In a world... where we were struggling two years ago to figure out what "the new normal" would be, and, just when we thought we had done that, we were hit with ugliness of inflation, the media hype of recession, the invasion of Ukraine and now the tragedy of what is happening in the Middle East. The bottom line of this opening to this Friday's blog is that there's very little right now that any of us can do to change any of these outside influences on our businesses.
What we should be doing is to take rigid control of what we can control and reduce that to the simplicity of selling vanilla ice cream!
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Sales Best Practices,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
Just about 40 days!
Here we are already at the end of September!
"The A-Team" shows up at 7:00 AM tomorrow for the first of the fall "Big Cleans" in Vermont. A team of four to six men and women now in their late 20's who began this tradition with me when they were students at Green Mountain College up the road a piece in Poultney.
Very coincidentally, Green Mountain has come up numbers of times in my Vermont life. Decades ago, it was my first college teaching gig long before MIT and Tufts.
Poultney is a classic example of a picture-perfect small Vermont town, and it's where my father, grandfather and GGF and GGGF lived for generations of being entrepreneurs. It's in the blood!
With the leaf peeping season well underway, Saturday's A-Team will be back again at the end of October to do the final clean-up in the woodlot and stack the three cords that will get me through the winta'. In Vermont, the winta' comes early, and as my grandfather used to say, "there's 9 months of winta', 1 of mosquitos, and two of just bad sleddin'."
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Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
Results, Results, & More Results!
Ok, a good way to think on a rainy Tuesday morning as I head out to a day of meetings in Boston in a wicked busy week.
Finished my intro business planning class at MIT yesterday and while I'm thinking about my second class at Tufts tomorrow which is all about market research, today's focus is 100% on sales, and where I need to be by the end of December...only about 100 workdays away.
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Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
Sales quota,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
It's been a great summer!
Sure, like you, I've had way too much work, a couple of speedbumps here and there, the cancelled long-planned August trip back to Tanzania, and, of course, today the reality of the seasonal rhythm that shuts that door hard on the summa of '23! Different from my buddy, Red, whose comic strip I read whenever I can, the fall is a great time to be back at work and at school, to be healthy and looking forward to the busiest time in any business year,
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Sales Optimization,
Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
Rhythm
Most everything in business has a definitive rhythm. Every quarter is marked by various events of annual planning, budgeting, sales kickoffs, trade shows, and of course...summa' vacations, which no matter how carefully we plan around them, they always seem to impact our sales forecasts with delays.
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entreprenurial,
Sales Best Practices,
entrepreneurship,
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Teaching entrepreneurship,
Teaching at Tufts University,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center
The Dog Days of Summa are here in full force, and what are we already hearing since last week's turn of the calendar page?
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Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
best sales practices;,
business planning meetings,
entrepreneurshipfortherestofus,
Teaching at Tufts University,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
When I was in junior high school, it was obvious to me and to my parents that I was not doing well in math. As a result, every Saturday morning was spent at the house of Mr. Sampson, the head of the high school math department, who served as my tutor taking me from basic addition to more complicated algebraic formulas resulting in a slow rewiring of my brain. Math Saturdays took place all year including when the family returned from the beach in August, and I still remember walking back and forth to Mr. Sampson's house in the sweltering heat of the summer. To a large degree, the rewiring process worked...although not so well according to my CFO friends.
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Sales Best Practices,
HubSpot Tips,
Inboound,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Sales Planning
Welcome to the Summa!
Just a superb holiday period last week, as I took unfair advantage of the fact that I live on the NH beach by lugging my book-filled beach bag out the door every afternoon and laying claim to my time-tested perfect location of sand and surf.
- Perfect for catching up on my long list of required reading assignments
- Necessary for the final edits to the fall syllabus which went out on the 5th
- Relaxing from being at the tip of the spear for the last quarter.
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Sales Optimization,
Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
Sales quota,
Sales Leadership in the Revolution,
Tufts Entrepreneurship,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
Teaching at Tufts University,
2023 Business Planning
With the end of the Q just eight days away (don't plan on anyone working on the 30th before the July 4th weekend/holiday week), it's time to plan the second half of the sales year in terms of strategic focus and where I'm going to focus my management time and my limited budget. Do I focus on ...
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Sales Best Practices,
Sales Management Best Practices,
Making Tough Choices,
4th of July,
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts,
2023 Business Planning,
2023 Marketing Plans
