Since I'm on the road every week commuting back and forth from the NH beach either to the Boston office or to Tufts, when I'm not making calls, I'm listening to Bloomberg: solid news, believable and crisply delivered. On any given morning, I hear the words, "inflation" and "the economy" dozens of times, and I always push myself to understand what those words actually mean to me personally since I have zero "control" over either inflation or the economy.
"Inflation" for me is the fact that a round trip to Boston used to cost me $27 in gas way back in March, and it now costs $56. I can't control the price of gas, but I can shift my travel schedules, combine other meetings or simply switch to zoom also saving me four hours of gut-wrenching bumper-to-bumper traffic. On the other hand, by opting out of a morning networking meeting yesterday that I had signed up for, I potentially missed out on an opportunity for new business. Since I also have a bit of a cold, easy decision.
Tags: HubSpot Tips, Making Tough Choices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Whenever I'm working out of the house in the morning, I walk on the one-mile beach across the street. I actually find the physical act of just walking to be borrring, so for the last 10 years or so, I pick up the trash left either by careless day-trippers or the junk plastic and lobster rope washed in from the prior night's tide. I realize that in the total scheme of things, my tiny bag of trash is not very impactful, but in my head, it works, and most importantly, it gives me purpose to the walk.
Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Teaching entrepreneurship, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, The Marketing of Me, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Most Fridays, even today right in the center of The Dog Days of August, I send out this blog. Sometimes it takes a serious clinical look at "The Science of Sales", a phrase that I've used my entire career since when I began as a salesguy, everyone wanted to provide me with "Tips & Tricks" on "The Art of Sales". Growing up working holidays in my grandfather's and parents' jewelry store in Davis Square in Somerville, I knew that (1) the concept of "tricks" would never work in a tight business community where relationships and trust counted more than anything else and (2) there was a definitive science that my parents applied to specific hours during a day, the days of week, the numbers of days before a holiday and, most importantly listening carefully to the weather forecasts.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, How to find the perfect job, 2026 Sales Best Practices
For "older" sales guys like me, our sales call days, back in the day, were defined by the length of the phone cord, or punctuated by the location of the nearest phone booth and a plastic bag of quarters. Today, by comparison, accessibility is instant — beyond easy — and immediately my cell plugs me into a host of apps that record, summarize, and drop the entire conversation into my HubSpot CRM. We've come a very long way in a very short time... and yet, there are salespeople who act like either they don't care about first impressions or are too busy to slow down and make it easy for the person on the other end of the line.
Three street rules this morning to think about:
1. Answer your phone!!!
The phone rings, and you already have a pretty good idea who's calling. Existing customers show up on caller ID, so 75% of the time it's easy: just take the call, talk right then, or let them know you're in a meeting and will call back later that day. Why does this very simple item matter? A missed, unanswered call sends a subliminal message of: "you don't matter to me". Answering the call takes one, maybe two minutes — and in that time you've created a human link between you and a customer or a prospect.
2. Set up your voicemail!
Nothing irritates me more than a canned AT&T or Xfinity response. You're telling the world you couldn't be bothered to spend ten minutes recording your own name and a short, personal promise to call back that same day. What kind of salesperson does that?!? Actually, there is one thing that irritates me even more which is when the automated voice says the mailbox is full. That salesperson shouldn't be allowed in the club!
Listen to your own voicemail this morning. Does it sound clear, calm, and personal — or does it sound like you were stuck in the tunnel under the Zakim and, in your frustration with Boston's wicked traffic, you decided this was the moment that you took to update your voicemail? And the result was garbled with your car radio playing in the background.
I'm more than a little obsessive on this one since I record a new voicemail every single day, telling the caller where I am, my approximate availability, and that I'll call back no later than X. Takes two minutes. Has this 20-year-old tactic ever won me business? I honestly don't know. But people comment on it every week.
3. Nothing is more powerful than your own voice!
You heard this in some rookie sales training class ten or twenty years ago, but it's true: for that one minute, you're on stage in front of an audience of one. Don't position yourself in your head — or in your voice — as squeezing in just one more hurried call. To the person on the other end of that call, this should sound like this is the most important call of your day. I do a fair amount of public speaking, plus I stand in front of 36 extraordinary Tufts students for three hours every week. Both require highly active engagement. On a phone call, even when the audience is one instead of 36 or 100, my focus is identical: create active engagement and leave the call with a few well-defined next steps that lead to an action.
Have a great day selling today and spend some time between your calls to ask yourself what's your own two-minute rule about your own voicemail!
Jack is a Managing Partner of Derby Management, a strategy consulting firm, and founder of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, where he has taught for 20 years. Every semester is significantly updated, with heavy emphasis in 2026 on AI in Marketing & Sales. At Derby Management, Jack and his team architect and build business strategies focused on sales and marketing processes, tools, and technology platforms.
www.derbymanagement.com | Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts
Tags: 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
You just finished your mid-year review pouring over the details of all of your KPI stats. At the end of the process, always the critical KPI is whether you're on the plan you committed to back in January!
Whether you're on exactly on your sales plan or on either side of where you should be, the talent market of what we see in Greater Boston plus the seasonal calendar math of what it takes to hire, onboard and move to what we call "full ramp speed", says that it makes a lot of sense to add to your sales team right now!
In the profession of Sales, we always have a sharp eye on both the clock and the calendar. Measured by months, weeks and quarters, points go up on the scoreboard every day, and you can either fight time ... and be very unsuccessful...or fully embrace it and let the natural rhythms of both the seasonal and budgetary calendars work for you.
Since I spend time each month living in the tiny town of Winhall, VT (pop 1,133) where six generations of my family have lived in this valley of the West River, I know very well that Vermont has many more than the normal four seasons we all know. One of the most critical of those "extra" seasons is the four weeks of "Leaf Peeping" when the buses run up and down the state producing 25% of VT's annual tourismrevenue.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, HubSpot Tips, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
I've been in the world of sales and marketing for decades!
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Two years ago, one of my Tufts Marketing alums asked me if I thought a part-time time interim gig job would be of value while she continued her still unsuccessful search following the rules of "The Marketing of Me".
I know her well and she had left a sports-related marketing position where there had been an unexpected big layoff, so I was overly cautious in my coaching.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Leaving the NH beach yesterday for my standard weekly three-hour drive to the tiny village of Winhall, VT, I thought the geography switch would also let me switch from my passion for the science of sales to my love of marketing.
In my work with my partners at Derby Management and in my teaching alongside my 28 colleagues at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, I've always worked from one strategy for our clients and my students alike: make the complex simple. Simple enough that strategy drives to tactics, and tactics drive to actions — because only actions get results. In marketing and in sales, it's only the results that count.
And nowhere is the need for marketing more personal than in your own job hunt.
- I see it up close in my 36 students each semester.
- I see it in the 100+ other undergrad and grad students I mentor.
- I see it in the Tufts alums — some of the 2,000 I've taught — who reach out wanting to change jobs.
- I see it in older friends who email me their resume with a note: "if you see something…"
And most everyone does a terrible job of marketing themselves:
- They send resumes no one reads. Average time a recruiter actually spends: six to seven seconds.
- They talk about their history and never translate it to the future.
- They make general claims with no specific value proposition for the buyer.
- They skip the detailed research, prep, and follow-through.
Which is exactly why I wrote the free book The Marketing of Me, used thousands of times by my students and Tufts alums. Along with my other free How-To books on business planning, marketing, and the science of sales, it's built to give you detailed, actionable steps — and an excuse to connect with me during one of my many weekly commutes between Boston, NH, and VT.
Here's what good self-marketing looks like in practice. Take Abishek Verma, one of my A+ grad students — an exceptional guy looking for a role in Product Management or Operations, with proven expertise in agile methodology, roadmap planning, A/B testing, and a real depth of other skills. He does the things above: he translates his history into future value, he leads with specifics, he does the prep. Connect with him directly, or give me a call and I'll walk you through the details. An extraordinary young man.
That's it this Friday morning as I head out to the Winhall General Store for breakfast and back for an exciting day of sales calls.
So here's the Friday question: if a recruiter gave your resume seven seconds, what would they actually remember?
Enjoy the weekend!
Jack is a Managing Partner of Derby Management, a strategy consulting firm, and founder of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, where he has taught for 20 years. Every semester is significantly updated, with heavy emphasis in 2026 on AI in Marketing & Sales. At Derby Management, Jack and his team architect and build business strategies focused on sales and marketing processes, tools, and technology platforms.
www.derbymanagement.com | Derby Entrepreneurship Center at TuftsWhat I changed, quickly:
Fixed the two typos ("at for breakfast," and I left your cane line out of the post entirely since it was in your note to me). Tightened the "complex simple" sentence into the cascade it wants to be. Changed the resume stat to "six to seven seconds," which is the defensible eye-tracking figure. Reframed Abishek as the living example of the four things done right — now he's the payoff of the piece rather than an ad stapled to the end, and it makes your whole argument concrete. Added your reflective-question close tied to the seven-second stat.
The one thing still in your hands: confirm Abishek okayed a public post using his full name and job search. If he's currently employed, that matters even more. Everything else is ready to paste.
One small note for down the line — you mentioned mentoring "2,000 Tufts alums," which I softened to "some of the 2,000 I've taught" so it reads as cumulative rather than 2,000 active mentees. If the real number you mean is different, adjust to whatever's accurate.
Yes, abi is fine with this
Perfect — then you're clear to publish. Everything's ready to paste straight into HubSpot.
Have a great day of sales calls up in Winhall, Jack — and enjoy that General Store breakfast. Glad the cane's behind you.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, How to find the perfect job, The Marketing of Me, 2026 Sales Best Practices
