Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

 Saturday mornings are always perfect...

• up later at 5:00 AM, not my usual in-week ritual of 3:15 to get into Boston early
• Keurig's KenyanAA in my favorite Orvis cup
• most non-winter weekends, walk up from the NH beach to my office in the studio
• during VT winter weekends, same regimen, just keep an eye on the time since the lifts open at 8

Typically, uncluttered time, with only a customer project or two to complete by the end of Sunday, and, most importantly, it's my time to think, to plan out the week or the month ahead by taking just a couple of hours to view the world from 100 feet off the deck.

Tags: sales coach, improved sales management, sales plans, sales producitivity

 So, what does it mean to be a leader?  

Countless books and blogs consume oceans of silicon in attempting to define sales leadership, giving point-by-point tactics and hundreds of how-to's, and yet the issue of leadership often comes down to, "I know it when I see it".  

Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales management, sales management coach, Sales Leadership in the Revolution

Just finished shoveling snow here in the "Live Free or Die" State  

Although I have a perfectly good, one year old snowblower sitting unused in the garage, it was important to me to spend 30 minutes shoveling this morning for a couple of reasons.

Tags: sales, sales tools, sales training, sales plans

Punxsutawney Phil, the Seer of Seers, and Prognosticator of all Prognosticators, did his thing yesterday on the barren Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, PA, and according to legend, it's going to be an early spring.  

Tags: sales

So, did you play The Recent PowerBall?  

     Come on now, of course you did...and so did I, and why not?

Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, improved sales management

Here we are in mid January, and you and I have the opportunity to change the world this year.  

Tags: business planning, business coaching, writing a business plan

One of my new year resolutions from a number of years ago, and one that I highly recommend to everyone now is to subscribe to the Harvard Business Review.  Back in the day, when I was in graduate school, I felt that I needed to read the magazines, but with working full time and being married and, and, and...the stacks of unread articles kept growing and weighing down the summer beach bag.

Tags: strategic planning

The most important thing about 2016 is that it will be a year of substantial change!

Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales management, sales coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement

 

A Wonderfully Exciting Time of Year!

1. Focus on the # of Days

 

Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales coach, sales management coach

My Marketing Course at Tufts is quickly winding down with the first of the exam days yesterday afternoon. For the last 13 weeks, six teams of five very talented students have labored, learned, questioned, and, most importantly, collaborated on very complex marketing projects given to them by six companies at the beginning of July.  

Presentations were made to the senior management of three of the companies yesterday, and the same will happen next Wednesday with the last three companies.  Basically, every piece of marketing content, strategy and tactic that was taught over the semester has been incorporated into these marketing plans complete with market and competitive research, primary inbound and outbound strategies and a host of carefully planned and budgeted tactical recommendations.  

Lots of very hard work, a number of speed bumps and surprises, like the unplanned acquisition of one of the companies mid-semester, but overall, very successful both for the companies in that they've received marketing deliverables that would have cost them thousands, and for the students, who have been paid both in real world experience and in grades.

Tags: sales, sales management, sales management coach, selling, improved sales management, sales plans