Very early yesterday morning, I drove to the picture-perfect New England town of Newport, New Hampshire. Since I had an early morning planning session with a key customer, I wanted to arrive early so that I could go over my notes, plus I wanted to talk to my favorite economist and her reaction to the Wednesday night Obama speech.

Picture Main Street, USA, and you have a mental image of what Main Street in Newport is. Neat, beautiful, picturesque and a perfect example of a small town community complete on one hand, with the headquarters of the Lake Sunappe Bank, the region’s leader, and also with my favorite place to have breakfast, The Main Street Bakery.

I walked down the stairs yesterday morning for my normal cup of tea and egg sandwich and, most importantly, to be able to listen to the owner, single employee, waitress, cook & bottlewasher and ask her what she thought about President Obama’s State of the Union comments.
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In addition to the work we do with our customers, I’m a professor at Tufts, where I teach Sales & Marketing within the Tufts entrepreneurship program. Great students, great faculty, hard work and very rewarding in the fact that it tests my skills, energy and the small amount of intellect that I sometimes think I have. Nothing is more real than addressing 20 students at 8:30 for three hours every week for 13 weeks.

Last Friday, I hit the “send” button to post the final grades in a very intensive course where the final semester-long project counts for 50% of the overall grade. As usual, I’m not too sure who is more anxious about this process: me or the students? I am sure that it is me.

From my Tufts experience over the past three years and my ten years plus of teaching business planning and marketing at MIT, I’ve adapted this concept of final exams and brought it into the world of interviewing sales managers, and this morning is a great example of putting this into practice.
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