Last week, I noted with great pride that Pitchbook's annual university rankings of the top producers of U.S. venture capital-backed startup founders listed Tufts in its top 50 universities in the country! Great to be listed alongside other MA-based universities like MIT, Harvard and BU, who also made the top 50. For me as a Tufts professor, this listing drives directly to the overarching mission of Tufts and its uniqueness to actively promote innovation and research across all of our 11 schools.
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how to write a business plan,
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2023 Business Planning,
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2023 Marketing Plans
Never a great math student in junior high school, I was shipped off by my parents to a math tutor every Saturday morning for my time spent in the 8th grade. No wonder I was never one of "the cool kids"...plus I played clarinet in the band. I do wish now that I could thank them profusely for that decision to enlist Mr. Sampson for those fundamental lessons in the basics of math. Today, in my love of "The Science of Sales" (the title of one of my Tufts courses at The Derby Entrepreneurship Center,) much of what I do in the world of improving sales productivity comes down to the math of understanding:
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When I returned from a couple of years in the Peace Corps, it was relatively easy for me to find a job...even given the fact that I had zippo experience in business and only an undergraduate degree from BC with a major in English. No one really cared about the degree or my skills; they just wanted to hear about the Peace Corps. One of my primary takeaways from those early years working first at Honeywell in their newly launched memory chip initiative and then at Becton Dickinson in their medtech division was the criticality of time management.
Maybe, it was my inherent drive to make sure that I could stay ahead of the curve working with really bright manufacturing and engineering types, or maybe it's just the way I'm wired, but I've become highly focused and highly protective of my own time and that of the teams I work with both in my consulting role and at Tufts.
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2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
I was sitting in a board meeting two weeks ago-great company and a superb team of directors and management-when one of the directors used this phrase of "no profit, no mission".
That quick comment crystallized for me in an instant that exacting balance we want to achieve in all our companies between "doing good" and "making money". In fact, in this particular company, we're a public corporation that manufactures specialty chemicals, so immediately one would think "well, there's an immediate problem with doing any good". The reality, however, is totally the opposite:
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Last night in watching the first 5 minutes of the national ABC news, the "I" word was mentioned 9 times
Bloomberg this morning was not much better with everyone focused on today's 8:30 retail sales data.
Technically, given the clinical definition of a recession, we were at that point at the end of Q2, but it was decided to "adjust" the definition a bit.
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Tomorrow morning I'll send out my normal Friday blog on an issue that I am increasingly very concerned about which is that it seems to me that we are rapidly talking our way into the downward spiral of a recession and a very cold winter. That's for tomorrow!
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2023 Marketing Plans
I love Tufts where I teach a course in Marketing and another in "The Science of Sales". Actually, considering the method that I use, both courses are deep into the engineering and analytics of their respective disciplines and follow a consistent thread of "Process-Tools-Technology-Metrics & People". Totally integrated into the courseware of building detailed marketing and sales plans for real companies, is the corresponding rigor of "The Marketing of You", where everyone needs to develop their personal Value Propositions for jobs.
Most importantly, at Tufts, we have a superb Career Center with very highly experienced leadership and hands-on advisors who really care about their work.
At this time, given 1,500+ alums who have gone through my courses, many of whom are now managers and looking to hire my recent graduates, plus a very wide network of thousands of business and investor connections, we can open a lot of job opportunities ranging from companies the size of Hubspot to Deloitte and Amazon down to tiny startups. The process is fun, often complex in a marketing sense, which makes it more fun, and, most importantly, very rewarding!
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2022 sales planning,
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entrepreneurshipfortherestofus,
Teaching entrepreneurship,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning
A crisp 55 in the Seaport where I am at 7 this morning. Probably 45 down at the Winhall General Store in Vermont and just cold enough to start planning seriously about filling up the woodshed. While the weatha’ dictates my long list of Fall "To-Dos" that need to be done at the NH beach and in the VT hills, with only five more selling days left in the Q, quota success for the balance of this year is all about detailed account planning:
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Tufts marketing projects,
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2022 business planning,
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Teaching at Tufts University,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning
In my 9 prior startups where I've been a founder/co-founder, they've all been in software or healthcare. Those are comfortable markets where I have backgrounds, plus I personally enjoy the complexities of building go-to-market marketing and sales plans in these demanding markets. My forays into consumer products have been limited to a medtech product sold in chain pharmacies and to outerwear apparel working with the genius of legendary CB Vaughn at CB Sports.
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how to write a marketing plan,
jack derby professor at Tufts,
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2022 business planning,
entrepreneurshipfortherestofus,
Teaching entrepreneurship,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts
