Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

 

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, closing sales, Sales quota, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

Yesterday, returning from the Boston office to the NH beach, I just "stopped by" Market Basket in Portsmouth to pick up the standard "Extra Milk, Bread & Eggs."

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

Mid-January today, and already it seems like we’re deep into 2026. Certainly, it's deep into winta' weatha' this morning since when I left the NH beach at 5:00, it was all of 10 degrees with a wicked wind.  Normal New England weather following the natural rhythm of the NE seasons.

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Sales quota, Making Tough Choices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

Mid-December, with a ton of advance planning, I left the normal work rhythm of the NH beach, the Boston office and the final exams of Tufts and retreated to the woods of Vermont to focus on long overdue projects, planning for our upcoming 2026 sales and strategy meetings, and, of course, preparing the house for Christmas.

With boxes and more boxes of ornaments and cascades of tangled strings of lights themed around various colors trucked over from the studio, the house becomes a somewhat chaotic and mildly disorganized process that somehow always ends up in the right space.  

Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, Making Tough Choices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

As anyone who reads these weekly meanderings from the NH beach where I live, the Boston office where I work, the Tufts classroom where I learn or the general store in the town of Winhall, VT (pop. 769), seven days a week, I'm 95% focused on the mechanics, the math, the processes, the embedded exciting technologies, and...of course...the people of the sciences of Sales and Marketing!   

Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, A wonderfully warm and safe Christmas, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

You can make your own count this wicked cold morning as to whether the actual selling days left are either 7 or 9, but the reality is that the end of this year's quota is just about here, and the remaining tactics we have left are all about closing. 

There are actually 34 different tactics one can use to close a B2B order, but at this time of year, I find the most effective are:

A very simple tactic is to simply write a series of personalized emails tomorrow morning to your customers, your referral partners and to your prospects.  This does not need to be anything lengthy, but it does need to be human, so please stay away from the bland "Happy Holidays" and nothing else. 

 

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, A wonderfully warm and safe Christmas, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

I spend 30% of my 80-hour work weeks in Vermont, which I find is the perfect place for figuring out large projects, writing business plans and creating complex sales playbooks.  I enjoy the view out the office window and the ability to step outside and walk in my woodlot for 30 minutes when I get stuck. It's almost perfect...except for the heat problem.

Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

 

The headlines are clear: Gen Z is entering one of the toughest job markets in decades.

For graduating seniors, the path from campus to career looks very different than it did even two years ago.

Here are the facts, and why your help matters both for students and for your own business!

Tags: Sales Hiring Perfectly, Sales Hiring & Onboarding, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

Pretty much, the 3 days I need to be in Boston every week, I'm in the car at the NH beach at 4:00 AM for the 59-minute drive at an average 61 mph (with a powerful radar detector) to Boston. With the wicked Boston traffic, if I were to leave at 5:30, it would take 2 hours mostly at 15 mph on 93. 

I start my day in the gym at 5:30 on the treadmill reading the WSJ, and yesterday, I read this Interesting article about the shortage of AI expertise and that workers in Silicon Valley are pushing themselves to extremes.  Since counting time and figuring out the math of Sales is one of my passions, I looked back at the data that we've collected over the last 10 years on the number of hours that the top performing salespeople work.   

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2025SalesPlanning, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning

At Derby Management, the fall is always a very busy time working with management teams on overall strategy while taking a deep dive into the sales and marketing processes, the tools and the people upgrades that will need to be made in order to accomplish 2026 forecasts.

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Teaching at Tufts University, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning