Huntin' & Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Oct 28, 2011

It’s the Tween Season in Vermont.  It’s neither foliage nor a lot of snow...yet, so it must be “‘tween huntin’ and winta’”  With little this year in the way of foliage due to the wet summer and Irene, most of Vermont is now painted in various shades of just plain old dull brown.  It’s that time of year that the highly celebrated natural beauty of Vermont becomes muted as every small community prepares itself for the coming of winter. It’s also that time of year when the hundreds of small contractors, which are the real backbone of Vermont’s economy, start feeling just a bit pressured when they receive those calls from their winter homeowner- customers asking how the new deck or the new kitchen cabinets look, when in fact, they still have the lumber in the back of their pickups.  

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, marketing effectiveness, Sales quota, sales training, business coaching

Football, Soccer & Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Oct 21, 2011

With 50 days (which is being generous, so do your own math) left in the quarter, there's not much time for changing out teams, re-planning key account plans or totally new game plans. This is 50 days of classic blocking and tackling as you move down the field toward the goal line.  Having said that, these last 50 days left in the season are also going to need to be played more like soccer than football.  There’s no bye time like the Patriots have this week. There’s no ability to swap out teams and bring in other players.  Clearly no time for time outs.  This is just constant forward motion activity, yard by yard if not inch by inch, and all of that activity absolutely needs to be at full speed.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, sales training

The Smell of Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Sat, Oct 15, 2011

Last weekend at this time found me in Vermont deep in shoveling the debris and dirt left from the floods and repairing the ATV trails in my woodlot.  Filling one five gallon bucket at a time, hauling them to the tractor, driving into the woods and filling the holes in the trails, inches at a time, reminded me again of how lucky I am to have my day job which, although complex and pressure-driven, as my friend Bernie Gordon, CEO of Analogic, used to repeatedly tell me “doesn’t involve any heavy lifting.”

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, sales optimication

Perspective...in life, in Sales and about Steve

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, Oct 06, 2011

I escaped from the end of the quarter Sales Crunch Time late last Friday, and went to Vermont this past weekend for the The Annual Fall Cleanup. It’s always a chore but also a relief to get through another summer season and start preparing for the winta'.   It’s just a bit of disbelief that the summer came and went, and I only made it back to my home state of Vermont once, and that trip was with customers for an offsite.  Those six generations who came before me were doing the proverbial rollover wondering what the heck happened to their Vermont son.  But my addictions to the NH beach and now Stratton’s beckoning snowboard trails help me put everything into perspective.  I just follow the seasons and the rhythm of our customer’s annual business calendars, and everything seems to fall neatly into place-very hectic and squeezed-but in place, all the same.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training, business planning