Jack Derby, Head Coach
Jack Derby, Head Coach, Derby Management
As founder and Head Coach of Derby Management, Jack Derby and his managers provide strategic planning, and sales and marketing optimization services to growth and middle market companies. Prior to forming Derby Management, Jack served as CEO of Mayer Electronics Corporation, President of CB Sports, President of Litton Industries Medical Systems, CEO of Datamedix Corporation and President of Becton Dickinson Medical Systems.
For his work in the entrepreneurial community, Jack was named to Mass High Tech’s All Star Team. He also received the distinguished Pro Bono Publico award from the Smaller Business Association of New England, the Meritorious Service Award for the Association for Corporate Growth, and the Vincent Fulmer Distinguished Service Award from the MIT Enterprise Forum. He is a frequent speaker at numerous sales meeting and business organizations including the Association for Corporate Growth and the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, where he was Chairman of both organizations.
He is a Professor of the Practice at Tufts University, where he teaches two courses: “Entrepreneurial Marketing” and “The Art & Science of Sales”. In 2015, Jack received the Henry and Madeline Fisher Award given to the best teacher on campus, an award that is voted by the graduating students and the faculty. He is the first faculty member from the Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Program to be given this recognition.
He is also a lecturer at MIT, where for the past nineteen years, he has taught classes in business planning and marketing to undergraduate and graduate students in the Mechanical Engineering Department.
Jack is currently an active board member in a number of companies, including the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, Accounting Management Solutions, Aviant Hospice, Brainshark Corporation, Chase Corporation, Rome Snowboards, Reiser Inc, and Tufts University’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Advisory Board. He is also the past Chairman of Common Angels Ventures, one of the most active seed and early stage investment funds, now rebranded by Jack and management to Converge Ventures.
We're all squeezed for time.
No new news here. We continuously balance our work and
personal time commitments. We endlessly shuffle our
schedules cutting off 15 minutes here and there to be able to
squeeze in another call, another meeting or just maybe a vacation day here and there. We know that there is no such thing as Work-Life Balance except in the fantasy world of academics, and what always loses out in trying to create that balance is that over-rated sleep thing.
Up at 4:00 yesterday, after a 2 hour trip, I found myself at a customer's at 8:00 and then spent the afternoon in Providence at a quarterly board meeting. The company is doing great, and perhaps not coincidentally the meeting began and ended with comments from the senior management in this high-performing business about the fact that they were more stressed for time than ever before. They commented that there customers' demands for their time were accelerating at a quicker pace and that those same customers were constantly being pressured themselves by their customers and the new normal of their retail markets for even quicker deliveries and faster design cycles.
Arriving back in Boston just before a customer dinner at 7, I managed to squeeze in a few minutes with my friend Brian, a long term EVP at one of our customers. With 5 weeks of vacation every year, he proudly told me that the only way that he had figured out how to use any of that time was to put himself on a regimen of taking Friday's off. Cute idea, but in the reality of Brian's unforgiving schedule, let's see just how many weeks that works...as in NEVER!
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Tags:
Sales Optimization,
Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
sales,
sales management,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales planning,
closing sales,
sales boot camp,
sales management boot camp
For me, the most exciting thing about our Sales Management Boot Camp every six months is the diversity of companies and executive management that we have in these programs. Our 24-30 attendees bridge across every vertical, geography and size that you can think of from fast growth tech companies such as Black Duck Software to Chase Corporation to Kayem Foods to Steinway and every possible combination in between. All of which lends to peer-to-peer engagement and a big boost in the real-life learning processes that go on over two nights and two days.
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Sales Optimization,
Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
sales,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales management boot camp
John Landry and I had the opportunity to present the week before last to the 128 Innovation Capital Group at the IBM Innovation Center on the subject of angel investing. Great group of entrepreneurs and Annette Reynolds, the Executive Director, runs a tight ship. Check out her next Pitch Party at the Piranha Pond, which is coming up on the 30th at 6:00PM at the Tech Sandbox, in Southborough With the significant market shifts in angel investing in general and specifically regarding the very positive changes at Common Angels, where John and I are partners, it was a great time to wave the flag and talk about something we're both passionate about.
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Tags:
Sales Optimization,
Sales Best Practices,
sales,
sales management,
sales plan process,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales tools,
sales management training,
selling skills,
sales training,
sales plans,
sales management boot camps
Find any salesperson, woman or man, and you'll find a person who cares about their shoes.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
sales coaching,
Sales Optimization,
sales,
sales management effectiveness,
sales management coach,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales tools,
selling,
sales management training,
sales plans,
sales boot camp,
sales jobs,
finding sales jobs,
sales boot camps
Jack McAvoy, Lifeguard & Rock-Solid Marketing Guy!
A senior marketing executive at Parametric Technology, Jack and I met a few years ago out of our common love of caring for the beach. Jack's been the senior lifeguard in Wallis Sands for a long time and is as passionate about taking care of this beach (Rated in the Top 5 cleanest beaches in the U.S. ) and its visitors as he is about the practice of marketing in the rapidly changing ecosystem of 2013.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
sales coaching,
Sales Optimization,
sales,
sales management,
sales management effectiveness,
sales plan process,
sales management coach,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales planning,
sales tools,
selling,
selling skills,
sales boot camp,
sales listening,
best sales practices;
My favorite blogger, especially at this time of year as we prepare to celebrate the 4th, is Benjamin Franklin.
An amazing patriot, which is why I always tie Franklin to the 4th. An inventor, an entrepreneur, the creator of Poor Richard's Almanac (the leading blog of his day), an extraordinary statesman, a lover of good food and wine, and provider of wonderfully simple quotes such as...
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Tags:
sales coaching,
Sales Optimization,
sales,
sales management,
sales management effectiveness,
sales plan process,
sales management coach,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales planning,
sales tools,
sales management training,
selling skills,
Sales quota,
sales training,
sales plans,
sales boot camp
So, this logic may not make sense to anyone else but me, but here goes...
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Tags:
summer networking; rolling stones,
martha and the vandellas,
Sales Optimization,
sales management effectiveness,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales planning,
improved sales management,
closing sales,
sales boot camp
I was sitting with the senior team at one of our most successful customers last Friday, and we were prepping for an upcoming sales and marketing planning meeting later this week.
Status: Solid first half performance
Status: Great processes & people
Question: How does everything fit for the 2nd half?
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Tags:
Sales Optimization,
sales,
sales management,
sales management effectiveness,
sales management coach,
sales effectiveness,
sales enablement,
sales planning,
selling,
sales management training,
sales training,
sales listening,
sales culture,
sales boot camps
Art Brault and I have worked together in a couple of companies over the years, and now he's a Regional VP of Sales at Brainshark, a leading Sales Enablement company. Right now, Art's working hard, thinking through deals and bringing all of his considerable experience to bear pushing to make sure that his team makes quota for the quarter.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
sales coaching,
sales plan process,
sales effectiveness,
sales tools,
selling skills,
Sales quota,
sales plans,
sales boot camp
