A morning of jumbled thoughts...

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Apr 24, 2020

By the end of a normal Friday morning, the front of my brain would have heard, dissected and categorized some hundreds of ideas, and I would have figured out one thread of hopefully a meaningful subject to twist around my travels to Vermont, my teaching at Tufts or my working at the NH beach.  This Friday is complicated by way too many jumbled "new normal" activities...not any different from any of you, I'm sure.  

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Tags: marketing projects, entrepreneurship, jack derby professor at Tufts, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, 2020 business plans, writing sales plans

Right Answers, Wrong Questions

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, Apr 16, 2020

Questions:

  • When will we get back to work?
  • When can I start selling again?
  • What's the messaging I should be using?

In a few hours, I'll be leading a webinar with 100+ business owners of New England destination hotels and vacation resorts who are looking for answers to these and 60 plus other questions that they've submitted in advance. 

These are the people right at the epicenter of the struggle who have had hundreds of cancellations for long-planned weddings, reunions and business conferences planned specifically around "getting away to the peaceful, bucolic and quiet beaches and mountains of New England".  And now, they have nothing but questions, time on their hands and the adjacent fears of unpaid bills and not knowing what to tell long term employees that they've already laid off. 

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Tags: sales leadership, value propositions, sales management productivity, creating trust in sales, 2020 sales plans, sales readiness

Focus on what you can control...and that's a lot!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Mon, Apr 13, 2020

We've all heard this phrase- "focus only on what you can control"- numerous times now over the last 10 chaotic weeks.  This Monday morning I'm merely suggesting that we give it a solid 60 minutes of detailed thinking during this week bringing the clouds of buzz in that phrase down to the streets of reality with a small number of carefully planned activities that we can totally control.

 
3 critical baselines we can totally control:

  1. Our Personal Health: 
    Most importantly, focus on your personal health and the health of your families!  That's always Job #1 and that by itself will take us through this chaos!  Once our own health and that of our family is solid and has been locked down, then we can figure out everything else. 

    Since by now everyone understands the basics of what it takes to remain healthy, I'm recommending ramping up those basics 2X over the next four months. Keeping ourselves healthy during the heat of this summer will be very difficult to say the least.  For a solid example of what it means to ramp up the basics, take a look at leading healthcare and certified nursing advocate, Jenn Loughty's hand washing site  

    Our Business Health: 
    Ramping up the basics of our business health was outlined perfectly last week by my good friend, noted author and acclaimed speaker, Jamie Turner in his 60SecondMarketer blog on
    "7 Strategies to help your business get through the crisis."  Definitely a worthwhile read! 


    This is stuff we already kinda' know, but now's the time to ramp it up 2X ...and squash the curve!


  2. Our Sales & Marketing Processes:
    We can totally control the necessary pivots to our Sales and Marketing processes and the tools that we're using right now in Q2.  We obviously can't "control" our actual sales results...couldn't before and certainly can't now..., but we can totally control what "Activities" we're planning and executing!


    For years I've been a student of strategy and business planning, and this simple graphic has always been a solid guide to center me when I'm working with our clients. In today's world of planning what we will be doing in marketing and sales, this is not a time when we should be focused on either vision or strategies. This is a time to be laser focused on the next 90 days with everything riveted on the tactical execution of activities.

    If there is a strategy, it is to survive, and survival is about executing battlefront activities!  

    Does it make sense?
    This is a very simple question to ask ourselves in our week-by-week and month-by-month battle planning of activities between now and the 4th of July since at the latest you should not be planning out further than that.  

    Get down to the street level and go through an analytical thought process of sense-making by yourself and ideally with your sales & marketing team.   

    Get your head out of the clouds of strategic planning and ask yourself "Does it make sense?" as you focus on the activities necessary to sell to customers in mini-territories of streets and not states and you launch Inbound-Only Marketing campaigns to one industry and not five.

  3. Our Sales Forecasting:
    We've now been living in this increasing chaos of the unknown for about eight weeks, and I continuously hear questions like I heard on a webinar I was on last Monday week with the amazing Laurie White, President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce 


    - The question was asked by a head of sales: "How do I forecast in these times?" 
    - Me: "Plan out only 4 weeks!".  (2 weeks ago, it was 2 weeks.)

    - He:  "My boss wants to see a forecast out to December"
    - Me: "Just say no. Plan out 4 weeks listing 5 assumptions. In 2 weeks, do 4 more.

    - Me:  "Focus 95% of your time on your current customers!  
    - Me:  "Focus 100% on your value propositions & not on your products"

Sales Management Boot Camp:  May 12th & 13th
"Successfully Managing Sales in Chaotic Times"


If you want to understand what it takes to successfully manage, sell, train, ramp up and forecast in these chaotic times, work with us online in a highly engaged, hands-on Sales Management Boot Camp!  

  • Two three & a half hour team sessions on the mornings of May 12th and 13th 
  • One-on-one Coaching Sessions on May 14th 
As part of our Sales Management consulting, we've been running two to three F2F boot camps a year for 20 years.  Held in partnership at MIT with other leading sales management experts focused on dramatically increasing sales productivity, enablement and readiness, we've run intensive one and two-day F2F highly engaged camps bringing together CEOs, Presidents and Sales Managers from a wide diversity of industries. 

  • We actively engage everyone in our unique strategy of "Process-Tools-Technology & People".
  • We dive deep into real-life tactics that you can start using immediately the next week.
  • We focus on developing street-level playbooks of Activity Plans

Now, we're bringing that expertise online with the same level of deep practicality and active engagement that's resulted in hundreds of notes of thanks from managers and presidents of both large corporations and mid-market companies covering a wide range of markets. 

The primary coaches will be George Simmons and me, with guest speakers featuring Colleen Honan, CSO of Brainshark and James Stone, Director of Mid-Market Sales at Hubspot.  Two leading mid-market companies focused on sales and marketing productivity with two highly successful sales execs who have figured out how to adapt and sell in this period of unknowns.

Click here for more details and then just connect directly with me for any questions at jack@derbymanagement.com, and I will set up a call with you right away and get you registered!

 

If at any time, you have a need for a confidential sounding board, just connect at any time.  Text or email me, and I will quickly set up a call. 

Obviously, no cost-just an opportunity to listen intently and make a few recommendations based on decades of experience.

Have a safe and positive week !

Please stay safe & connected!
jack@derbymanagement.com
Head Coach, Derby Management, experts in...
-Sales & Marketing Productivity
-Business and Strategic Planning
WHAT WE DO AT DERBY MANAGEMENT

Professor, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
-Entrepreneurial Marketing
-The Science of Sales 

 

 

 

 

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Tags: sales planning meetings, sales forecasting, sales success, sales effectivness, writing sales plans, writing business plans

In the belly of the beast

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Apr 03, 2020

This is exactly where we hoped we would not be, and yet, here we are today in the belly of the beast.  

Not many of us any longer are hoping that this situation will get better, since what we have experienced most recently in the harsh reality of the last seven days, clearly defines that the personal and business impact will become a lot worse before it improves.  I am neither capable nor technically equipped to make any projections, and my personal business expectations are just as good or as bad as yours, but having said that, I, like you, run businesses and, like you, I'm a pragmatist, and I know that we are in this chaotic situation for a long time until vaccines hit the market.  

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Tags: improving sales productivity, Making Tough Choices, sales management productivity, creating trust in sales, 2020 sales plans, writing sales plans, sales readiness