Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

A wicked busy week combined with customers, fundraising for our new startup, and super excited about this week at The Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts as we enter into the final competition at the annual Tufts $100K Business Plan Contest being held this Thursday night from 6-9:00.  If you want to participate online in this professional slice magic of entrepreneurship at its best, click here to register.

With the results of Q1 left in the dust of last week, we're already reworking new sales plans for this quarter, hiring and changing a few new team members and taking apart, piece by piece, those perfectly planned lead generation tactics conceived in the dark winter of last January.  Some worked, many did not, but blogs and video continue to be clear winners.  Certainly, social, but so much of it falls under the classification of "It depends..."

We seem to waste a lot of time worrying, writing and talking about the practices of not getting enough sleep!  
Someone even named Friday, March 17th, as World Sleep Day, without even considering the conflict with the much more important St. Patrick's Day, which, of course, has zero to do with sleep. 


According to a study by the American College of Cardiology, up to 8% of deaths from any cause could be attributed to "poor sleep patterns", while those with healthier sleep habits are less likely to die prematurely. Data from Statista shows that in the US, 39% of respondents said they had suffered from a sleep disorder (problems falling asleep or staying asleep) in the 12 months prior to the survey. To me, vague phrases of "could be attributed", "less likely" and "problems falling asleep" seem to underscore the question of whether the lack of sleep is a real issue, or has this discussion just crept into being a filler when there isn't enough real news to report.

"Spring is nature's way of saying, 'let's party'" -Robin Williams

Teaching in my Science of Sales course last Thursday afternoon, only hours before the official start of Spring Break was in a word, "interesting", but with the help of visiting instructor and prior student, Erica Veino, senior Account Exec at BitSight, we worked through the fundamentals of her sales process.  For me, nothing is better than bringing back to Tufts alums from my courses who are now experienced sales professionals to teach exacting details in terms of process steps, sales tools, and sales models.  The mastery of those details experienced the prior week from alums Frank Yandrisevits and Shannon du Pont transitioned concepts into the practicality of how to model, train, manage and compensate salespeople.  

Last Tuesday, I wrote about The Tufts $100K Business Plan contest and its upcoming semi-finals which occurred last Thursday night. 50 Plus solid teams of students and faculty who had completed detailed applications, provided business plans and videos were narrowed down to 15, who will now be moving on to the Finals to be held on April 13th 6:00-9:00 PM.  I am looking forward to seeing you there!   For more information on last Thursday and just superb examples of the reality of what true entrepreneurship is, please click here for our LinkedIn post.   

Unfortunately, what has also occurred at exactly the same time is the very difficult situation caused by the mismanagement of the senior execs of Silicon Valley Bank, which continues to make waves in the tech market and will most probably cascade into the general banking community of small banks everywhere.  Clearly a very tough situation, and for those of us who start and invest in companies, the reality of corrections we will now need to take will slow down what we should be doing at this time of year...which is figuring out how to better market and sell our products and services.  

as managers, It's important to focus on what we can control

What we, as entrepreneurs, personally cannot control is the external banking environment and what will now assuredly result in in terms of tighter controls.  For many weeks ahead, we'll listen to the histrionics of politicians, bankers and administrators pointing fingers at one another while mandating increased controls, and that, in turn, will hopefully reign in bad management.   

In the meantime, what we can not only "control", but we can invest time and money into are a few of five business fundamentals of successful entrepreneurship.  Success in entrepreneurship for the rest of us always ...especially in difficult times...comes down to intense leadership focus in markets, in product, and in selling value to real people and not allowing the team to be distracted. 

https://www.brainshark.com/derbymanagement/vu?pi=zFGzu5funzFFz0

Just a few ideas to think about this morning while a different type of a wicked weatha' storm encompasses us here in Boston!   

2023 SALES PLANNING  

For more than a few ideas and real fingers-in-the-dirt details, take a look at our free Writing the Winning Sales Plan for 2023.  

Or you can just email me, and I will send you a free copy, and, of course, you can connect with me at any time for questions, comments or just catching up. 


CONNECT ANYTIME!

Connect with me at any time for some quick ideas and feedback. 

There's never a cost for a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about Sales & Marketing.   

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.

I first heard the word "entrepreneurship" hanging out for years in the packed seats at MIT's Enterprise Forum every 2nd Wednesday in Room 10/250.  At the time, I was running a division of a large corporation and had zero idea of what an entrepreneur really did, or why they did it even though I grew up in a family of multi-generations of parents and GFs and GGFs who did exactly that.  We just never used that word, "entrepreneur"

If it wasn't for bad luck, you know, I wouldn't have no luck at all

There's a superb classic blues song sung by R&B greats, Ray Charles, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and my personal favorite Joe Bonamassa, about luck...or in this case...bad luck. 

On Friday the 13th, I thought that it was appropriate to kick off today as we enter the season of 2023 sales and business planning meetings with a couple of thoughts about luck.

Bottom line: Never plan on luck, optimism or even best efforts!  What will happen, will happen only as a result of you and your team's personal involvement and rigid commitment to a planning process this year.

After graduating from BC, I went into the Peace Corps, and when I came back to the States, with little else than a degree in English and Biology, I was lucky enough to land a job at a large medtech corporation that was hiring interns based on attributes rather than skills and experience. 

Very quickly, I and a group of other rookies hired at the same time for a specific new product, were pushed into an intensive, week-long management training session simply on "planning".  

With the beginning of March and just a few short weeks before the end of the Q, life in the world of us in the profession of Sales is totally focused on what we can bring across the finish line by the end of this month. 

It's been a very exciting time during the last four months as our 2022 planning ramps with our customers.  What I thought might be helpful is to share with you some of the primary themes we are experiencing in our role as business planning consultants as management gears up for 2022.   The following bullets are not prioritized, plus they come from a wide cross-section of markets covering healthcare, tech, food, industrial commodities, financial services and not-for-profits.