It all comes down to 50 minutes
In life, in Sales, and in teaching, there are always deadlines.
Wednesday, one of those deadlines was evidenced in 50 minute final exam presentations days at Tufts. After 12 weeks of content in the brand new Sales course and in the nine-year-old Marketing course, Wednesday was the day when the first two teams of Sales students and the three teams of Marketing students presented their findings, reams of research and their detailed sales and marketing recommendations to the management of their project companies.
We'll do the same thing to the same rhythm next Wednesday, and then another semester will be over. During the summer, I'll spend a big chunk of time on the beach refining and re-calibrating for the fall semesters at Tufts and at MIT, where I've had the privilege of working with Professor Chun for almost 20 years. For me, all of this is a lot of fun, a fair amount of hard work and always some level of anxiety, which keeps me on the competitive edge, which is exactly why I teach...since I continue to believe that I'm just a student of the very exciting worlds of sales and marketing.
At Tufts, half of the grade for the semester comes from me, while the other 50% is determined by the management of the companies that provide the projects who assess criteria such as...
- Did the student team deliver the required marketing or the sales plan objectives as planned?
- Were the specific research or pricing or tactical implementation requirements met?
- Did the market research and customer surveys validate the activity detailing?
- Did the forecasting and expense budgeting criteria stand up to reality?
- ...and a long list of other objectives
The bottom line of the semester so far...
- Everyone, including me, learned something over the last three months of hard work.
- There was a fair amount of coaching which took during class and around campus about Marketing and Sales, about life, and about the process of finding high-paying jobs, which, for me, is one of the most important measurements of the output of these courses.
- Everyone became certified through the course requirement of becoming Hubspot certified, through the various case studies and presentations that occurred during the semester, and, of course, as a result of the final grade given by me and the management of the various companies.
Teaching, Coaching & Certifying
This weekend, as you think through where you are in meeting your Q2 sales quota, you might want to assess the level of teaching, coaching and certifying that you are being provided/are providing as a salesperson or as the sales coach in your company.