15 plus years ago, I learned the details of a new concept called "Inbound Marketing" from a young startup called Hubspot. Since I had known co-founders Brian and Dharmesh, I started to explore their website that first summer just after we moved to the NH beach. I was amazed that they were making all of their detailed content about these very different strategies to be used in Sales and Marketing available on their site for free. I actually kept wondering when Hubspot would email me with a large invoice for all the content i was using, and then I discovered that providing free expert content itself was one of the pillars of Inbound.
At the time, It made no sense to me to be giving away these jewels of expertise, but I would spend a couple of hours reading with the sun just coming up on the horizon at our new ocean house. I would then print everything out, load it into my beach bag and head out to the sand to devour what for me was an entirely new approach to sales and marketing than what I had learned as a salesguy.
Process, Tools, Technology & Math seemed to me to be much more practical than just "stopping by and bringing Dunkin' & Doughnuts"
Piece by piece over the next year, I began to put these theories into hard practices coupled with Hubspot technology and realized that we could dramatically increase sales productivity for our customers...assuming that they wanted to learn and practice the science...and the discipline...of Inbound.
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Tags:
HubSpot Tips,
Making Tough Choices,
Inboound,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning
Like many of you, I hunkered down for the past three weeks mostly working, plus I fully realized that anything I had to say in a business blog among a well-meaning tsunami of cards, emails and social posts focused on wonderfulness, warm wishes and joyful times would be not important in an important personal time.
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Tags:
Making Tough Choices,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
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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Tags:
Sales Best Practices,
Making Tough Choices,
Inboound,
Teaching entrepreneurship,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning
This is going to sell by itself!
Too many times, inexperienced entrepreneurs of all ages will use that deadly phrase. It reminds me of the old Ralph Waldo Emerson cliche of "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
In the cold reality of the science of entrepreneurship, most likely that path will be very narrow if it exists at all. As professional marketers, what we all want is for that small path to become a four-lane highway, and what we know is that will occur only through consistent marketing that doesn't talk about the product at all but highlights the value that the product brings. After all, we really don't need a better mousetrap; we just need to get rid of the mice quickly, efficiently and without looking at squished mice caught in an ugly trap.
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Tags:
Tufts marketing projects,
branding plans,
Making Tough Choices,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
2022 business planning,
entrepreneurshipfortherestofus,
Teaching entrepreneurship
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
The official summa' kicks off this Saturday, -which by the way, looks like a perfect weatha' day- and we welcome in this season of beaches, barbecues and barefootin'.
Most importantly, it's time to kick back a bit, take a breath, and simplify from what we've been through over the past 100 days. We need to take a break, or at least a partial break, from the pressures of the reality of the virus and from the stress of the unrest.
Given what's been going on around us and the financial realities of where we are, I expect that the word "vacation" may have a very different meaning during the Summa' of 2020. Having said that, we still need to take a break and shut things off for a day or five or a couple of weekends since it's going to be a long road ahead to get to "recovery" whatever the word means. We also need some time to get out of the day-to-day survival mode where we've been hunkered down for the last 100 days and think a bit more strategically about where we're going to be at the end of the next 100 days.
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Tags:
Sales Management Best Practices,
sales boot camps,
sales management boot camps,
Making Tough Choices,
how to write a sales plan,
2020 sales plans
Last night, I watched the documentary about the climber Alex Honnold, who is the star of Free Solo, the documentary about his ascent of El Capitan that won an Oscar last year.
El Cap is a 3,000ft sheer rock face in Yosemite, California, and he climbed it without a rope.
Although Alex is known in the public eye as a free solo-ist, most climbing he does takes place on a rope. He typically won’t free solo a difficult route until it’s been thoroughly rehearsed while attached to one.
So that’s what makes this photo here fun...and of course, here he’s roped in.
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Tags:
Sales Management Best Practices,
sales and marketing best practices,
sales management training,
selling skills,
sales training,
Making Tough Choices,
sales management productivity,
sales readiness
With last weekend's nasty weatha' at the NH beach and even more snow stopping my planned Saturday mornin' trip to Winhall/Bondville VT, I took the time to post to my 6,700 LinkedIn friends my "Six Best Sales Practices for Selling Normally in Abnormal Times",
This comes from a webinar with I shared with Laurie White, President of the Providence Chamber of Commerce, and her superb members.
I thought that the questions raised from these real-life business owners and salespeople were perfect examples of what it takes to work and survive on the front line in these chaotic times.
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Tags:
Making Tough Choices,
sales management productivity,
selling trust,
sales motivation,
2020 sales plans,
writing sales plans,
sales readiness
This is exactly where we hoped we would not be, and yet, here we are today in the belly of the beast.
Not many of us any longer are hoping that this situation will get better, since what we have experienced most recently in the harsh reality of the last seven days, clearly defines that the personal and business impact will become a lot worse before it improves. I am neither capable nor technically equipped to make any projections, and my personal business expectations are just as good or as bad as yours, but having said that, I, like you, run businesses and, like you, I'm a pragmatist, and I know that we are in this chaotic situation for a long time until vaccines hit the market.
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Tags:
improving sales productivity,
Making Tough Choices,
sales management productivity,
creating trust in sales,
2020 sales plans,
writing sales plans,
sales readiness
Typically, at this point in the selling season, I'd be writing this morning about the end of Q1, telling everyone to crunch it for this final week ahead, and begin prepping for the upcoming most important quarter in any selling year, But, not today!
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Tags:
business planning,
writing a business plan,
Making Tough Choices,
2020 business plans,
2020 sales plans,
writing business plans
