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

Hopefully, everyone shoveled through Snowmaggedon 2026 without too much impact.  Here at the NH beach, with two driveways, two snowblowers, a plow service, and most importantly, two high school brothers who live down the street, we weathered also giving me time to talk with the boys about high school, summer jobs and college choices.

Tags: finding sales jobs, finding marketing jobs, Teaching entrepreneurship, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2026 Sales Planning, How to find the perfect job

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

Having struggled through the wonderful commute from Boston to the NH beach last night, I'm ready to declare that it is now officially winta'! 

6" at the beach, when I set off to Boston this morning after shoveling the driveway at 4:30. 

Driving in and out of Boston ...especially in the winta'...is all about the preplanning of one's schedules down to 30-minute time blocks. 

Exactly the same rhythm all of us in Sales need to be doing every day for the rest of this month!

Tags: Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2025 Business Planning, 2025MarketingPlanning, 2025SalesPlanning, 2026 Sales 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

 

Tags: Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, Making Tough Choices, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2025 Business Planning, 2025SalesPlanning, 2026 Sales 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