I was sitting with the senior team at one of our most successful customers last Friday, and we were prepping for an upcoming sales and marketing planning meeting later this week. 

Status:      Solid first half performance
Status:      Great processes & people
Question:  How does everything fit for the 2nd half?

I open each semester at Tufts by asking my students what my job is.  After a couple of awkward minutes including... "to teach us about marketing", to which I respond, "That might be a problem because I don't know that much about marketing", my real answer is..."to make sure that you get the highest paying jobs that you're going to find to be the most rewarding".   And, at the end of the day, that's really the most important result from any university. 

Late Friday afternoon, I managed to squeeze into the Winhall General Store minutes before closing time and found myself waiting in line beside my friend, Mike, to order takeout.

Click for Video on our Sales Management Boot Camp:  Oct. 6th-8th

The best mix...

The best of all possible worlds...I love what I do! 

Deep into January, and already settling into the rhythms of the year...

Yesterday was a great day for family, snow (at least here in Vermont), gigabytes of pictures taken with newly unwrapped cameras and iPhones, along with way too much food.  Just what Christmas is supposed to be.  I could have done without the 350 mile rotation to “therealworld”  commuting from "vermontwinterfantasyland”, however, other than that, it was all good.

Dave Brubeck...

When I was 16, my friend and I hitchiked to Newport one summer heading to the NewPort Jazz Festival attending the free workshops during the day and sneaking into the concerts at night to listen to the true legends of jazz crossing the spectrums from Basie, Coltrane, Gillespie, and Monk to Dave Brubeck, whom I had never heard before. Five summers ago, I had the opportunity to be part of an intimate 90 minute session, where Brubeck, looking deceptively frail, once again took absolute command of the keyboard as he started the set with that same mystical lilt heard right at the beginning  of "Take Five".  I vividly remember Brubeck both back in the early 60's in Newport and also in a small art center a couple of years ago in Vermont and was saddened to hear about the death of this true legend last week.

With a long weekend of maxed-out football from Thanksgiving Day high school to the Pats, I realize that I'm constantly comparing professional sports teams to professional sales organizations on the basis of....

How many times a week do you hear that request for "just five minutes" of your time?  Maybe it's from your boss or a co-worker, or maybe it's a non-business friend or your spouse as in... "Can you help me for just five minutes?" (spouse translation: "Can you go to the drug store/shopping/cleaning out the closet for me?")