Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

I've always loved music of any kind! I grew up on 1940's jazz, I love classic 60's rock (never missed a U.S. Stones concert), I tolerated disco, love early rap and have a special place in my head and heart for soul and funk.  

Tags: sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales tools, marketing effectiveness, how to close sales, sales success, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022 business planning

As an "older" salesguy, I've seen it all:

Tags: sales coaching, sales tools, best sales practices;, sales success, how to write a sales plan, sales effectivness, writing sales plans, 2022businessplansuccess

• Let's celebrate the end of the Q!
• Let's give it up for finally moving into the official summa'!
• Let's celebrate the freedom that we have which is the true meaning of the 4th!
• Let's kick back this weekend and just relax and dial it down a bit!

Needless to say, it's been more than a bumpy ride over the past six months, and I could list 10 points below that we are all very frustrated with and are complaining about, but I won't since I want to leave you with just one thought this Friday AM which is to simply to celebrate our freedoms and have some well-deserved fun...at least for a day or three.  

Tags: sales effectiveness, sales tools, business coaching, how to close sales, best sales practices;, how to write a sales plan, writing sales plans, planningsalestodayinacovidworld, effective blogging, 2022businessplansuccess

We're always constrained by time...or more accurately, the lack of it and the accompanying pressures of the lack of time! 

We think about it! We plan everything around it! We're constantly checking our phones, our watches, our calendars and everything else that defines our digital and analog worlds, and it always seems "there's never enough" and that we're "runnin' out of time"... all the time!

 

Ok, so we all know that time itself is finite.  It might be too long or way too short, but it's always going to be bound by nanoseconds, days, months quarters and years.  I have on a very visible shelf of my bookcase here in the office, a fossilized Nautiloid that is approximately 400 million years old just so that I can be frequently reminded to put into perspective the contributions of a 100-year life and my 18-hour workdays.   Most importantly, what I've come to realize about time is that I and you need to love what I do, and at this advanced time in my life, I simply love to work, to teach and to build companies.

9 Days

For those of us who sell stuff and manage others who sell stuff, there is always a daily, monthly, and, in the world of most businesses, the all-important quarterly clock that places points on the board.  We measure and are measured by others in comparison numbers to our quotas and what we are currently doing balanced against the metrics of last quarter or last year and a long list of other blocks of time.  For example, this coming Monday provides us with 9 more days left in the all-important second quarter, which is going to be interpreted by each of us as "just" or "not enough" or "plenty of".   I find that each of those words are typically defined by just how well a salesperson actually plans their own time over a longer period, but, in general, unfortunately most salespeople do not plan their time very well! 

• We get caught up in the complexities of selling without a formal sales process 
• We too often end up doing the job of what Marketing or Service should be doing 
• We simply do not take the time to plan out the 20 key selling days in any month

As a test of this, ask any salesperson today to show you their plan for the next 9 days or what their detailed plan looks like for July, and too often the response will be "I'm working on it".   This is not because salespeople do not work hard.  It's the exact opposite in that too many salespeople simply work without a detailed weekly, monthly and quarterly workplan.  

A 30-60-90 Day Plan

Right now, all of us are focused on finishing the Q and then most probably our primary focus will be on what we're going to be doing for the 4th!   Next weekend, on the 25th, is actually a perfect time to rough out the architecture of what a broad outline of your 90-day sales plan would look like.

• How many actual selling days will there be in each month?
• Then, subtract your own vacation days 
• Then, subtract days immediate to the 4th and Labor Day
• Be realistic about Fridays in the summer
• Blend in your business travel schedules for July and August
• Take out time for sales training and standard weekly/monthly sales meetings

Now plan out what you have left around your own quota and specific sales objectives for the quarter.  That's the easier part. Then take what's left and break that available time down into weekly plans based on your specific monthly quota objectives.  That's where the rubber hits the road!  For more details, click on our "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2022", or just connect directly with me at any time for some quick pointers of how to do this. 

To put work/life balance of time into perspective, here's an interesting article from the WSJ this week: 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-have-only-so-much-time-are-you-using-it-right-11655043558

 

Have a great day selling today and a superb Father's Day Weekend! 

After a three-hour dead-stop traffic jam on Route 2 late Wednesday afternoon trying to get to Vermont, I simply gave up, turned around and headed back to Boston, so it's the NH beach this weekend and not the VT hills. 

At any time, if you want to discuss your own sales and marketing planning for the next 30 or 90 days or the rest of this year, just connect with me for some quick ideas and feedback. There's no cost to a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about this rapidly changing world of Sales.  

www.derbymanagement.com  

Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: sales effectiveness, sales tools, how to close sales, improving sales productivity, best sales practices;, sales success, how to write a sales plan, 2022 business planning

I'm on the NH beach this weekend for a couple of reasons:

Tags: sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales planning, sales tools, improving sales productivity, how to write a sales plan, writing sales plans, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022businessplansuccess, entrepreneurshipfortherestofus

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

At the beginning of the Q on April Fool's Day, it's important to first congratulate yourself for the quarter no matter what the results!!!  Overall, a solid quarter for most everyone as we slowly crawl out of the pandemic. Clearly questions on the horizon with the impact of Putin's War, but still a relatively positive outlook for the balance of the year in which we've discovered workarounds for labor and supply shortages.  At the end of the day, we still need to successfully sell things that create value, no matter what the outside environment is. 

Tags: sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales tools, how to close sales, sales boot camps, how to write a sales plan, 2022businessplansuccess

First, on what looks like a spectacular weatha' day here on the NH beach, I'm officially declaring today as "The End of Winta".  I'm Done.  It's Over.  Totally Finished! 

Tags: sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales tools, marketing effectiveness, how to close sales, sales success, writing sales plans, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts

With the beginning of March and just a few short weeks before the end of the Q, life in the world of us in the profession of Sales is totally focused on what we can bring across the finish line by the end of this month. 

Tags: Sales Optimization, sales effectiveness, sales tools, how to close sales, sales process, how to write a sales plan, sales management productivity, 2022 sales planning

Minus 5 right now out by the barn this AM. 

Tags: sales enablement, sales tools, how to close sales, improving sales productivity, sales success, how to write a sales plan, sales effectivness, planningsalestodayinacovidworld, 2022businessplansuccess

The #1 or #2 issue we hear in all of our 2022 planning sessions this fall is the issue of the difficulty to find and retain talent. 

It is what it is, and we can debate for hours why it's occurring and the surrounding theories of the inflation impact on the economy. but the reality is that...

 

• it's here, it's been here for 12 months, and we all see and read about it everywhere.
• it's real, not a bubble, and it's not going away in 2022; maybe in '23 when the world flattens a bit.
• this is a fundamental shift in the future of work, what represents "the office" and lifestyle
• we need people now, onboarded and in place in Q1 if we're going to make out '22 numbers

From all of our 2022 planning sessions, what follows below are five non-prioritized tactics that you might want to think about.  Connect with me at any time, and I can walk you through any of the details, or just be a sounding board for best practices.

Tags: sales enablement, sales tools, how to close sales, improving sales productivity, how to write a sales plan, sales effectivness, writing sales plans, hiring sales people