Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Good morning!  looks like a great Friday coming into a sunny weekend!

Tags: sales planning meetings, sales forecasting, Sales Hiring & Onboarding, sales management plans, sales effectivness, sales motivation, 2020 sales plans, writing sales plans, sales readiness

Every year I travel about 40,000 miles between the NH beach, the Tufts campus in Medford, the Derby Management office in Boston and the Vermont house alongside the Winhall River up the road a piece from Brattleboro. 

Because of the miles and the typical wicked tough New England weather, I totally love Subarus. Cheryl, my #1 Subaru salesperson, and I will soon be celebrating our 10th car together as soon as the pre-ordered 2020 four-cylinder turbo is delivered in a couple of weeks. 

Tags: sales hiring, sales success, sales effectivness, 2020 sales plans, writing sales plans, sales readiness

Already deep into January....

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

Hey, Team...

How many times a day, do we use the word "Team"? 

Almost every email I send to my board members, my students, our faculty and the senior managers in our companies, starts with "Team". 

Tags: jack derby professor at Tufts, sales management productivity, sales effectivness, selling trust, Tufts Entrepreneurship, social impact, social entrepreneurship

Change is in the air, and it's everywhere !

Tags: closing sales, best sales practices;, sales effectivness, Tufts Entrepreneurship, sales motivation

It's that time of year again...

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

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

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

In the billions of years of time, we hopefully have 60 or 80 of those in which we can make a difference, so  let's start, beginning today, with taking control over the next 150 real work hours remaining in this quarter! 

Tags: sales effectivness, Tufts Entrepreneurship

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and while most normal people are already thinking about the 3 F's of Family, Friends, and Football, guys like me are calculating just how many selling days there are left in the year.  The Answer: 

at Best, there are 22 selling days left in the year !

- First, you should thankful that there are 22 !
- Second, 22 is a maximum number !
-The obvious days of this Wednesday & the immediate days after any of the holidays are not included.
- Even if you and your Champion are around post-Christmas, the probability of everyone involved in the process is zero !

-And, btw, there are a huge amount of other end-of-year distractions much more important than you between now and then.  
- So, now is the time to plan out every possible day that you can own of those 22 days. 

One of our most highly respected, most resourceful and most energetic sales leaders, Colleen Honan, CRO at Brainshark, refers to this detailed selling process as "Your Plan to Make Plan", which gets right down to what I call "Selling on Streets not States":

• In a quarter, in a month, and certainly in these 22 days, planning is not about strategy !
• It's about planning out next week's daily activities and the following week's tight travel and calls !
• It's planning travel at a street-by-street, city-by-city level travel to maximize your efficiency !
• It's about re-doing your Discovery Checklist and asking questions about prospect's holiday plans.
• Nothing is worse than having a commit and then learning that the Purchasing Manager is skiing.
• It's about taking today/tomorrow and making tons of calls and emails to get December meetings,
• At the very least, you should be reaching out to wish your prospects  "Happy Thanksgiving!" 

Had the occasion to have breakfast with my close friend, Dan Tyre, last Tuesday at Hubspot headquarters in Cambridge.  Picture I took sports Dan's Movember Stash.

Clearly, THE MOST ENERGETIC SALES LEADER I know anywhere, any company, at any time ! 

In addition to being a superb sales pro, a Hubspot evangelist and director, a highly experienced and acclaimed speaker, he has just published his most recent book on The Inbound Organization-How to Build Your Organization Using Inbound Principles, not just "another" inbound marketing book, but a fundamental guide for both selling and marketing in today's totally changed customer world !

Download now, skim over this weekend, see what nuggets you could use for these 22 days, then read it completely over the next couple of weeks !

 

So, that's it here on a Monday morning!  Time to get moving, but before you do...

Tufts- "Content in Context" Marketing projects

It's that time of year again, when I go out to our greater blog, LI, FB and Twitter communities and begin the process of soliciting complex, semester-long Marketing projects for next semester.

When I began teaching at MIT 20 years ago, and then at Tufts 13 years ago, I quickly realized that the only way I was going to provide any meaningful content...and keep my students awake...was to wrap that content within the context of real companies who needed new or updated marketing plans. 

Our clients for these courses range from tiny startups often looking for their first marketing plans to large public corporations who are launching new products or are looking for a different perspective from young adults.

• We're looking for six Marketing projects for the spring semester which starts mid January
• Your marketing project might be for an entire company or for a specific product
• Out clients' businesses range in size from startup companies to public corporations
• Each project will be assigned to a student team of four to six students
• At least two of each team will have solid prior marketing sales experience
• The project definitions and the syllabus are sent to the students on December 26th 
• There is research work that they will need to do in January before coming to class
• The deadline for applications to be submitted to me is December 7th 

If you are interested in participating, please just email me at jack.derby@tufts.com or text me (617-504-4222), and I will send you the instructions of how to participate. 

Have a great day selling something today!    

 

 Please stay connected!

Jack Derby, Director, TEC-Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
Cummings Family Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship
Spark-Incubate-Accelerate@Tufts
Come to our Events
Cell:  617-504-4222 jack.derby@tufts.edu  

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

Tags: interns for marketing projects, sales process, inbound, sales management plans, sales effectivness, Tufts Entrepreneurship

You cannot not like Michael Porter... 

The guy is just brilliant!  Been around for a long time.  Lots of books.  Got the Five Forces Thing down.  Senior professor at HBS.  Has a building on campus named after him.  And, he's a true Renaissance Man, who continues to do research, write and still actively teach. The Real Deal !

Tags: entreprenurial, Tufts ELS, sales planning meetings, entrepreneurship, sales management plans, sales effectivness, Tufts Entrepreneurship