With the Yankees showing up tonight at Fenway at 7:10 to take on the Sox, let me shift away from my last Friday's blog comparing being half way through the baseball season to being half way through the Sales year and focus on the Patriots on this superb summa' morning.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, The Competitive Edge, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2024 Marketing Planning
I trust that everyone had a fun and relaxing 4th and was able for a day or two to leave behind the pressures of the office, quotas, politics and geo-turmoil and focus on celebrating this most important holiday with family and friends. For me, I retreated to my tiny Vermont town of Winhall (pop. 769) where my major decisions came down to painting the second floor deck of the studio and whether it was worth the two mile drive to the general store for milk, or could it wait for another day?
The answers were that the painting could not wait, but the trip to the Winhall General Store was put off for multiple days. It must be something in the Vermont air because the entire state of Vermont...along with Bernie Sanders... operates at its own pace and nothing a flatlander does or says is going to make any difference in terms of political or financial impact. Even with 7 generations of Vermonters surrounding me, I always remember "my place" since I was born on the south side of Chicago and grew up in Boston's suburbs even through 5 generations before me were "true' Vermonters".
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, HubSpot Tips, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
Tough loss last night for the Celts. The most polite word, I read this morning in The Globe and heard on 'BZ was "blowout".
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
The U.S. economy keeps throwing up surprises, so those of us who are the managers of smaller and mid-market companies are left scratching our heads trying to figure out what's behind this and more importantly what are we to do.
Let's take a look at what we see happening:
Tags: 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
Just a superb win last night!
Can't say enough about the game and, more importantly, the various sports reporters are saying and showing it this morning better than I could ever do.
On to Sunday!
Tags: HubSpot Tips, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Sales Planning, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
No, I am definitely not going to ask this morning that question of whether Mr. Trump's conviction yesterday will make any difference in the election, or will it be simplified to a "So What?" and the election discussion moved to inflation, the border and the budget. One thing we've learned early as salespeople is never to get involved in any discussions about politics. One basic rule is that it's none of my business, and two, as a salesguy, I'm 100% focused on selling VALUE that fits my specific persona, whether that person is a new prospect or an existing customer. I simply cannot afford to be sidetracked or fall down the rabbit hole of politics!
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
Every spring, everything tumbles and crashes into one another in our business. It's merely the rhythm of our consulting business when the excitement and optimism of the annual January sales meetings meets the reality of Q1 sales forecasts measured against actual results Sometimes up, sometimes down, but never exactly as was planned, which then results in increased business for us at the firm. It's just the rhythm of our business which always seems to align itself with the seasonal calendar rhythms of the year.
Add to this cyclical rhythm the reality that the implementation of any new sales or marketing plan will always take a minimum of 90 days before any results are seen, which is why we always focus on Q2 as being the most important quarter of the year. By the month of May, we know what's working and what's not, and there's still plenty of time to make adjustments that will pay off in Q4.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, HubSpot Tips, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
I'm love being a salesguy!. I love what we do in our consulting practice working with companies in the rapidly changing environments of Sales and Marketing, plus the fact that I can explore those practices even more intently by teaching both subjects at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts provides a perfect flywheel of experiences with highly positive results. Personally, I can take out of the classroom and labs new ideas and bring them into our customers while many of our customers take advantage of three-month deep dives in perfecting their planning with my student teams of juniors, seniors and grad students.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Sales Hiring Perfectly, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 Sales Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
Not sure how we got here so quickly, but here we are at the 12th week of a 13 week semester with all that's left being the end-of-semester final Marketing presentations of the student teams to their company managers over the period of the next two weeks. Those 90 minute presentations accompanied by detailed marketing plans account for 40% of the students' semester grade, and that 40% is determined by the company manager graded on the basis of how the student teams of five or six met their objectives. All very exacting, all very real-world, all real-life detailing of Marketing strategies, tactics and accompanying expenses. The reality of the hard work accomplished by the students is what's exciting for me and keeps me motivated.
It's been a demanding, complex, fun and very exciting semester The Science of Sales course has one more content week, and then their final presentations and detailed sales plans will unfold through the balance of the month into the first week of May.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
This afternoon's Finals of the Tufts $100K Business Plan Competition started with 100s of February applications and countless hours of expert advice from hands-on-coaches which then moved to 30 Semi-Finalists three weeks ago and today will come down to the judging of 15 finalists for all of the marbles. Along that path, our distinctive expertise in applying our own brand of "Entrepreneurship for the Rest of Us"is the uniqueness that we provide at The Derby Entrepreneurship Center.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2024 Business Planning, 2024 Marketing Planning
