Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Yesterday on Groundhog Day, it seems that Punxsutawney Phil declared six more weeks of winter.  Certainly, as I sit here in Vermont this AM with the temp at 5 at 8:00 with a forecasted -25 ambient tonight, winta' like Phil is going to stick around for a while.  On balance however, this has been a very mild winter, and although I'm looking out at 18" of snow in front of my office window, when I left Tufts yesterday, there's no sign of any snow in Boston.  

Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, Tufts Marketing, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans

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.  

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

I've probably listened to, coached or presented in 10-20,000 presentations.

• Early volunteering and chairing the MIT Enterprise Forum, was my first love!
• Being involved in the leadership of 4 or 5 other entrepreneurship associations
•  20 years of teaching at MIT in early stage business planning 
• 14 years of teaching at Tufts in entrepreneurial marketing and sales 
•  Director of the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center & Cummings Professor of entrepreneurship
•  9 of my own startups-a few very good, some just ok, and some "what was I thinking?"
• A venture guy in three early stage venture firms and chairing Common Angels.

10,000 plus seems to be a good guess over 30 years; it's probably a lot more.

A couple of years ago, when we took over what has now been rebranded as the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, we knew we could most importantly take entrepreneurship to the next level at this extraordinary University with 10 of the highest ranking research schools in the country.  We're really urgent, so we quickly moved ahead breaking more than a few rules along the way always focused on creating the absolute best student experience!

Tags: Tufts Marketing, marketing interns, entrepreneurship, jack derby professor at Tufts, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center

As a marketing & sales guy, I really dislike the word "FREE". 

Tags: Tufts marketing projects, Tufts Gordon Institute, Tufts Marketing, Tufts internships

About to head out to Tufts this crisp fall morning, and I'm already leaping ahead thinking about the spring, 2017 semester, and of course about Sales.

When I put this four to six month look ahead in timing into perspective, it's exactly the same process that we're right now experiencing with our customers in their 2017-2019 strategy planning and in their detailed sales and marketing tactical planning for next year.

Tags: sales, Tufts ELS program, Tufts Gordon Institute, Tufts Marketing

13 Weeks of marketing classes ended yesterday at Tufts...

• The semester's 16 page syllabus was sent out on December 27th
• Along with five complex, semester-long, corporate marketing projects  
• Five teams were formed around each project requiring research and full marketing plans
• We tackled three HBR cases studies during the first four weeks
• We took field trips to Hubspot & Brainshark to learn their platforms
• We learned blogging, keyword definitions, content construction...and a lot more
• We filled a toolbox with SWOT, Targeting, Persona, Pricing, and Value Proposition tools

...and

Tags: Tufts marketing projects, Tufts university, Tufts ELS program, Tufts Marketing

Learn a little about Sales, learn a lot about Sales...everyday

   

Tags: sales, business planning, how to write a business plan, Tufts Marketing, marketing interns, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan

Tags: Tufts university, Tufts ELS program, Tufts Gordon Institute, Tufts Marketing, Tufts internships

Each semester at Tufts, over a period of 13 weeks, I engage 30-35 students in a unique, hands-on, tools-based experience of preparing them for the real world of business in general and specifically the complexities of working in today's exciting environment of Marketing and Sales.  As a result, I...

Tags: Tufts university, Tufts ELS program, Tufts Gordon Institute, Tufts Marketing, Tufts internships