for a lot of folks. [...] Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful, but I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure.

Designer and entrepreneur Eric Karjaluoto expresses similar sentiments. "I admire [Jobs] for the mountains he climbed. At the same time, I wonder if he missed the whole point, becoming the John Henry of our time. He won the race, but at what cost?" Kottke admits that "since Jobs died, I've been pushing a little less hard" toward a definition of success that involves insane working hours.

And it is not just Kottke and company who are wondering whether most of us really want to pay the true costs of anything resembling the Zuckerberg or Jobs-type of success. Blogger Penelope Trunk has a woman's perspective on the issue and focuses on Facebook's soon-to-be-massively-wealthy COO Sheryl Sandberg in a new post. While she has nothing against Sandberg, whom she praises as super smart and extremely supportive of women's ambitions, Trunk still has questions about whether Sandberg's success is actually an appealing option for the vast majority of women.

Sandberg wants to be a role model for women who want big, exciting careers. But here's the problem: women don't want to be Sandberg. It’s no coincidence that the number one woman on the list of self-made millionaires is Oprah. She has no kids and no husband. She’s fascinating, nice, and smart. But few of us would really enjoy her life.

Sandberg and Oprah represent extreme choices in life. The things they give up are not things that most women would want to give up in exchange for the wild career success they could have.

The bottom line for Trunk is the same as it in for Kottke—seeing your kids and having start-up success are not compatible goals. That might not often be clearly articulated in the culture but it's true, and this makes high-octane entrepreneurialism a hard choice for many. "Sandberg is not a role model. She's an aberration," concludes Trunk.

Do you agree you have to be willing to give up a certain bond with your kids to be an entrepreneur? And if so, is it worth it for you?

Thinking of starting a business, but not sure where youll find the cash? Here are a few tips on how to launch a business with little to no money out of pocket.

Just like meeting Mr. or Mrs. "Right," or having your first child, the most opportune time to launch a new product or service can arise when you least expect it. And to fully take advantage of all that comes along with the opportunity, you must hold your breath and take the plunge!

Assuming you're like most people in this world—not born silver-spoon-in-mouth—you might feel the cards are stacked against you in starting a business. How can you turn your idea into a thriving business without much, or any, start-up capital? In this era of multi-million-dollar Series A investments, is it even possible to start-up without angel or VC funding?

Of course it is. But it's neither easy nor intuitive. Here are three tips, based on my personal experience, on how to start up without hawking all of your worldly possessions in the process:

1. Don't quit your day job. At least not yet. By staying put at a 9-to-5 as you prepare for your company's launch, your salary can support the impromptu expenses (beyond the cost of your personal time) that inadvertently pop up when starting a venture. Doing so also provides the financial peace of mind to observe and learn from other people's successes and failures before diving in. This comes in the form of networking with industry players, volunteering, and researching the entrepreneurial space to get ready for what's in store! For a head start on the latter, check out The Everyday Entrepreneur. It's a quick read with easy-to-apply lessons from entrepreneurs across a range of industries who provide the advice needed to prevent costly mistakes novices might make otherwise.

2. Exercise all options—virtually. One of the biggest (and bought) lessons I learned while founding Heritage Link Brands is that not all countries, states, or municipalities are alike where setting up the physical location of a company is concerned. And some, more than others, provide incentives or tacit benefits to startups to encourage enterprise, depending on the industry, product or service provided. Since our venture of choice was wine (one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world), we took diligent notes to understand costs (i.e. annual licensing: $5,000 in Massachusetts versus $400 in California) and made decisions accordingly. With the tremendous amount of information available through the Web, take advantage of side-by-side comparisons or business indices before making any hard-core investments. Also be sure to explore services that allow you to outsource some of the minutia that comes along with administering a business, like Elance or Talent Gurus. With the support of such firms, your business can ramp up slowly as you accelerate your bandwidth to match the venture's growth trajectory.

3. Don't be afraid to accept the kindness of strangers, friends or family! Whether tapping into an alma mater network for interns or fielding volunteers that learn how special and differentiated your offering is
through word of mouth, you can expand the capacity of your venture tremendously. The easiest way to manage this low/no cost option is to introduce a trial period for these wonderful souls to gauge fit and develop systems and processes for firm hires in the future. Also be sure to align skill sets with the demands of the business. Especially when the relationships are close, make sure whoever you bring on board is capable since the ramifications of things going sour are amplified, when family or friends are involved. If you find something's not working, don’t be afraid to let go of volunteers who add little to no value to the company’s bottom line. Lastly but not least, always be thankful and appreciative to these selfless beings for the extra help! Honestly, I'm not sure what I would do without the countless people who contributed to the success of my business.

Weekly wine pairing tip: For a wine that offers no risk of disappointing your palate, try the Tupun Torrontés out of Argentina. Filled with peach flavors and hints of lemon zest and citrus, it's just delightful.

Don't be that person. Seriously.

Some of these moves are just plain rude. Others are real reputation-killers. Don't be caught making any of them:

1. Your significant other publicly criticizes employees, customers, or vendors. No matter how justified, no matter how right, they don’t work there. They have no right.

It always without exception sounds horrible.

In fact it sounds something like this.

(Go ahead and watch. I'll wait.)

Told you.

2. You sell an item that was a gift. Say you write a popular tech blog. A manufacturer gives you a tablet in hopes you’ll review it on your blog. It’s a gift. It’s yours to do with as you please.

If you don’t want it, now or later, give it back. Or donate it to charity. Just don’t sell it. That’s tacky.

3. You ask for a favor and then describe how the favor should be performed. When you ask someone to help you, describe what you need. If he agrees let him help you—on his terms.

It sucks to say yes only to find out that 10 more conditions also apply. (Which is why, “Hey, do you have any free time tomorrow?” should always be followed by, “Maybe… what do you need?”)

Beggars can’t be post-agreement choosers.

4. You don't stay to the end when you’re given tickets to an event. Providing tickets to sports games, concerts, etc. are a time-honored customer relationship tradition. Even if the game is a blowout, half the crowd is gone, the players have lost interest, and your “host” isn’t even there, stay until it’s over.

Anything less shows you really didn’t appreciate the gesture.

5. You—however mildly—criticize a nice gesture. I once wrote a review for a person at their request. I posted it. The next day she emailed me. “Could you change a few of the words in your review? You used ‘great’ three times. Change two to ‘excellent’ and ‘outstanding’?”

Um, no, I can’t. Forget I used "great" three times in the same sentence on purpose because I liked the rhythm. It was an awesome review. Why quibble?

Don’t try to turn someone else’s nice gesture into something even nicer. Just say thanks.

6. You interview someone’s friend as a courtesy. Throwing someone a bone usually means someone gets hurt. If the friend does not otherwise deserve an interview, don’t go through the motions.

7. You commit a lunchtime assault. Your perfume or cologne should never precede you; neither should your lunch. Save the fragrant leftovers for home. The only time anyone should ever know what you’re having for lunch is if they ask.

8. You do something at the office party you wouldn’t do at work. Okay, you can have a drink even though you (I’m guessing?) wouldn’t have one at work.

Still, work parties, picnics, or outings are an extension of work. They aren’t Vegas. What you say and do at the office party doesn’t stay at the office party—everyone remembers, often in the form of legend.

And then you’re that girl.

Don’t be that girl.

What's on your list of tacky business moves?

If you want your audience to make a decision, you need to tell a good story. Here's how to avoid Death by PowerPoint.

Most business presentations are as boring as watching paint dry ... in slow motion. If you want to persuade your audience to make a decision, you need to make it interesting–which means that you must tell a story.

The reason is simple. The human brain automatically organizes everything into stories, because that's how we understand the meaning and context of everything around us.

So if your presentation doesn't tell a story, your audience's mind will create one. Unfortunately, it will sound like this: "We sat down and saw some slides and this guy talked about them for a while and then we all got up and left."

And that's if you're lucky. If you're not, the story your audience creates will look like this: "We sat down and some bozo started blathering about something, so I pulled out my phone and answered email until he was done."

Here's exactly how to tell a story that persuades an audience.

1. Know what decision you want made. When most people start out to create a presentation, they start with the question: "What do I want to say to these people?" The correct question, however, is: "What decision do these people really need to make?" The story must hinge on that decision being made.

2. Begin with a "heart-stopper." Every movie, TV show, or novel starts with something that captures your attention–and your emotions–and holds your interest while you "get into" the story. Without a "heart stopper," the audience's mind will wander.

3. Make the audience the main character. To maintain the interest of your listeners, the story must be about them, not you. At best, you and your firm should play a "best supporting actor" role–but the main role is always the audience's, and the action is what happens (or might happen) to them.

4. Create a plot line. A plot line consists of a goal and some obstacles that the main character must overcome in order to achieve that goal. For your presentation, the key to overcoming the obstacle(s) should be the decision you want made. In other words, if they don't make the decision, they can't reach the goal.

5. Provide a "risk-remover." The risk-remover eliminates any remaining reluctance to make a decision. By anticipating and addressing concerns, you can push the audience off the fence and persuade them to make the decision now.

6. Ask for the next step. This is where you ask the audience to actually make the decision that was the point of the entire presentation. 'Nuff said.

Example: Selling a Supply-Chain Remedy

Suppose you're selling a supply chain solution to a medium-sized firm. The decision you want made is therefore a buying decision (See Step 1 above.) With that in mind, here's a story that would likely persuade the decision-makers to buy:

Slide: $10 Million
Pause to let that number sink in. "Yes, $10 million dollars. That’s what you lost last year." (This is the heart-stopper.)

Slide: Inventory Problems
"According to the research that I’ve conducted with your team, your company's inability to track inventory has resulted in the defection of three large customers and several smaller ones. The total amount of revenue from those accounts was $2 million, but the reputation that you’ve gotten in the industry has lost you additional sales. In fact, $10 million is probably a conservative estimate." (This identifies the main character and goal.)

Slide: Lost Market Share
"If the current trend continues, there’s no doubt that you will lose market share to your competitors. This will allow them to apply economies of scale that your company will eventually be unable to match. Worst case, you could go into a downward spiral where you become successively less competitive." (This identifies the obstacles to achieving that goal.)

Slide: Controlling Inventory
"The challenge with inventory control isn’t just getting costs under control; it’s turning your inventory into a competitive advantage. Here are some examples of companies that have not just managed to reduce their inventory costs, but used a shortened supply chain and just-in-time inventory to gain new customers ..." (This increases the desirability of the goal.)

Slide: [Simple Table]
"This is the top line of a spreadsheet that I’ve worked up with the help of your CFO, showing how an inventory control solution can gradually get expenses in line and increase sales revenue. You’ll note that the bulk of the cost savings comes within three months of installation, but then there’s a follow-on effect of increased revenue." (Your offering thus makes the goal achievable.)

Slide: Risks
I’ve already met with your technical guru to ensure that it’s fully compatible with your existing infrastructure and our engineers have pre-qualified your system for an easy install." (This is the risk-remover.)

Slide: Next Steps
"As soon as we get the go-ahead, we can have this system installed within three weeks. Are there any questions?" (This is the close.)

The Takeaways

Needless to say, there would need to be plenty of data and reality behind the various points in the story. And for this to work in an actual sales situation, you'd probably have to meet one on one with many of the participants to get your ducks in a row, as they say.

But the structure is all about creating emotion and persuading the audience to make a decision, right now.

By the way, did you notice that the slides themselves were very simple, with no bullet points? That's 100 percent intentional and quite important. I'll explain why in a future column.

In fact, I'm preparing a huge column showing exactly how to craft a presentation so that it has maximum emotional impact. So you'll definitely want to stay tuned. The best ways to do this are either to sign up for my weekly "insider" newsletter or my @Sales_Source Twitter feed.

It takes more than a firm handshake to make a great first impression these days. Use these tips to make sure you're getting it right.

Basic business truths keep coming back in new ways. One of those truths is that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

We’ve been all told this since we were 2 years old. So why am I even talking about it? Because I see so many mistakes being made in this area on a regular basis. Some are old mistakes, but the new digital era also brings new mistakes.

Here are the new rules for making a great first impression.

Online Presence

It used to be that you made your first impression with a firm handshake, a smile and a pressed suit. Now your first impression precedes you–and it happens digitally.

• Make certain your picture, profile and position are on your company website–as well as those of any people on your team you bring to a meeting.
• Have a current and robust profile on LinkedIn. Almost one out of every two executives who are meeting with someone for the first time looks online prior to the meeting–and LinkedIn is one of the most frequently used platforms.
• Restrict your non-friend Facebook access. There is no sense in letting your personal life drive your first professional impression, even if you think you have nothing to hide.

Your Team

The people who surround you are a clear part of your professional impression. Prospective partners and customers know that performance quality is driven by many people. Good teams create chemistry and confidence in the first impression.

• Make sure your team understands all the same rules about grooming, handshakes, dress, smiles and eye contact that you follow. The first impression that your team makes is the first impression that you make.
• Take the right number of people to a meeting. Base it on the number of people the other company is bringing. If you have too many from your side, you will make them feel overwhelmed; too few suggests a lack of understanding and respect. I like a 2:3 ratio–two of our side for every three of theirs.
• Congruity is important. You don’t have to look, sound and act exactly alike. You do have to demonstrate some positive chemistry together.

Communication & Details

Because you are sending out so many first impressions before you connect face to face, you need to make certain you get all of the details right.

• Emails: The agenda, appointment confirmation and logistics need to be managed well. Your emails need to have complete contact information–including names and titles for all attendees you are bringing.
• Voicemails: Button down the details by making certain to leave the same information that you sent in your email on voicemail as well. You never know which communication technology someone prefers; they may only use one. Better to overcommunicate.
• What to bring: Bring it all; bring it on paper and digital; and bring more copies than you think you need. That goes for collateral material, presentations and (if this is your thing) delightful parting gifts. Also, make certain everyone on your team brings his or her business cards.

As the world becomes digitally porous, the aperture of perception gets bigger–but our control over it gets smaller. Use these new rules to make your best first impression.

Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky, the co-founders of online retailer BaubleBar, talk about how they convince customers they sell quality designer jewelry, despite their lower prices.

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Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky, the co-founders of online retailer BaubleBar, talk about how they convince customers they sell quality designer jewelry, despite their lower prices.