Summa!
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Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, sales management, sales coach, sales planning, sales producitivity, business tools, business planning, business plans, The Competitive Edge, writing a business plan
Sure, I get it...work, life, and relationships are often wicked complicated, maybe even overcomplicated, but that's life! Way too often we overthink things, especially at work, to the point of making the already complicated impossibly cluttered, slow to enact and painful in which to participate. Recently, I've adopted with my work and my teaching a concept of frequently taking a view 100 feet off the deck and asking myself and others..."Aren't we overthinking this?", and, typically, I am discovering that the answer is a resounding "Yes".
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Tags: Tufts university, entrepreneurship, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales management productivity, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
Too often we business types roll our eyes to the ceiling when we think about academia. Our images of university life immediately flash back to our own college days, but that image has little to do with the reality of university life today.
Today, college students are wicked bright, very hard working and highly focused on jobs, careers and the social impact of making a difference in the lives of others. As a group, current students and alums for the past eight or ten year are a massive category with huge numbers, but they also have far less spending power due to the very high cost of housing in general and the massive student debt that they carry.
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Tags: sales productivity, sales management, improved sales management, small business management, management, business coaching, leadership
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Tags: strategic planning, Tufts marketing projects, value propositions, sale management, Tufts Entrepreneurship, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
After this first year in my new role as the Director of the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, now that we have a solid understanding of what we have, and we don't have, I'm spending time visiting the heads of the local universities to figure out how and where entrepreneurship fits into their organizations. I'm doing this partially to understand their organizational structures of what works and what doesn't, partially to assess "the competition" and mostly to be able to better express what's unique about Tufts' own brand of entrepreneurship. These interviews, plus talking with hundreds of students and alums, and having just completed our first-ever "Impact Report on Entrepreneurship at Tufts", will lead to developing an updated two-year business plan this summa'.
I love working on "Tufts' Stuff" on the beach. It justifies, just a bit, my excuse to be on the NH beach and not commute into campus
By the way, if you would like to receive a copy of this just-released "Impact Report, just email me at jack.derby@tufts.edu, and I'll send you a copy.
The Impact Report work is dynamic and all the more so since it was done by our students, led by Team Captain, Leila Li, a remarkable student leader and friend.
One of my first stops in assessing other universities was Babson, perhaps the most highly rated university in the world when it comes down to encompassing "entrepreneurship" in everything they do. As I and a few of my associates visited with the senior leadership of Babson, I was struck by...
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May is always a bittersweet time !
It's the end of the academic year and the realization that hundreds of our students at the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center will graduate opening the next chapter in their books of life and in their careers. We know from our data that the majority will join larger companies where they will bring their entrepreneurial spirit of curiosity and innovation. Right alongside our congratulating the seniors going to work at Google, Hubspot, Linked and other companies where we can open doors, we are also closely watching and coaching a handful of companies being birthed right now as a result of this spring's very successful Tufts $100K New Ventures Competition 
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Tags: angel investing, Tufts university, Tufts ELS program, Tufts internships, entrepreneurship, jack derby professor at Tufts, Tufts Entrepreneurship, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself"
...Andy Warhol
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Tags: price waterhouse coopers, student intern marketing projects, sales planning meetings, sales leadership, value propositions, selling trust, sales motivation
20 years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore! Dream! Discover!
...Mark Twain
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Tags: sales boot camp, sales management boot camps, Tufts marketing projects, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales management productivity, creating trust in sales, Tufts Entrepreneurship, sales motivation
It's that time of year again...
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Tags: sales planning meeting, business planning meetings, Making Tough Choices, sales management plans, sales management productivity, sales effectivness
Of course the announcement of the beginning of Spring brings out all of that amorphous stuff about rebirth, awakening and new growth. For me, after all of these springs, I'm sure that those touchy feelings also exist somewhere neatly filed in some dusty corner of my brain right alongside my desire to look for the first robin. Not really !
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Tags: entreprenurial, Sales Management Best Practices, sales optomization, sales management boot camp, improving sales productivity, sales leadership, Making Tough Choices
