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
During a "normal" non-Summa' work week, I spend 20-25 hours in traffic commuting from the NH Beach to the Boston office or to Tufts. It is what it is in America's worst city for traffic and accidents. In the world of "Things That You Don't Need to Know", Boston drivers are 244% more likely to get into a collision than the national average. This year for me has been especially "interesting" with 24,000 miles added on already through July plus a major repair caused by my losing argument with a concrete post in the Tufts parking lot.
Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
Nothing is more definitive than the scorecard at the end of the season for any professional sport. Right now, with the wicked one-point loss for the Celtics to the Knicks on Wednesday night, they're in a tough come-from-behind situation for Saturday afternoon's game at MSG. The absolute metrics of the losses are bad enough, but the giving up of 20-point leads in both games says that there's something terribly wrong with the team. Metrics tell it all...all the time!
Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Management Best Practices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
I trust that everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend and enjoyed the perfect spring weather, fun family gatherings and a special time to reflect.
On this Easter Sunday, I found myself on the NH beach at sunrise realizing once again that in the environment surrounding me, the only opportunities I can personally impact are those where I can take specific actions to impact specific change. I like to make the complex simple, which is difficult, so I bring it down to my own points of interest where I can personally make a difference.
What I certainly cannot do is to impact the tide coming in or the sun rising. Similarly, I can't impact geopolitics or make any meaningful difference to the general economy, tariffs or political infighting. That being said, what I can do is take immediate action right now to impact revenue growth in my own company! What I know from a lengthy list of unexpected disasters, recessions and global wars over decades of running businesses is that now is the time to take action to grow revenue and not retrench and hunker down.
Tags: Making Tough Choices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
Is it just "the older me", or did others of you grow up with the following little poem that is right now rattling through my head this cold and rainy classic Vermont Spring morning?
Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is.
They say the birdies on the wing, but that’s absurd.
I always thought the wing was on the bird.
Tags: Sales Management Best Practices, Sales quota, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
Happy Valentine's Day!
Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Sales Hiring Perfectly, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
Every week, I shuffle between living on the NH beach, working in Boston, teaching at Tufts and spending weekends in Vermont. Lots of miles on the car, a good time for customer and student calls, and always an opportunity to think about planning ahead. In a month like January when we're kicking off sales meetings and working through the details of territory plans, account plans and commission plans, since I'm a planning kinda guy, I thought I'd have some fun this morning and introduce you to the art and science of what it takes to plan ahead when one heats their house with a woodstove which is what I do in Vermont.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2024 sales and marketing best practices, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
Just as in all sports, nothing is more measurable than our end of year scorecards for how we did overall in our businesses and especially in our measurements of revenue and bottom line. Everything is on some sort of a scoreboard, and whether it's the Celtics, Bruins and Patriots, or it's in our yearend results to our shareholders and investors, or it's in the semester's grading for my students, there's no sense in playing any game, studying in any course or working in any company without a scorecard! It would be like playing tennis without a net.
Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning
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
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
