Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

This is going to sell by itself!

Too many times, inexperienced entrepreneurs of all ages will use that deadly phrase.  It reminds me of the old Ralph Waldo Emerson cliche of "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." 
In the cold reality of the science of entrepreneurship, most likely that path will be very narrow if it exists at all.  As professional marketers, what we all want is for that small path to become a four-lane highway, and what we know is that will occur only through consistent marketing that doesn't talk about the product at all but highlights the value that the product brings.   After all, we really don't need a better mousetrap; we just need to get rid of the mice quickly, efficiently and without looking at squished mice caught in an ugly trap.   

I love Tufts where I teach a course in Marketing and another in "The Science of Sales".  Actually, considering the method that I use, both courses are deep into the engineering and analytics of their respective disciplines and follow a consistent thread of "Process-Tools-Technology-Metrics & People". Totally integrated into the courseware of building detailed marketing and sales plans for real companies, is the corresponding rigor of "The Marketing of You", where everyone needs to develop their personal Value Propositions for jobs.  

Most importantly, at Tufts, we have a superb Career Center with very highly experienced leadership and hands-on advisors who really care about their work. 

At this time, given 1,500+ alums who have gone through my courses, many of whom are now managers and looking to hire my recent graduates, plus a very wide network of thousands of business and investor connections, we can open a lot of job opportunities ranging from companies the size of Hubspot to Deloitte and Amazon down to tiny startups.  The process is fun, often complex in a marketing sense, which makes it more fun, and, most importantly, very rewarding!

A crisp 55 in the Seaport where I am at 7 this morning.  Probably 45 down at the Winhall General Store in Vermont and just cold enough to start planning seriously about filling up the woodshed. While the weatha’ dictates my long list of Fall "To-Dos" that need to be done at the NH beach and in the VT hills, with only five more selling days left in the Q, quota success for the balance of this year is all about detailed account planning:

Tufts classes are now deep into their second week, and my Marketing students are equally deep into their projects with 5-6 students assigned to each.  In my consistent theme of "Marketing is Everything", which has been in my head, my writing, and basically everything I do in Sales and in Marketing, all my students are exploring and most importantly beginning to organize what will become fully developed marketing plans 10 weeks from now.  

In my 9 prior startups where I've been a founder/co-founder, they've all been in software or healthcare. Those are comfortable markets where I have backgrounds, plus I personally enjoy the complexities of building go-to-market marketing and sales plans in these demanding markets. My forays into consumer products have been limited to a medtech product sold in chain pharmacies and to outerwear apparel working with the genius of  legendary CB Vaughn at CB Sports.  

There are certainly more than a few universities both locally and across the country that feature entrepreneurship programs.  In fact, every university and most standalone colleges have an entrepreneurship program from the giants of Babson, where entrepreneurship is their DNA, to the halls of MIT, where I also teach, to excellent programs at BU, BC, UNH and across all the campuses of UMass.  Very simply, a university cannot be taken seriously without entrepreneurship studies in their program at some level since. in fact, entrepreneurship is not about tech startups.  Real entrepreneurship is about innovation and very few universities are as well-equipped as is Tufts, which is recognized as one of the top research universities in the U.S.  

I've always loved music of any kind! I grew up on 1940's jazz, I love classic 60's rock (never missed a U.S. Stones concert), I tolerated disco, love early rap and have a special place in my head and heart for soul and funk.  

We're always constrained by time...or more accurately, the lack of it and the accompanying pressures of the lack of time! 

We think about it! We plan everything around it! We're constantly checking our phones, our watches, our calendars and everything else that defines our digital and analog worlds, and it always seems "there's never enough" and that we're "runnin' out of time"... all the time!

Ok, so we all know that time itself is finite.  It might be too long or way too short, but it's always going to be bound by nanoseconds, days, months quarters and years.  I have on a very visible shelf of my bookcase here in the office, a fossilized Nautiloid that is approximately 400 million years old just so that I can be frequently reminded to put into perspective the contributions of a 100-year life and my 18-hour workdays.   Most importantly, what I've come to realize about time is that I and you need to love what I do, and at this advanced time in my life, I simply love to work, to teach and to build companies.

9 Days

For those of us who sell stuff and manage others who sell stuff, there is always a daily, monthly, and, in the world of most businesses, the all-important quarterly clock that places points on the board.  We measure and are measured by others in comparison numbers to our quotas and what we are currently doing balanced against the metrics of last quarter or last year and a long list of other blocks of time.  For example, this coming Monday provides us with 9 more days left in the all-important second quarter, which is going to be interpreted by each of us as "just" or "not enough" or "plenty of".   I find that each of those words are typically defined by just how well a salesperson actually plans their own time over a longer period, but, in general, unfortunately most salespeople do not plan their time very well! 

• We get caught up in the complexities of selling without a formal sales process 
• We too often end up doing the job of what Marketing or Service should be doing 
• We simply do not take the time to plan out the 20 key selling days in any month

As a test of this, ask any salesperson today to show you their plan for the next 9 days or what their detailed plan looks like for July, and too often the response will be "I'm working on it".   This is not because salespeople do not work hard.  It's the exact opposite in that too many salespeople simply work without a detailed weekly, monthly and quarterly workplan.  

A 30-60-90 Day Plan

Right now, all of us are focused on finishing the Q and then most probably our primary focus will be on what we're going to be doing for the 4th!   Next weekend, on the 25th, is actually a perfect time to rough out the architecture of what a broad outline of your 90-day sales plan would look like.

• How many actual selling days will there be in each month?
• Then, subtract your own vacation days 
• Then, subtract days immediate to the 4th and Labor Day
• Be realistic about Fridays in the summer
• Blend in your business travel schedules for July and August
• Take out time for sales training and standard weekly/monthly sales meetings

Now plan out what you have left around your own quota and specific sales objectives for the quarter.  That's the easier part. Then take what's left and break that available time down into weekly plans based on your specific monthly quota objectives.  That's where the rubber hits the road!  For more details, click on our "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2022", or just connect directly with me at any time for some quick pointers of how to do this. 

To put work/life balance of time into perspective, here's an interesting article from the WSJ this week: 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-have-only-so-much-time-are-you-using-it-right-11655043558

Have a great day selling today and a superb Father's Day Weekend! 

After a three-hour dead-stop traffic jam on Route 2 late Wednesday afternoon trying to get to Vermont, I simply gave up, turned around and headed back to Boston, so it's the NH beach this weekend and not the VT hills. 

At any time, if you want to discuss your own sales and marketing planning for the next 30 or 90 days or the rest of this year, just connect with me for some quick ideas and feedback. There's no cost to a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about this rapidly changing world of Sales.  

www.derbymanagement.com  

Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts. 

Snowing heavily at 6:00 this morning out by the Vermont barn, as I'm sure it is wherever you are here in New England.  Looks like 13-15" on the hill today, but unfortunately for me a packed day of sales calls and zooms.  When it snows, I always worry about the mechanics of dealing with it even with three snowblowers at various houses and a superb plow service from the team at Homestead up the road a piece.  It's just my normal belt and suspenders approach to way overthinking too many details.