Gearing up for September at Tufts

Somewhere deep in the rhythm of the lives of all of us are the memories which awaken around this time of year of "back to school" whether that results from buying clothes and supplies for our own kids or the anxieties that came in our own lives with major shifts into a new building or going off to college as a freshman.  The rhythm of operating our businesses, especially as it relates to our employees, is often in sync with the rhythms of the school year.  

 

Tufts logoFor me, as a professor at Tufts in the Derby Entrepreneurship Center, it's no different. Since I teach Marketing in both semesters and the Science of Sales only in spring semester since I also teach at MIT in the fall, I am always thinking about gearing up and planning ahead.  

 

  • The fall syllabus went out on July 5th.  The spring syllabus is sent on 12/26
  • The syllabus is delivered with 6 real company marketing projects 
  • Six person teams are required within 5 days; most are done on the first day
  • The pre-reading is David's The New Rules of Marketing & PR
  • Hubspot Inbound Certification is required at the start; 6 have completed already 

I'll spend a good chunk of August between Derby Management work assignments, redoing my teaching content from last year since in today's fast-paced world of marketing, 50% of what I taught and how I taught it last year is obsolete this fall.   Following my own practice of asking my customers, I always pay a lot of attention to my student's confidential end-of-semester comments on "what could I have done better?"  Lots of very positive comments, and then there are always ten plus absolute nuggets which I bake into the next semester's content and my choice of outside speakers, all of whom are now my former students now marketing managers, pricing experts and in one case a TV newscaster who talks on presentations.

I'm already meeting students online at their request to talk about their company projects and some are reaching out to their company management with the management of one company holding an online one hour "101 Basics" about their market.  All about gearing up and planning ahead!

 

JumboAnd, of course, which is always fun for me and rewarding for the students is having numerous discussions about their own marketing process of finding jobs and thinking through future career choices.  Having been at this with more than 1,000 graduates and now having many of those alums in senior management hiring positions, I can very easily kick open doors at a wide variety of companies ranging from enterprise-level companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Deloitte down to early-stage startups and hundreds of companies in between.   

 

Just thought that I would share this thought process of gearing up with you this morning on the last sales day of the month as I am about to step into a multi-hour board meeting where we are always geared up for what lies ahead and before I set off for Vermont later this afternoon.

Have a superb weekend!  

Jack Derby, Tufts Professor & Sales Coach At any time, if you want to discuss your own sales and marketing planning for the rest of this year, just connect with me for some quick ideas and feedback. There's no cost to a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about this new rapidly changing world of sales and marketing.  It's nothing like the old days of 2020!

In the meantime, take a look at our 2022 edition of "Writing the 2022 Winning Sales Plan" 

 

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts. 

 

 

Tags: free marketing projects from universities, marketing planning, social entrepreneurship, 2022businessplansuccess, Teaching entrepreneurship, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts