So, just what is marketing anyhow?

It's already the third week of my classes at MIT where I teach business planning and marketing, and at Tufts where I teach classes in Marketing and in the "Science of Sales". We're now ready this coming week to jump from knee-deep-testing-the-waters-concepts to full immersion in the reality of my methodology of teaching "Process-Tools-Technology-People & Math" and wrapping those mechanics into the practice of Sales and Marketing.  

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, meeting networking, free marketing projects from universities, student intern marketing projects, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning, writing sales plans, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts

This year starts right now...

Summa's over, kids are back in school, vacation days are behind us until the end of the year, and we're back at it moving at 100mph, working hard, fingers in the crankcase oil, making sure the machine works perfectly between now and December.   Different from Red above, for me personally, September through December is always the most exciting part of any year, and especially this year:

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Tags: sales coaching, marketing effectiveness, sales management boot camps, improving sales productivity, Tufts ELS program, entrepreneurship, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning, writing business plans, freedom

For planning for '22, first enjoy this weekend!

Just before we jump into the deep end of the pool next Tuesday, it might be worthwhile to think about approaching this year's planning season by looking out over two horizons and dividing your business plan into both the first and second halves of 2022.

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Tags: sales planning, marketing effectiveness, business planning, how to close sales, marketing planning, writing sales plans, writing business plans, 2022 business planning

David Meerman Scott says it best about finding time

My relationship with David goes back a decade plus when I fell across his iconic The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which, for me and my students became our bible of change.  Now having written its 7th edition, David always continues to rapidly evolve and extend that misunderstood word "Marketing" from what we used to think about marketing and PR to now the the colliding worlds of Content Marketing, Podcasting, Social Media, AI, Live Video, and Newsjacking.  For me, I've always followed the most simple definition of Marketing, which I learned from my other folk hero, Regis McKenna, in his ageless HBR essay Marketing is Everything, which when one does not overthink this word, "marketing" is just an exceptional definition.

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, business planning, marketing plans, marketing planning

9 to 5 ???  Are you still using typewriters also?

I enjoy receiving the HBR's "Management Tips of the Day" around 7:00 AM every morning.  First, I've been an avid reader of everything HBR ever since my first job as a purchasing expeditor at Honeywell, and second, it's one of those instant pop-ups that takes 10 seconds to read and often stimulates an idea or two.  My initial reaction was the headline that I then wrote for this blog since most probably none of us have ever worked in a 9-to-5 environment... certainly not as salespeople,  certainly not as entrepreneurs, and most probably just never in any position at any company we've worked in.

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Tags: sales coach, sales effectiveness, marketing effectiveness, how to close sales, sales boot camps, sales success, marketing planning, Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts

Do you have a minute?

Think about...for just a minute...how many times you will hear that phrase today at work. 

Of course, this weekend you will be reintroduced to a slightly modified version from your partner in words such as "I only need you to help me for 5 minutes."   The reality is that in all of our work, in our family lives, and in our social environments, time is the number one denominator that factors above everything else since it is totally inelastic.  

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Tags: sales and marketing best practices, marketing productivity, marketing planning, writing your 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

If it's April 16th, must be snowin' in VT

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

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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

just how do you want your spaghetti cooked?

Rising through the ranks from Manufacturing to Engineering to Operations and then through a battlefield promotion to division president, I never stopped along that path to learn anything about Sales or Marketing. I've always been a process, tech, time-management and metrics guy, and back-in-the-day, the world of Sales seemed to revolve around travel, food, and golf, none of which I do very well.  Marketing to me back then was even more confusing since it was simply expensive black magic.   

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Tags: marketing productivity, marketing management, how to write a sales plan, marketing planning, Selling Successfully in a Covid World, planningsalestodayinacovidworld

Ben Franklin...the original blogger

Yes, it's the end of a week, and right in line with our weekly Friday morning blog, and since it's been a blogging kind of week, I thought that I would share a couple of insights into why we consider blogging the most critical #1 Inbound Marketing tool!   

First, some basic definition, and although I live in an Inbound Marketing world and personally love blogging, I frequently get asked "just what is a blog?".  More often than not, I find out that the vast majority of small and mid-size companies don't blog at all...although a senior manager I might be talking to "has been thinking about it" for some time.

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Tags: marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, marketing planning, bloggingacriticaltool