The Rhythm of the Seasons

Surprise!  Surprise!
The leaves are falling in Vermont!  

When I was in in Vermont last weekend cranking up the leaf blower, I realized that the natural rhythm of the Fall was well underway. 30% early color in my woodlot and lots of buses full of leaf-peepers. Stratton's ad this morning featuring this picture marketing the fall festival next weekend and early discounts on ski passes made it official for me. 

 In the very unique state of Vermont, 25% of the annual tourism dollars happen in the next two or three weeks with busses from Ohio rolling in daily filled with seniors waiting to buy tiny, overpriced jars of maple syrup.  Right now, the rhythm of the seasons in Vermont is all about marketing as it should be!

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Tags: sales and marketing best practices, how to write a business plan, improving sales productivity, how to write a marketing plan, how to write a sales plan, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2025 Business Planning

Myth: If you build a better mousetrap, they will come.

We've all heard the adage about the better mousetrap and buyers beating a path to the door.  In fact, the U.S. patent office over the years has issued more than 4,400 patents for "better" mousetraps, and my guess is that over my years of owning houses, my choices always seem to come down to two: the old-fashioned, dangerous, lose-your-finger, spring traps and the myriad of make-you-cringe newer glue traps.  4,400 ideas reduced to just a couple of choices and actual buying decisions typically being made in the aisles or on the websites of Home Depot and ACE based on colors, brand names, fonts, images of dead critters, and anonymous reviews citing "better, "faster" and "more humane".   

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Tags: HubSpot Tips, how to write a marketing plan, Making Tough Choices, how to write a sales plan, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, Teaching entrepreneurship, 2023 Business Planning, 2023 Sales Planning, 2023 Marketing Plans

The 10 Must Do's in your Job Hunt

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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Tags: how to write a marketing plan, Sales Hiring & Onboarding, 2020 business plans, 2020 sales plans, 2022 business planning, 2022 sales planning, 2022businessplansuccess, entrepreneurshipfortherestofus, Teaching entrepreneurship, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts, 2023 Business Planning

Tufts Entrepreneurship births a Juice Company

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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Tags: how to write a marketing plan, jack derby professor at Tufts, marketing planning, Tufts Entrepreneurship, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022 business planning, entrepreneurshipfortherestofus, Teaching entrepreneurship, Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts

Just what is "Value Marketing & Selling"?

"We've spent a lot of money on consultants that have not come close to the value received from your Tufts students working with us this semester!"   

What's above is a direct quote this week from the VP of Marketing of a well-established healthcare analytics company with deeply experienced management and this was his comment to me and his project team upon completing their 13-week semester.  

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Tags: sales coaching, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, marketing effectiveness, how to close sales, Tufts marketing projects, interns for marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, how to write a sales plan, sales readiness, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022businessplansuccess

5 things you need to know for your presentation success

This past Wednesday was the last class for the semester. 

What now remains are the final presentations from the six teams of juniors and seniors to the management of their respective companies.  This is a very demanding course in which I, my four TAs and seven outside lecturers, all alums from this course, provide deep technical content on the science of marketing structured around the student teams delivering full marketing plans based on the objectives provided by their companies.  The TAs and I provide 60% of the project grade while the senior management provides the remaining 40%.  For me, it's a perfect blend of introducing my students to the real world of business structured on the same sales and marketing principles of "Process-Tools-Technology-Math & People" that we use in our consulting practice.  If you're interested in participating in a marketing project for the fall semester, just connect with me.  All of this blends together perfectly with the added benefit that my students are able to select from 40-50 job offers each semester mostly from prior alums from this course.  

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Tags: closing sales, Tufts marketing projects, free marketing projects from universities, student intern marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, marketing planning, writing sales plans, delivering great presentations, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts, 2022businessplansuccess

What the heck is marketing anyhow?

The end of the day on Thursday found me starting to write this morning's blog on a classic VT spring day:

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, how to close sales, Tufts marketing projects, free marketing projects from universities, how to write a marketing plan, marketing planning, 2022 sales planning, 2022businessplansuccess

Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth!

That phrase about planning comes from the infamous Mike Tyson decades ago, and it came immediately to mind over the last two weeks as I listened to the unfolding 5G fiasco after ten years of planning for a much-anticipated rollout. 

Tyson's plan was always to be to be the brawler, the bruiser, the biggest and ultimately the baddest guy in the ring which he demonstrated to the extreme by biting off the ear of Evander Holyfield in a title fight.  Not much of a plan, but maybe it was.

More importantly to the fiasco of the 5G plan...
 

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Tags: sales and marketing best practices, how to write a business plan, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan, how to write a sales plan, writing sales plans, 2022 business planning, 2022 sales planning

Are you Orvis or Carhartt?

Working in Boston, now back traveling to the offices of our clients, teaching at Tufts, hanging out in NH, and digging in the dirt and snow of Vermont, I go through lots of different clothes, boots, shoes and jackets.  Like you, I greatly appreciate quality, style and especially value in what I wear and the cars I drive, which is why I drive a Subaru Outback most of the time.  When it comes to clothes and shoes, being a Vermonter I love both the brands of Orvis (the headquarters is just down the road a piece) and Carhartt (the basic uniform of most Vermonters).  

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan

The problem is actually making the marketing choices!

Discussing marketing is fun, until we need to decide...

"Discussing" Marketing is exciting, challenging and lets our brains run free...at least that is until we need to make the choices of what we need to do in order to move ahead.  And today, given the hundreds of both strategic and tactical choices available to us in both Sales and in Marketing, the task often seems to be overwhelmingly difficult.  Actually, that's not the case compared to making choices about...for instance...milk.  

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing management, Tufts marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, Making Tough Choices, marketing planning, sales management productivity