My teaching in both my Marketing and Science of Sales courses provides a laboratory for my work with my students and with our management consulting practice building sales and marketing processes.

• 6 projects / semester from companies ranging from startups to $100m in revenue. 
• 6 juniors, seniors, grad students per project company across 6 totally different markets.
• Content, case studies and a final product graded by management for 40% of the grade.
• Lectures by my sales exec. alums.  Frank Yandrisevits was superb yesterday on structure!
  
  

...and then the math, the analytics and the science of the class

Before Frank arrived for his fascinating 90 minute lecture on structures, sales functions and comp planning, we went through the math of what a salesperson has as available time in which to sell:. 

-We had an interactive talk about hours an "A" level salesperson works a week:  Students' Answer: 60; Jack's: 57 (McKinsey)

-We talked deductions: holidays, sick, vacations quickly came up: Students' Answer:50; Jack's:35 

-We explored indirect time: "How was the weekend?"  "the game?", "the kids?" Or just "whatever?" time. Answer: 15% 

Then came the discussion around the actual math of sales productivity, which is the underlying theme in this course and in the reality of any professional salesperson. 

• We start with around 3,000 hours; we take out the "must have" deductions to get to around 2,300 hours.
• We take out admin and non-sales meetings, post-sale time and "other" and look at actual prep and selling time. 
• And we're left with around 1,300 hours a year.
   

This course and the reality of the very best salespeople are the ability to control their customized processes, their standardized tools, their unique quarterly playbooks, their easy-to-use CRM technologies from HubSpot and the resulting analytics that can be used quickly and inexpensively to immediately get actual productivity to 90%.

With four more weeks left in the semester before their two-hour presentations to their management, I'm reasonably confident on two fronts: 

• We're relatively on target from where we need to be and totally transparent in the positives and the concerns...just as we would need to be with any sales teams...at this time in the year.
• We're producing another 10 sales professionals out of a course of 36 this semester!

Just a few thoughts on the underlying math of our available selling time as we "leap ahead" as a result of Daylight Savings Time this Sunday.  Have a great weekend!

updating your 2025 Sales plans for Q2!

For a few ideas on how to improve your own math and sales planning for Q2, click here for our just updated, no-cost "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2025, outlining ideas on structure, sales models, process funnels, productivity tools and how to recruit, hire and onboard the best salespeople.  A hands-on "how to" guide for real salespeople written by real sales managers with their fingers in the dirt.  

Connect with me any time at jack@derbymanagement.com and let's discuss your own sales math!.