Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Fall has officially begun, and we're deep into it already
Summer's gone with a snap of the fingers and a turn of the page of the calendar with lingering self promises that "next year, I'm going to plan my schedule better."  

Good luck on that btw...

This week began with a Monday front page Wall Street Journal article that started with the comment...

Walt Garrison, who was a legendary football player at Oklahoma State and the Dallas Cowboys, often provided this quote when speaking about delivering straight talk...

Recently, I've spent a lot of time thinking about two of my favorite and most interesting customers

We just finished an assignment working with Paul and Craig, two solid, heavily experienced serial entrepreneurs who have developed breakthrough technology turning really big food waste (think food prep locations for major supermarket chains, universities and prisons, for examples) into small wafers that can be used as organic fertilizers. Great technology, superb ROI and heavily experienced entrepreneur owner managers attempting to change the world due to a major problem because...

At our company, we have the privilege of being the strategy guys for a large number of customers ranging in size and shape from venture-backed tech startups to colleges to resorts to large police departments to industrial manufacturers and a wide variety of service organizations.  Add to that frothy mix of markets, a variety of business structures that range from closely held families, to municipalities, public corporations and businesses that are owned by venture and PE firms, and it all becomes a wonderfully engaging puzzle of assembling future directions and the tactical building blocks to move from here to there.

This morning BRINGS ME TO THE TOPIC OF RACE IN AMERICA.

As a professor of marketing, and a still struggling student of being a better sales professional, one thing I know is never to talk about race, religion or sex, but unfortunately, I need to to break that rule.  

Enough is enough!

I love reading Harvard Business Review's daily blogs, hints, teasers and management ideas.  The magazine articles, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but I do believe that their comments on most management issues on marketing, and, most recently, on the science of sales are both stimulating and very thought provoking.

Lots happening this week...

• For the firm, it's end of the month and end of the quarter-just like our customers, we're scrambling
• Sales are strong, but we're always looking for more
• Added John Routhier as a senior partner...wicked strong background in sales and marketing
• Personally feeling superb and just started jogging...well, kind of jogging 
• ...and this week, I just completed my annual MGH checkups from my PCP, cardiologist and other specialists.  Back to back days, multiple tests...over and done with.  All good!

It's such a privilege to live in cities like Boston, New York, Dallas, and many others where one has such an incredible concentration of excellent, world-class healthcare.   After a couple of "situations" during the last couple of years, it's very reassuring to know from my buddies at MGH that everything on the health front is A-OK! 

We all live in very time-consuming  and high-pressure environments working very hard to balance our careers and personal lives, so having the quiet knowledge that everything is A-OK medically is more than a little comforting.


As a result of all of this personal process of questioning, probing, listening and testing, I thought that I would do the same with the business, which led to us sitting down this week to analytically take a snapshot of the business

I'm now going to date myself, but it's an important perspective in understanding just why I, you and the entire profession of sales need to keep rapidly evolving while it focuses, not on the practice of sales itself, but on the value that we bring to our customers.