Stratton has had 139 inches of snow this year, but who's counting? Well, the mountain management is, the whacko, overly-addicted skiers and riders like me are, and then, there's all of us on the hill who measure just about everything with enough computing power contained in our devices, apps and cameras mounted on our ski helmets that we could have captained an Apollo space mission. Last weekend, I was just thinking about the average "badge-of-honor metrics" that are displayed in real time on every skier's Ski Tracks app ...
And then there's the video and the photos that get directly uploaded from our helmet cams and positioned exactly to ski trails mapped by GPS locators that copy our turns on each trail.
Balancing the art and the beauty of Vermont with the science and the fun of understanding the metrics of what we do on the hill has added a new dimension to skiing and riding.
Data is all around us. Big Data, whatever that is, and, I guess therefore, "little data", capture everything that we do and plan to do, and there's no better place to use and apply data than in the fast paced and rapidly changing world of sales and marketing metrics.
And yet in the world of Sales, something as simple as the consistent and proactive adoption of the use of CRM systems continues to result in only fair to poor results. When one looks at adoption rates by a salesforce of their CRM systems, the 2012 results from
Sirius Decisions are...
Improving, but still very poor results, and yet, if we believe in the importance and criticality of data in optimizing and enabling our salespeople, it all begins with, not just the use, but the full adoption of our CRM platforms. There's just simply no other way to optimize our sales productivity without useful data and the sliced and diced analytics that go with it. Said another way, not to fully adopt a CRM platform is like playing tennis with no net. We had a good workout, we played hard, but we have no idea whether we improved or not.
Good Selling!
I expect that by now you've racked up a very positive Q1. Congratulations!!!
Let's turn the page in the calendar over the weekend and move into Q2-for me the most critical of all of the quarters of the year.
Click for Video on the Derby Sales Management Boot Camp: October 6th-8th
It's that time of year again, when I'm searching for six company projects for my seniors and juniors marketing class at Tufts for the fall semester. For the last six years, I've had the privilige of being a professor of Marketing at Tufts in a fast-paced, highly interactive course where the students are continuously immersed in the real world of today's marketing strategies, tactics and tools.
One of the means through which this is accomplished is that six teams of five students are focused for the 13 week semester on completing complex marketing projects for companies in the NE geography. These no-cost projects vary widely from developing market research reports, to new product launches, to creating full marketing plans for small and middle market businesses.
If you are at all interested in participating for the fall semester, just email me at jack@derbymanagement.com, and I will send you an outline of what's involved.