Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Just Three 2014 Things...

If there were just three things that you could improve on and be super successful at during 2014, what would they be?

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales boot camp, sales jobs, sales management boot camp, strategic planning, sales checklists

Just finished one of our two and a half day Sales Management Boot Camps, and right now I'm in the zone of somewhere between exhausted and excited.

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales management training, sales boot camp, sales enablment

 
Spectacular fall weather for selling and marketing stuff which also helped both my mind and body in completing the annual "Vermont Big Clean" last weekend.  Fueled by a small army of local high-school boys armed with rakes and a full array of mechanical things, we managed to clear out the summer gardens, rake up mountains of leaves and cut, split and stack a whole bunch of trees, bringing my theory of "a clean forest is a happy forest" to completion, once again. The picture above was taken up on the ridge in my woodlot after six trees were felled, sawed, hauled and split on Saturday morning.  Everything, neat and tidy-kind of the way that I think about a good end to a Sales quarter:

Tags: sales coaching, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp

Here in Vermont today dealing with yet another contractor issue. Had to take the day off from work, deal with Vermonters (said he lovingly being a 7th  generation Vermonter), and drive 6 hours back and forth. It is what it is, but the trip up late last night did remind me of this summer's hotly debated "Battle of the Winhall River" in the town.  

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales plan process, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp

It's been a really great summer !

Lots of work, lots of time to do "field research", and lots of time to think about the upcoming four months of Sales and Marketing activities between now and the end of the year. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp

 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp

 A couple of days last week I went over to Vermont,
 explored the woodlot up on the ridge and basically locked 
 myself away during all of that rain to do some intensive 
 work. As I was working on material for the fall semesters at
 Tufts and MIT along with the new content for our October
 Boot Camp, it led me to really, really appreciate the sun at
 the beach.  I love Vermont-7 generations and all that-but for
 the choice of VT mountains or NH beach in the summa', I'm
 choosing the NH beach. Just don't let any of the good ol'
 boys on the bench know about this down at the Winhall General Store since I may not be allowed to bring my trash to the dump (sorry, in proper Vermontese, I mean "transfer station").

I've been spending a lot of time this summer thinking through the decision makers on the other side of the table.  As a salesguy, coach, blogger, I'm typically focused on "our side of the table"

Tags: Sales Optimization, sales, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp, sales producitivity

 
 We're all squeezed for time. 

  No new news here.  We continuously balance our work and 
  personal time commitments.  We endlessly shuffle our
  schedules cutting off 15 minutes here and there to be able to 
 squeeze in another call, another meeting or just maybe a vacation day here and there.  We know that there is no such thing as Work-Life Balance except in the fantasy world of academics, and what always loses out in trying to create that balance is that over-rated sleep thing. 

Up at 4:00 yesterday, after a 2 hour trip, I found myself at a customer's at 8:00 and then spent the afternoon in Providence at a quarterly board meeting.  The company is doing great, and perhaps not coincidentally the meeting began and ended with comments from the senior management in this high-performing business about the fact that they were more stressed for time than ever before.  They commented that there customers' demands for their time were accelerating at a quicker pace and that those same customers were constantly being pressured themselves by their customers and the new normal of their retail markets for even quicker deliveries and faster design cycles. 

Arriving back in Boston just before a customer dinner at 7, I managed to squeeze in a few minutes with my friend Brian, a long term EVP at one of our customers.  With 5 weeks of vacation every year, he proudly told me that the only way that he had figured out how to use any of that time was to put himself on a regimen of taking Friday's off.  Cute idea, but in the reality of Brian's unforgiving schedule, let's see just how many weeks that works...as in NEVER!

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, Sales Management Best Practices, sales, sales management, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, closing sales, sales boot camp, sales management boot camp

Find any salesperson, woman or man, and you'll find a person who cares about their shoes.

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales tools, selling, sales management training, sales plans, sales boot camp, sales jobs, finding sales jobs, sales boot camps

Jack McAvoy, Lifeguard & Rock-Solid Marketing Guy!

A senior marketing executive at Parametric Technology, Jack and I met a few years ago out of our common love of caring for the beach.  Jack's been the senior lifeguard in Wallis Sands for a long time and is as passionate about taking care of this beach (Rated in the Top 5 cleanest beaches in the U.S. ) and its visitors as he is about the practice of marketing in the rapidly changing ecosystem of 2013. 

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, selling skills, sales boot camp, sales listening, best sales practices;