Ya Gotta Love Vermonters, their Planning...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Tue, Dec 17, 2013

cold weather 2 resized 600-3 today and more snow, on top of the 18" from Sunday, coming right now. Just the right type of weather for roofing the house, right?  

Made the arrangements with the roofing guys last July (bright sun, highs in the 80's, hard to remember now) to replace the roof.  Reminded them in September when they told me that I was "the next job".  Got a bit concerned that they didn't show up in October, and then promptly forgot about it until they magically appeared at the end of last week. Did I mention that it snowed 18" this weekend?  Maybe they weren't getting the email alerts from the Weather Channel?  Don't know, but since everyone else in the northern hemisphere knew about the first big storm of the season, I have to figure that these guys are so far off the grid, that there is no grid.

I mentioned all of this to Lorraine last Saturday, a friend of mine who owns the Winhall General Store down in the village of Bondville (population 725), about the lack of planning up when literally there's no more time left in the year to do this.  She looked at me with great surprise admonishing me that in fact the roofing boys, who she knows very well, had planned this perfectly...  

  • They finished their last job in September
  • They went bird huntin' in October
  • Deer huntin' in November 
  • Bear huntin' the first week of December
  • ...and now, I'm "the next job"

As far as Lorraine was concerned, a perfect example of perfect Vermont planning...

Vermonters, ya gotta' love 'em...

  • Work, whether planned or not, typically centers around the weather
  • Sales and marketing messages often begin or end with seasonality
  • Time is measured over this and next year rather than months 
Having said that, as a 7th generation Vermont family, I don't believe that there's a better, more honest, more open a population than the 550,000 (smaller than the city of Boston) people living in Vermont.

Hopefully, right now you're on the downward slope of finishing up the year and looking forward to taking a couple of days off around Christmas.  As one of your personal rewards for all of your hard work this year, think about buying yourself the perfect gift and plan on attending our upcoming Sales Management Boot Camp.  I might suggest that there are three activities you might want to follow up with:

  1. Click on the icon below for an outline of what takes place.  
  2. You can also click HERE for a more detailed agenda
  3. Or just email me at jack@derbymanagement.com, for a 10 minute call
Sales Management Boot Camp

 

 

 

    

 

 

 Good Selling !!!

 Jack Derby 

 Head Coach

Linked In and Sales

Buy yourself a Christmas gift that will last & last.  If you want to learn about value propositions, pricing, sales and marketing processes, technology tools and how to hire perfectly every time, join 30 other managers at... 

The 2014 Sales Management Boot Camp:  April 6th-8th


Sales Management Boot Camp

Click HERE for information about our next Sales Management Boot Camp.

  • Perfectly timed for new sales management skills for 2014
  • Focused on you and what it takes to enable your team
  • Process, tools, tactics, and technology in a Sales 2.0 world
  • Only 30 managers are accepted
  • Always sold out so register early!

Tags: sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management boot camp, improving sales productivity, best sales practices;