Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

To a boring fault, I am all about planning...

Tags: sales plans, business coaching, strategic planning, Tufts marketing projects, Tufts internships, student intern marketing projects, interns for marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning

With teaching every Wednesdays at Tufts, I always have a process (should not be surprising to anyone who knows me) to making sure that everything is in place since I well know by now that both time and students are unforgiving.

Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, Tufts marketing projects, free marketing projects from universities, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan, entrepreneurship, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center

I attended the Tufts graduation this past weekend

Tags: marketing projects, free marketing projects from universities, interns for marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, marketing planning, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, 2020 business plans

Positive or negative, emphatic or weak, powerful or not, you and I are brands!  

The fact that you're reading this post means that you have already defined some level of brand for me.

• It could be the Professor Guy, the Vermont Guy, the Sales & Marketing Guy, the NH Surfing Guy, the management consultant guy...or someone else.  The fact is that when you read this post, which now has close to 10,000 subscribers, or you connect with me by phone, text or email, immediately, for a few synapses of a few seconds, you've defined me as a brand.
• Similarly, for that instant when we do connect, I immediately associate a defined brand for you.  First, for a few milliseconds, I immediately categorize you as a student, a customer, a partner, a prospect or an investment, and then in that same instant, I picture (not really an image, but a composite video blur of a photo, a voice, a job, and an attribute into a definition of you as a brand.

What's the largest selling cereal in the U.S.?

Even with cereal sales slightly declining, Cheerios again and again, tops the list in market share with a strong commanding need.  Even though the specific sub-brand of Honey Nut Cheerios leads the overall family of the various Cheerios brands, in general, the brand reaction that we all instantly make follows a connected chain of links that leads to their well marketed value proposition...

- Cheerios is made from oats

Tags: branding plans, how to write a marketing plan, how to brand, Sales Hiring & Onboarding, marketing planning, sales management productivity

13 Weeks Later @ Tufts

• I start looking for new sales & marketing projects on 10/01 and 5/1
• The syllabus w/projects are sent out on 12/26 and 07/05
• 6 marketing & 4 sales projects for 2 very oversold courses
• 1 week later, the newbies need to tell me which project and why
• Bios are circulated to me and teams of 5-6 are formed
• Reading and research begins 30-45 days before class begins
• 13 weeks later, complete plans are presented to management

On the last day of the course in the last 15 minutes, I talk about, 'Jack's 3 Rules'

Rule # 1:  Connections are Forever

Make all the connections that you possibly can.  Cherish them.  Treat each of them with extraordinary care.  Store them, use them and communicate to them all of the time in LinkedIn, Twitter, FB and Insta.  Never let those connections go stale and unused!

This week, I met with David K. in my office at Tufts.  Haven't seen David, a brilliant product/market genius, president-level guy in 15 years since we sold EarCheck, a wonderful startup, founded by Sandra Kimball, where I was CEO and Dave was a critical part of our success.  David's daughter is now at Tufts, and he found me when I made some recent noise at Tufts...which I often do, so he stopped by to chat.

Dave and I played the "whatever happened to..." game for 15 minutes, and he mentioned a critical person on our EarCheck team.  While Dave was sitting there, I looked up that person on LI, and we talked about how important our success was due to that person.

Two hours later, I was talking to one of my seniors about a potential job.  She mentioned the company, which seemed very familiar, and then I realized that the familiarity was because I had just pinged the company two hours before when David and I were reminiscing about "whatever happened to?".  My student now has an interview next week with that long lost person, who is the president of that company.

In life, in business, in love and in family, cherish your connections!

Rule # 2: Learning is Consistently Continuous

Each semester-now 20 years at MIT and 10 at Tufts-I realize just how much I don't know. 
At the end of every semester, I tell my students that everything which had been learned over the prior 13 weeks, is on that last day, obsolete.

Whether you're 21 or 33 (the age now of my oldest Tufts alums) or 43 or 53, to be in business at any level, I believe that you must consistently push yourself to learn more, to study more, and to test yourself all of the time. 

I read a book a week, and in the summer often two.  I'm fascinated by the intersection of technology in Healthcare and in Sales and Marketing, and I like nothing more than exploring new apps and platforms.  My Summer Beach Bag is filling up quickly, and below you will find two new MUST READS if you want to push your own world of Sales & Marketing.

Summer reading

Tags: marketing projects, sales management effectiveness, Tufts marketing projects, student intern marketing projects, how to write a marketing plan, jack derby professor at Tufts, sales plans for 2018, Tufts Entrepreneurship

Teaching Marketing at Tufts... 

• A consistent search for real life Marketing & Sales Plan projects for my students
• 5-6 person teams work for 13 weeks on complex marketing and sales plan assignments
• All of our academic content is woven into these assignments from real companies
• I teach the tools; company management provides the real life experiences

The results are very positive and dynamically exciting from everyone involved

Tags: sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, marketing effectiveness, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan, sales management plans, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning, sales management productivity

Companies face an enormous challenge trying to stay on top of marketing trends and finding new ways to increase lead generation.  When working with our clients to develop their marketing strategy and/or write their marketing plan we are always working to determine how to reach the right target audience, with the right message and generate the most MQL's (Marketing Qualified Leads).  One key strategy is always leveraging LinkedIn Groups to push out content to strategically targeted groups. This is a great way for companies to use existing content like blogs, white papers, Press Releases and push them out to the right audiences to increase lead generation.

 

Tags: marketing, how to write a marketing plan, SEO, Inboound

Learn a little about Sales, learn a lot about Sales...everyday

   

Tags: sales, business planning, how to write a business plan, Tufts Marketing, marketing interns, marketing plans, how to write a marketing plan