Two years ago, one of my Tufts Marketing alums asked me if I thought a part-time time interim gig job would be of value while she continued her still unsuccessful search following the rules of "The Marketing of Me".
I know her well and she had left a sports-related marketing position where there had been an unexpected big layoff, so I was overly cautious in my coaching.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
Leaving the NH beach yesterday for my standard weekly three-hour drive to the tiny village of Winhall, VT, I thought the geography switch would also let me switch from my passion for the science of sales to my love of marketing.
In my work with my partners at Derby Management and in my teaching alongside my 28 colleagues at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, I've always worked from one strategy for our clients and my students alike: make the complex simple. Simple enough that strategy drives to tactics, and tactics drive to actions — because only actions get results. In marketing and in sales, it's only the results that count.
Which is exactly why I wrote the free book The Marketing of Me, used thousands of times by my students and Tufts alums. Along with my other free How-To books on business planning, marketing, and the science of sales, it's built to give you detailed, actionable steps — and an excuse to connect with me during one of my many weekly commutes between Boston, NH, and VT.
Here's what good self-marketing looks like in practice. Take Abishek Verma, one of my A+ grad students — an exceptional guy looking for a role in Product Management or Operations, with proven expertise in agile methodology, roadmap planning, A/B testing, and a real depth of other skills. He does the things above: he translates his history into future value, he leads with specifics, he does the prep. Connect with him directly, or give me a call and I'll walk you through the details. An extraordinary young man.
That's it this Friday morning as I head out to the Winhall General Store for breakfast and back for an exciting day of sales calls.
So here's the Friday question: if a recruiter gave your resume seven seconds, what would they actually remember?
Enjoy the weekend!
Jack is a Managing Partner of Derby Management, a strategy consulting firm, and founder of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, where he has taught for 20 years. Every semester is significantly updated, with heavy emphasis in 2026 on AI in Marketing & Sales. At Derby Management, Jack and his team architect and build business strategies focused on sales and marketing processes, tools, and technology platforms.
www.derbymanagement.com | Derby Entrepreneurship Center at TuftsWhat I changed, quickly:
Fixed the two typos ("at for breakfast," and I left your cane line out of the post entirely since it was in your note to me). Tightened the "complex simple" sentence into the cascade it wants to be. Changed the resume stat to "six to seven seconds," which is the defensible eye-tracking figure. Reframed Abishek as the living example of the four things done right — now he's the payoff of the piece rather than an ad stapled to the end, and it makes your whole argument concrete. Added your reflective-question close tied to the seven-second stat.
The one thing still in your hands: confirm Abishek okayed a public post using his full name and job search. If he's currently employed, that matters even more. Everything else is ready to paste.
One small note for down the line — you mentioned mentoring "2,000 Tufts alums," which I softened to "some of the 2,000 I've taught" so it reads as cumulative rather than 2,000 active mentees. If the real number you mean is different, adjust to whatever's accurate.
Yes, abi is fine with this
Perfect — then you're clear to publish. Everything's ready to paste straight into HubSpot.
Have a great day of sales calls up in Winhall, Jack — and enjoy that General Store breakfast. Glad the cane's behind you.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, How to find the perfect job, The Marketing of Me, 2026 Sales Best Practices
First, and most importantly, I hope you had a superb July 4th holiday topped off by a successful end of the quarter.
In my last post on July 1st, I wrote about Ben Franklin, my favorite blogger, who — in addition to being an outstanding statesman — was just an exceptional sales and marketing guy.
At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which met in secret from May through September of that year, half of the delegates were under 40. Franklin was 81. A superb orator, he had written a compelling speech meant to rally his colleagues to sign the newly drafted Constitution they'd negotiated and battled over for four months behind closed doors. But due to his declining health, Franklin couldn't deliver it himself, so he passed that job to James Wilson, a fellow Pennsylvania delegate. Franklin wasn't about to waste the marketing opportunity, though: after the signing, two delegates put his speech into the Massachusetts and Maryland newspapers, from which it was reprinted up and down the country building the pressure that finally got the Constitution ratified in June 1788.
Yea, I know — a lot of history for a Friday before the weekend. But after binging 12 hours of Ken Burns' PBS documentary on the Revolution over the 4th, I was fascinated by just how much I didn't know.
That weekend, as I balanced my time between the air-conditioned house and the 100-degree beach outside the door, I found myself piecing together the various dates and the seasonal rhythms of the summer and winter campaigns, trying to make them line up. Here's an example: before that documentary, if you'd asked me how long the Revolutionary War lasted, I'd have said — embarrassedly — "around 5 years." In fact, it lasted 8.
For us in sales, we're not going into battle with our prospects and customers, but the discipline is the same: track your time exactly, know your available days to sell, and do the math on moving each deal from that first qualifying step through to a closed deal. It's all about managing your time and selling the business value.
For Franklin and his band of revolutionaries, the value was never the Constitution as a document — that was just the contract at the end. The real value was the political power it would secure for a few and the economic prosperity it would unlock for many, built on a newly discovered abundance of raw materials.
In our own lives as salespeople, having closed the first half with lots of points on the board, it's time to take a deep dive with the team this Monday and plan out, in detail, the next 58 available-days-to-sell in Q3. And before you get comfortable with 58...or you just round it up to a cozy 60, you need to subtract the equivalent of 5ish days caused by the reality that some of those critical people that you need are going to be on vacation.
As you go through your Beginning-of-the-Quarter Meeting next week, here are a few things to consider and hand out as assignments, to be worked during the balance of the week and reported back on Monday the 20th:
Just maybe, on this beautiful Friday morning here in Vermont — where I arrived at 6:00 for a day of sales calls, I've overstepped on the war-and-sales comparison. War and selling aren't the same thing, but one of the primary metrics we measure ourselves by every month is Wins & Losses.
So, as we count these next 58 days, just like General Washington winning the Revolutionary War, success will come to those of us who plan the best while demonstrating the most continuous leadership over time.
Have a great week next week putting points on the board while planning out the details for your wins!
Jack is a Managing Partner of Derby Management, a strategy consulting firm, and founder of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University, where he has taught for 20 years. Every semester is significantly updated, with heavy emphasis in 2026 on AI in Marketing & Sales. At Derby Management, Jack and his team architect and build business strategies focused on sales and marketing processes, tools, and technology platforms.
| www.derbymanagement.com | Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts
Tags: 4th of July, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
I'm always driven by the natural timing of the seasons and how they line up with the quarterly rhythms of running any successful sales and marketing machine. With the Summer Solstice arriving this past Sunday at 4:21 AM to announce the official start of summer, and the end of Q2 now just six days out, it's time to step back, review where we've been since January, and lay out a specific plan for July, August, and September.
First, I block out vacation. As much as I love the work at the firm and my teaching at Tufts and MIT, the first thing I did a month ago was strike out summer vacation time. Living on the NH beach with regular travel to the house in VT keeps the logistics simple... though I'll admit I still start most days with some office time. My heavy blocks are the first two weeks of July (especially this year, for the nation's 250th) and the last two weeks of August.
Second, I fill in teaching time. Tufts and MIT class days for the balance of the year, with office hours built around each.
Third, I fill in board meetings.
With those three locked, I assess what's actually left in Q3 and Q4, run a rough calculation of the hours owed to existing clients on existing projects, and what remains is the real number in available selling time for the rest of the year both for me personally and for everyone in the firm.
Our business as management coaches in strategy, sales, and marketing is relatively simple. It runs on available hours in a defined market and a geography focused on New England and New York. Yours is far more complex — more products, more services, more functions, more people. Which is exactly why you need to do this same assessment right now. What's the available time left in the quarter, measured against where you stand on quota, measured against vacations and what is always a punishing September.
And keep this in mind while you're counting your own hours: your customers and prospects are counting theirs at the same time. A recent Q2 Gartner survey in their Q2, 2026 "The CSO Report" shows that customers increasingly expect salespeople to do three things: (1) establish personal and corporate trust, (2) lead with financial value for them rather than product and services, and (3) stay genuinely available in a 24/7 environment.
What's your real available selling time between now and December 31, and does your plan match it?
Have a superb day selling today!
Now's THE Time to dive into your Sales planning for what lies ahead in Q3!
Think about taking a full day in August or September to commit to updating your Sales Playbook for the balance of 2026. Just connect with me at jack@derbymanagement.com, or give me a call, and we can discuss a few ideas.
"Writing the Winning Sales Plan"
"Writing the Winning Business Plan"
www.derbymanagement.com
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Business Planning, 2026 Marketing Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
30 years ago, I was sitting in an MIT lecture hall on a Saturday morning, when I first heard the word "disintermediation" from one of the founders of what is now Silicon Valley. I did not attend MIT, but as an English major from BC, I was fascinated by the sound of the word and its alliteration. As a techy nerd, who at that time had already been using Arpanet for 5 years, I sat there fascinated by the potential scope of what was to come.
The evolution that did take place giving birth to the launch of the web, Mosaic and Netscape was glacially slow by today's AI standards, but the word itself (dis-in-ter-mee-dee-ey-shuhn) has stuck with me in my lifelong pursuit of the science of sales.
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, 2026 Sales Best Practices
