More than anything else, standing out in the 35 degree Tuesday morning cold at 8:00 AM while waiting in line and sharing free coffee and hand made pastries from the local PTA, once again, I realized that this election process is a true testament to both "The American Way",...and also why New Hampshire is lovingly labeled "The Live Free or Die State".
All of this may not be perfect, but, it sure works more than the alternatives. Both the running of the country and the running of our businesses are fueled by growth, and it's time to put the election process behind us and get back to growing our companies.
Up all night watching the results, I never slept and fumbled back into the Boston office at 4:00 AM on Wednesday to catch up on what had been happening in the real world. Later that afternoon, I had a fascinating discussion with my Tufts marketing students on which candidate ran the better marketing campaign, and who used their marketing tools and budgets more effectively. The outcome was a clear decision for Donald with the students noting numbers of the tactics that we've learned this semester:
With the election now thankfully behind us, hopefully this week we can hopefully get back to running our businesses full time and worrying about the real things that actually do keep us up at night, and, most importantly, what we can do that will lead to increased sales.
We know this answer since we constantly ask "What keeps you up at night?" of hundreds of our CEOs and Sales VPs during the year. The number #1 answer for the past three years continues to be...
"I need my salespeople to be more productive!"
To hammer that point home, take a look below at the recently released data from the team at Sales Benchmark Index. In the last three years, productivity declined for the world’s largest sales forces.
Unfortunately, whatever our sales teams, in general, have been doing to improve sales productivity hasn't been working except in specific pockets. It's only in those companies where the company leaders have focused on a balanced integration of disciplined sales processes, highly integrated sales tools and combined sales and marketing technology platforms like Hubspot, that productivity has improved.
We also know that unfortunately cutting expenses to make up for lackluster sales productivity is relatively easy. Increasing revenue is, by comparison, far more complex than cutting expenses simply because it involves a much wider set of both strategic and tactical decision making, which typically also involves initial additional expense, which makes both the strategic and tactical decision making all that much harder.
It's only then, when these strategic decisions are made, that the hard work can begin in creating the detailed 2017 sales and marketing tactical plans and their budgets.
Nothing else counts right now!
In order to make this process of 2017 planning a bit easier for you, each summer, we update our free 100 page book, "Writing the Winning Business Plan", which you can download at our Solution Center, where you can also find a number of other tools to make your 2017 planning work easier.
Also, when you have questions, just email us, and we will quickly set up a time to talk and become a (free) confidential sounding board. Take a bit of your time this weekend and think through your sales and your business planning processes and make sure that it's effective and works for the benefit of you and your team.
If you're interested in submitting either a marketing or a sales project for this spring, just email me at jack@derbymanagement, and I will send out the instructions on what's expected, the logistics and the dates for the spring semester for both the sales and the marketing courses.
Remember back to when you were in college, and you were wondering how you were going to put into use that course in sociology or whatever you were studying at the time? At Tufts, the experience we provide for our marketing and sales students through these projects is unique since they learn strategy, they debate tactics, and then get their hands dirty by actually diving deep into the crankcase oil by being asked to provide detailed recommendations and actual execution activities. That's the value received on the student's side of the table.
For your company's side of the table, the value received is...
Good selling this week!
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
jack@derbymanagement.com