Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales effictiveness, sales boot camps

Last Sunday, driving from early morning mass and on my way to my personal weekly reward, which is searching out sales at my favorite store, Home Depot, I noticed 20 feet ahead two turkeys feeding on late fall garden scraps on the left side of the road.  As I slowed down, I also noticed this small yellow sign noting "turkeys crossing" over to the right.  And then, as if on cue, 20ish turkeys hopped up on the stone wall, walked across the road right in front of my car and joined the others in the garden.   Which, of course, got me to thinking about Sales...

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management boot camp, sales checklists

It's that time of year again...

...when, just like the snow guns at Stratton in mid-November, and the family's angst over Uncle Ernie, once again, making a fool of himself at Thanksgiving, the pressure's on to submit the perfect 2014 business plan to the board or your boss by December 1st.

Tags: sales coaching, Sales Management Best Practices, sales enablement, how to write a business plan, sales boot camps

Just about ready for winta'.  As part of my never-ending "drive-1,000-miles-a-week" travel schedule, late Thursday night and Friday morning found me in the towns of Colchester and Williston, VT.  I thank the inventor of GPS every single trip when I head off with absolutely no idea where I'm going other than... "It's north (or some other direction) somewhere."  A Mobil station dinner and a Hampton Inn breakfast later, I found that the management team at the Colchester and Williston plants were truly engaging, have complex opportunities, and I'm looking forward to our two day planning session in December.

Tags: Sales Best Practices, sales management, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management boot camp, sales boot camps, sales checklists

MassTLC (short for Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council) keeps doing everything perfectly! Having run a number of business associations such as SBANE, ACGBoston and the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, I personally know how very hard it is to keep things new, exciting, and constantly refreshed.   Members want to feel engaged, sponsors need to feel loved, and new prospects want to join only if "the cool kids" belong.

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales management, sales enablement, sales planning, sales effictiveness, sales management boot camp, sales boot camps

30 years ago, during one of my "I think I will once again try to live in Vermont" sojourns, I remember working high on a mountain ridge one cold, wet fall morning pouring cement that we had laboriously carted up by buckets in ATVs for the footings on a microwave tower.  It was November and long gone were the colorful fall leaves and smiling tourists visiting the antiques fair down in the postcard-pretty town Weston.  It was back to the hardscrabble work of running a commercial masonry company building a series of towers all along the spine of Vermont.  That November and December, we worked until the ground froze hard with most daybreaks spent chopping through the ice that had crusted over our water storage from the overnight freeze.  It was during that period of what seemed to be a never-ending expedition of increasingly cold, wind-whipped, ugly, steel-gray days that I made a decision that I was moving back to Boston and would do everything I could to avoid November in Vermont. 

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management boot camp, sales producitivity

Why do I teach?

You would think that that between my day job of running Derby Management, being a board member of six companies and working with a superb team of partners as the Chair of Common Angels, I just might have enough to do. 

Tags: marketing projects, ELS105, Tufts university

In St. John, New Brunswick, Canada this morning where I was a keynote speaker yesterday along with David Meerman Scott for the two day Engage Conference sponsored by the economic development and export trade offices of the Province and St. John.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales optomization, Sales quota, sales management boot camp, sales producitivity

A couple of times a week, I stop by Honovan's Cleaners to drop off laundry.  Right around the corner, Honovan is the epitome of uber customer satisfaction.  Open 12 hours a day, six days a week, she accommodates everything that I could possibly need. 

I don't want to be bothered with tickets, so years ago, Honavan simply told me "no tickets".  I don't want to wait in line.  Simple solution for Honovan was to give me a laundry bag.  I mentioned to her that I loved the fact that she opened, at 6:30 and then complained that the shoe repair store didn't open until 8.  That day, Honovan became the drop off place for the shoe repair guy.  Not satisfied with just laundry, shoes and, of course, alterations, a few years ago, she expanded to do the commercial laundry for many of the hotels in the Back Bay. 

Tags: Sales Best Practices, sales, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, business plans, how to write a business plan

I spend most of every day, most weeks (except a couple on the NH beach and a couple at Stratton snowboarding), every month and every quarter thinking about and working in the professions of Sales & Marketing. 

Tags: sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales training, sales plans, sales management boot camp, sales producitivity