Jack Derby, Head Coach

Jack Derby, Head Coach, Derby Management As founder and Head Coach of Derby Management, Jack Derby and his managers provide strategic planning, and sales and marketing optimization services to growth and middle market companies. Prior to forming Derby Management, Jack served as CEO of Mayer Electronics Corporation, President of CB Sports, President of Litton Industries Medical Systems, CEO of Datamedix Corporation and President of Becton Dickinson Medical Systems. For his work in the entrepreneurial community, Jack was named to Mass High Tech’s All Star Team. He also received the distinguished Pro Bono Publico award from the Smaller Business Association of New England, the Meritorious Service Award for the Association for Corporate Growth, and the Vincent Fulmer Distinguished Service Award from the MIT Enterprise Forum. He is a frequent speaker at numerous sales meeting and business organizations including the Association for Corporate Growth and the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, where he was Chairman of both organizations. He is a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University, where he teaches two courses: “Entrepreneurial Marketing” and “The Art & Science of Sales”. In 2015, Jack received the Henry and Madeline Fisher Award given to the best teacher on campus, an award that is voted by the graduating students and the faculty. He is the first faculty member from the Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Program to be given this recognition. He is also a lecturer at MIT, where for the past nineteen years, he has taught classes in business planning and marketing to undergraduate and graduate students in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Jack is currently an active board member in a number of companies, including the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, Accounting Management Solutions, Aviant Hospice, Brainshark Corporation, Chase Corporation, Rome Snowboards, Reiser Inc, and Tufts University’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Advisory Board. He is also the past Chairman of Common Angels Ventures, one of the most active seed and early stage investment funds, now rebranded by Jack and management to Converge Ventures.
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Recent Posts

Want more customers?  Maybe a great job?  All about your connections!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Tue, Jan 21, 2020

Already deep into January....

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Tags: sales planning meetings, sales leadership, sales management plans, sales effectivness, sales motivation, 2020 business plans, 2020 sales plans, writing sales plans

2020-a year to be very curious

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Jan 15, 2020

Right now I'm about four hours away from my first Marketing course of this new semester at Tufts, and I never know who's more nervous or excited about the upcoming 13 weeks- me or the students? 

Experience says that it's always me!.

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Tags: sales leadership, sales management productivity, Tufts Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, 2020 business plans, 2020 sales plans

Today...We Gotta Get Moving!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, Jan 09, 2020

The Scores are on the Board!

2019 in review

The scores have been on the scoreboard now for a few days since the official year ended on the 30th, and the final game tapes have been reviewed.  There'll be a couple of minor adjustments made during this week, but the big numbers are already posted on the board!

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Tags: writing a business plan, sales planning meetings, sales success, how to write a sales plan, Tufts Entrepreneurship, writing sales plans

Enjoy Your Entrepreneurial Break !

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Mon, Dec 23, 2019

One does not need to be an entrepreneur to be entrepreneurial, so it's with that thought that I share a few ideas to take you through the holidays and hopefully a couple of days off for a much-needed break.   

In the spirit of sharing, the first three of these came to me last week from one of the all-time great entrepreneurs, CB Vaughn, the founder of CB Sports, who revolutionized the world of skiing and championship ski racing by designing and manufacturing outwear that became the market leader in design, while being extremely functional on the hill.  Still today, when people notice that I worked with CB, they will stop and tell me about the first CB parka that they bought, its color, and how they had saved up for a year to make the purchase at top ski shops like Pedigree Sports.

  • Always Inspire !

    Above everything else, inspire your team and your customers to want to do work with you!  At CB Sports, we weren't the biggest, but we were certainly the leading brand in terms of design, quality and functionality!  There was never a question as to the absolute focus on our customers and the value that we provided. Long before the clinical marketing term of "persona" was conceived, we knew exactly who are customers were...and were not. With CB's very strong leadership, all of us from associates to suppliers to retailers were totally driven to focus exactly on the team on the hill.
  • Be Prepared for Your Own SuperBowl !

    During the time that I worked with CB, he had the drive and, most importantly, the discipline of preparation to be able to interpret and translate the smallest detail into the impact and the value that it delivered to our customers. His SuperBowl has always been the customer experience, which, when you think about it should always define our own success in everything we do.
  • 4th & 1: You Don't Need a Playbook !

    In any company, whether it's one of my many emerging startups that we innovate out of the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, or it's an established rapid-growth company like CB Sports, there are those critical times when you need to take control of the ball and just drive decisively down the field and win!
  • Entrepreneurship is About Making Change Happen in your own world!

    Growing up as a corporate guy at Becton Dickinson, even though my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my father were all very different entrepreneurs, I couldn't spell "entrepreneurship" before I started sitting in the audience at the MIT Enterprise Forum, where years later I became an avid volunteer and a committed board member and chairman. 

    Back-in-the-day, even after working with CB and then starting a company when I returned to Boston, and then another company and another and more, I always thought of entrepreneurship as doing just that. I thought that entrepreneurship was all about starting companies and moving up and to the right from Concept to Team to Structure to Scale to Success. And, while that's somewhat true, that path works only in a tiny 1% of 1% of companies that actually succeed, and even then, it's never a straight line. 

    Of much more importance is our own entrepreneurial ability that's present in all of us to initiate and make change happen in whatever piece of the world where we choose to make it happen! 

    In among the holiday presents, the marvelous food and the travel, I would ask you to take a tiny slice of time and think about mapping out your own entrepreneurial journey for 2020.  I've just completed mine and looking forward to hearing about yours!

    Have a wonderful holiday!
    Enjoy !  Hug!  Be Safe! 
    Make Change Happen!
    Please stay connected! jack@derbymanagement.com 

    Advisor, Derby Management, experts in...
    -Sales & Marketing Productivity
    -Business and Strategic Planning
    WHAT WE DO AT DERBY MANAGEMENT




 

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Tags: entreprenurial, entrepreneurship, 2020 business plans, 2020 sales plans

Transitions & Next Chapters...Great time of year to make changes!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Dec 06, 2019

 

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Tags: sales management effectiveness, Making Tough Choices, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales management productivity, Tufts Entrepreneurship, 2020 business plans

How'd We Do?  Time to Measure Up, Rethink & Replan!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, Jul 25, 2019

Summa!

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Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, sales management, sales coach, sales planning, sales producitivity, business tools, business planning, business plans, The Competitive Edge, writing a business plan

Three Timely Management Tips from the Deans

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Jun 14, 2019

Too often we business types roll our eyes to the ceiling when we think about academia. Our images of university life immediately flash back to our own college days, but that image has little to do with the reality of university life today. 

Today, college students are wicked bright, very hard working and highly focused on jobs, careers and the social impact of making a difference in the lives of others.  As a group, current students and alums for the past eight or ten year are a massive category with huge numbers, but they also have far less spending power due to the very high cost of housing in general and the massive student debt that they carry. 

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Tags: sales productivity, sales management, improved sales management, small business management, management, business coaching, leadership

10 Best Practices for Your Next Planning Session

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Mar 27, 2019

It's that time of year again...

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Tags: sales planning meeting, business planning meetings, Making Tough Choices, sales management plans, sales management productivity, sales effectivness

Welcome to the Spring-Don't Get Stuck in the Mud!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Mar 22, 2019

Of course the announcement of the beginning of Spring brings out all of that amorphous stuff about rebirth, awakening and new growth.  For me, after all of these springs, I'm sure that those touchy feelings also exist somewhere neatly filed in some dusty corner of my brain right alongside my desire to look for the first robin.  Not really !

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Tags: entreprenurial, Sales Management Best Practices, sales optomization, sales management boot camp, improving sales productivity, sales leadership, Making Tough Choices

Jump Off ! Don't Look Down!  Plan! Push & Measure!

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Sat, Mar 09, 2019

It's the beginning of March, and we all know what March is good for !

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Tags: sales management boot camp, how to write a business plan, writing a business plan, business planning meetings, Making Tough Choices, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales effectivness, sales motivation, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center