Marketing is free tacos!

Tufts classes are now deep into their second week, and my Marketing students are equally deep into their projects with 5-6 students assigned to each.  In my consistent theme of "Marketing is Everything", which has been in my head, my writing, and basically everything I do in Sales and in Marketing, all my students are exploring and most importantly beginning to organize what will become fully developed marketing plans 10 weeks from now.  

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Tags: marketing projects, marketing effectiveness, sales culture, Tufts Marketing, marketing planning, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022 business planning, entrepreneurshipfortherestofus, Teaching entrepreneurship

Jack's 3 Rules at semester end

With the last two presentations this afternoon, we will have completed the 10 final project presentations.

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Tags: marketing projects, sales and marketing best practices, sales effectiveness, Tufts university, student intern marketing projects, how to write a sales plan, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts

I attended Tufts graduation last Sunday in the new normal...

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Thu, May 21, 2020

I attended the Tufts graduation this past weekend

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Tags: marketing projects, free marketing projects from universities, interns for marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, marketing planning, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, 2020 business plans

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

Jack's 3 Rules for my grads, for Sales & for me

13 Weeks Later @ Tufts

  • I start looking for new sales & marketing projects on 10/01 and 5/1
  • The syllabus w/projects are sent out on 12/26 and 07/05
  • 6 marketing & 4 sales projects for 2 very oversold courses
  • 1 week later, the newbies need to tell me which project and why
  • Bios are circulated to me and teams of 5-6 are formed
  • Reading and research begins 30-45 days before class begins
  • 13 weeks later, complete plans are presented to management

On the last day of the course in the last 15 minutes, I talk about, 'Jack's 3 Rules'

Rule # 1:  Connections are Forever

Make all the connections that you possibly can.  Cherish them.  Treat each of them with extraordinary care.  Store them, use them and communicate to them all of the time in LinkedIn, Twitter, FB and Insta.  Never let those connections go stale and unused!

This week, I met with David K. in my office at Tufts.  Haven't seen David, a brilliant product/market genius, president-level guy in 15 years since we sold EarCheck, a wonderful startup, founded by Sandra Kimball, where I was CEO and Dave was a critical part of our success.  David's daughter is now at Tufts, and he found me when I made some recent noise at Tufts...which I often do, so he stopped by to chat.

Dave and I played the "whatever happened to..." game for 15 minutes, and he mentioned a critical person on our EarCheck team.  While Dave was sitting there, I looked up that person on LI, and we talked about how important our success was due to that person.

Two hours later, I was talking to one of my seniors about a potential job.  She mentioned the company, which seemed very familiar, and then I realized that the familiarity was because I had just pinged the company two hours before when David and I were reminiscing about "whatever happened to?".  My student now has an interview next week with that long lost person, who is the president of that company.

In life, in business, in love and in family, cherish your connections!

Rule # 2: Learning is Consistently Continuous


Each semester-now 20 years at MIT and 10 at Tufts-I realize just how much I don't know. 
At the end of every semester, I tell my students that everything which had been learned over the prior 13 weeks, is on that last day, obsolete.

Whether you're 21 or 33 (the age now of my oldest Tufts alums) or 43 or 53, to be in business at any level, I believe that you must consistently push yourself to learn more, to study more, and to test yourself all of the time. 

I read a book a week, and in the summer often two.  I'm fascinated by the intersection of technology in Healthcare and in Sales and Marketing, and I like nothing more than exploring new apps and platforms. 
My Summer Beach Bag is filling up quickly, and below you will find two new MUST READS if you want to push your own world of Sales & Marketing.

Summer reading

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Tags: marketing projects, sales management effectiveness, Tufts marketing projects, student intern marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales plans for 2018, Tufts Entrepreneurship

Interested in our Tufts Marketing Projects for spring, 2014?

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Mon, Oct 28, 2013

Why do I teach?

You would think that that between my day job of running Derby Management, being a board member of six companies and working with a superb team of partners as the Chair of Common Angels, I just might have enough to do. 

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Tags: marketing projects, ELS105, Tufts university