I've been roaming the sales cubicles of lots of companies most of last week and this. Probably 20 plus companies in 10 work days. Opening doors into the heads of heavy-hitter sales leaders along with young, hard working BDRs. Asking the tough questions of hard-charging, get-out-of-my-way 35 year olds and also to a few 55 year old trail-beaten veterans who still hang on to "the old days" of relationship selling.
Tags: sales, sales coach, sales tools, sales plans, sales process
The business plan pitches were Wednesday, and the awards were made last night. This year yet another company, Mimir Insights, with several of my marketing Alums won the top prize in High Tech. This is what real entrepreneurship...at the street level...is all about. Congratulations to all of the entrepreneurs!!!!
Tags: entreprenurial, business plans, Tufts university, marketing plans, entrepreneurship
Back in the day, you probably remember your mother warning you about making sure that you were wearing clean underwear "because if you're in an accident, and they bring you to the hospital, then, you want to make sure that you don't have dirty underwear". I must admit I didn't think about this a lot during my various ER experiences of broken bones after falling off my bike or crashing into trees while learning to snowboard. Actually, there never seemed to be any checklist at the ER asking about the health or even the cleanliness of my underwear.
Tags: sales coach, sales planning, sales tools, Sales quota, sales culture
Tags: sales, business planning, how to write a business plan, Tufts Marketing, marketing interns, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan
My first real job out of BC, after returning from three years in the Peace Corps, was as a Purchasing Expediter working for Honeywell's new minicomputer group. In a work-hard, work-harder, baptism-by-fire-environment in which you either performed or were fired, I quickly learned the realities of purchasing, inventory control and production. A great education and a great company...even though they missed the whole mini-computer thing..which prepared me well for a long career at Becton Dickinson Medical Systems-another great company with solid management development programs allowing me to eventually rise through the ranks.
But, all through that development process with more and more training, and more and more education programs, the complexities of P&L's and balance sheets always eluded me, but since I had by then become president of various companies, I had the luxury of hiring the best CFOs at Datamedix (Bob Badavas, currently CEO of Plum Tree, is a superb example) who were much better in Finance than I would ever be.
Those experiences led me to adopt a simple axiom that I use today with all of the managers in all of our customers:
"Your job is to hire people who are much better than you in their own skills"
Today, although I believe I'm now pretty fluent in everything Finance, my three simple Finance rules that always guide me to success are...
Tags: sales management, sales coach, sales management coach, sales management training, Sales quota
Today's my birthday.
I was born at 10 minutes past midnight in Chicago's Cook County Hospital in a blue collar, South Side neighborhood of meat cutters and steelworkers and the home of my first generation Polish grandparents. Wonderful people and wonderful memories that I still remember today since they were most often wrapped around events surrounding birthdays, Catholic holy days, marriages and funerals. All of these events are for me indelibly marked through emotions, the rituals of the church, and, of course, being Polish, the smells and kitchen sounds of unbelievable food piled high on huge oaken dining room tables.
Tags: sales tools, Sales quota, sales plans, sales meeting
We've all heard the saying, "Beware the Ides of March."
It's one of the most popular quotes from William Shakespeare, a man who may honestly be one the most quoted authors in history. The actual quote is from Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar (1599). The warning is uttered by a soothsayer who is letting Roman leader Julius Caesar know that his life is in danger, and he should probably stay home and be careful when March 15th, the Ides of March, rolls around.
But as you might already know, Caesar doesn't stay home on March 15th, and he is murdered halfway through the play. His death does not come as a surprise to the audience. Yes, he was warned. But history already told us that on the actual date of March 15th, 44 BC, the real Julius Caesar was violently murdered, stabbed 23 times by a mob of senators who were led by his protégés and supposed 'friends' Cassius and Brutus, which led to the other often quoted phrase of... "Et tu, Brute?"
Given our super-heightened awareness of current politics as a result of this week's 'Super Tuesday' the upcoming "Ides of March" will most likely only reinforce the positions of the current front runners and the rapid march to the conventions.
However, in the real world of running our companies and managing our sales and marketing for the balance of 2016, the Ides of March, do require...
My recommendation is always that you need to focus your very valuable and very limited time focusing on the right side of the sine wave! You need to collaborate with your top 20%, the critical Sales Warriors, and provide them with the time and advanced training to move them and your results to performance that exceeds 100%. The data on this math is very specific, and the example above, based on a $200 million quota, shows that by applying time and resources to the top 20%, results can improve by as much as 23%.
This is where you earn your pay as a manager since you need to make the tough decisions, and you need to make them now right at the end of this quarter when you still have time to make personnel changes that will pay off in Q3 and Q4.
#3. NO LATER THAN THE IDES OF MARCH, FINISH AN UPDATE OF YOUR Q2 PLAN
My guess is that the current 2016 sales plan was most likely crafted back in November and "sold" to your various bosses at the December board meeting.
It's time to dust this off, take a new look, revise a number of tactics and codify an entire list of updated best practices to be polished during the balance of the year.
Derby Management...for 25 years
-Sales & Marketing Productivity Experts
-Business & Strategy Planning Specialists
-Senior Management Coaches for CEOs & VPs
Box 171322, Boston, MA 02117
Jack's Cell: 617-504-4222
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
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
