How to Think About Innovation & Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Mon, Mar 31, 2014

Driving back from running one of our boot camps in Rochester last Friday, I decided to stop at the house in (the frozen tundra of) Vermont rather than make the drive even longer by continuing on to the NH beach.  Looking at the house, as I drove in late Friday afternoon, I noticed that there were...

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Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales optomization, sales boot camps

Am I a Professional Salesperson? ...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Mar 26, 2014

Monday morning I was reading what turned out to be a really stupid HBR article about "professionalism".  It actually started with the interesting question of "Do your colleagues think you’re professional?", which got me to thinking about the perceptions that people have regarding salespeople in general. Unfortunately, the article then went on to attempt to tie "professionalism" to the way one decorates their cubicle and then tie that result into gender and race.  Note to HBR:  you really need to do a better job at screening your writers.

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Tags: Sales Best Practices, sales coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales optomization, sales management boot camp, sales producitivity, sales boot camps

Birthdays, Social Marketing...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Tue, Mar 18, 2014

Last week I celebrated my xx birthday.   No magic number.  No big celebration.  But, as a friend of mine from my daily high school email posse remarked... "Having birthdays is a whole lot better than not having them".  James Geshwiler and Maia Heymann began our 8:00 Monday morning  status call at Common Angels by singing "Happy Birthday".  Mike Schumann, VP of Sales at Salsify, asked through Linked In how it felt to be 49? I responded, of course, that "I wouldn't know...yet." 70 of my FaceBook friends chimed in with best wishes and another couple of hundred through Linked In. And, yes, I did get two actual paper birthday cards...from the cats.  And, oh yeah, I bought myself a car as a birthday gift.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales effectiveness, sales management training, sales training, sales boot camp, sales management boot camps

Cheerios, not Wheaties has the best Sales Value Proposition

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Mar 07, 2014

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, there was an interesting marketing article on Wheaties.   Most of us grew up with the marketing tag line of "The Breakfast of Champions" ringing in our head along with pictures of Michael Jordan, Dorothy Hamil, Michael Phelps and similar top level athletes featured in full color on the outside of the box.  Wheaties actually taste pretty good! The problem is that although they are an iconic 91 year old brand, they no longer sell very well. 

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Best Practices, sales, sales enablement, sales effictiveness, sales boot camp

It doesn't matter if you're right; it matters that you're understood

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Sat, Mar 01, 2014

Recognition for this title to Seth Godin in his blog last Saturday.  A Tufts grad, Seth has a knack for minimalism both in his blog content and in his persona.  As I was reading his blog, immediately I thought of how important a statement this was for the sales people at most companies.  And the reason for that are these disturbing facts below from a recent study at the Harvard Business School:

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Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Best Practices, sales, sales effectiveness, sales management boot camps