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

Bayer?  Beah?  Bare?  Bear?  Gotta use the same language!

It's been a superb summa' so far.  Rain or shine, I don't really care; all I know is that any day from May through September beats February in Vermont!

A typical week has me working from NH the first half of the week and then mid-Wednesday afternoons I take  the red summa' car to let the ponies run on the three hour drive to Vermont. I typically work from the VT house for the balance of the week returning to the NH beach at some point depending on the weatha'.

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Tags: sales coaching, Sales Management Best Practices, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management boot camp, how to close sales, sales success, how to write a sales plan

...just plain ol' Vermont grit

Vermont is a tiny state with a very diverse grouping of residents.  I'm not talking here about the 13 "gold towns" inappropriately named by an infamous prior governor who overtaxed the flatlanders who came to VT to ski.  I'm also not talking about Burlington where 50% of the population lives. To know the real Vermont, one needs to get down into the dirt and understand their own grit and exceptionally hard work. 

When one takes a look at the stats, it almost defies logic of why the state even exists...except for grit.

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Tags: sales coaching, sales plan process, sales management boot camp, how to close sales, Tufts marketing projects, student intern marketing projects, how to write a sales plan, sales effectivness, Tufts Entrepreneurship Center

Gotta Love April!

Gotta love April !!!   

Hard to believe, but here we are, one year later in a very different spring of positive outlooks and what will become a roaring economy on the back half of this year.  Still a bit stressed, but much less so, and, as sales pros, we're always thinking through what the quarter ahead is going to look like. This is always the excitement and the challenge of being a Sales leader. Just like any  professional athlete, even with consistent training and exacting playbooks, we never exactly know what the end game or the final points on the scoreboard will be.    

Just ask either side on the women's final basketball championship last week between Arizona and Stanford.  

 

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Tags: sales coaching, sales management coach, sales enablement, closing sales, how to close sales, improving sales productivity, sales success, how to write a sales plan, planningsalestodayinacovidworld

So, you want to blog?  Here's 3 winning tactics from my students

 

Last week, I mentioned that Brian Bresee, an alum from our marketing course, and now Hubspot's North America's Director of Partnership Sales, provides a lecture every semester starting with an outline of Inbound Marketing. 

Brian and I met 11 years ago at Tufts, became friends with a common love of being on the Vermont snow.  After graduating, he worked for one of my companies as a BDR, moving to Hubspot 10+ years ago and has become a highly valued Tufts Lecturer in my courses for the last 8 years.  Brian provides content and Hubspot platforms for our course and has become a coach for numbers of my students who want to move into a sales role.  Same way that I coached Brian a decade ago, which is all about giving back to our Tufts students through our alums.

          

Brian masterfully brings the strategy of Inbound right down to the reality of teaching the specifics of blogging to junior and seniors who have marketing plans to deliver to real companies in just 10 weeks from now.

For me, having been a writer of books, newsletters, magazine and newspaper articles and now blogs, I know that blogging is one of the most important tactical tools in any marketer's toolbox. In fact, prior to 2018, when video content began to rise and then just exploded in use in 2020, blogs led the list as the most heavily used media tool

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Tags: sales coaching, sales effectiveness, marketing effectiveness, how to close sales, sales success, value propositions, effective blogging

just waiting for the spring this AM

With 30 years of skiing anchored firmly in my Vermont winta' roots, I've now spent the last 25 years only snowboarding gaining a new love for old trails and new woods and parks that I would have never explored on skis. I still remember the taunts and laughs from my skier buddies I left behind, but as with anything new, I've learned to find the best coaches and study harder and longer than others. 

This winta' morning, I find myself at the NH beach trading my Big Boy Ariens snowblower back in VT for shovels that fit NH winding paths and decks that overlook a very angry ocean.  It will actually be good to grab some fresh air and quick exercise today between six zooms and a board meeting. One of the benefits of WFH.

Love winta'...but cannot wait for March 20th, the official start of spring and leaving behind dark mornings and getting back out into the VT woods with my chainsaw or looking for seaglass on the NH beach.  I do love the rhythm and the variety of the NE seasons...most of the time

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Tags: sales coaching, sales effectiveness, closing sales, marketing effectiveness, sales management boot camp, business coaching, how to close sales, improving sales productivity, sales success, how to write a sales plan, planningsalestodayinacovidworld

2021 a year all about change...

This week...

I write this this afternoon at the end of an extraordinarily cataclysmic week. 

I could not even begin to provide any meaningful content today that has not been said better and more fluently by much more knowledgeable people than me. 

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Tags: sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales effectiveness, best sales practices;, sales productiv, how to write a sales plan

Fall Begins... 3 Steps to Staying Sales Focused, Urgent & Relevant

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Sep 23, 2016

Fall has officially begun, and we're deep into it already
Summer's gone with a snap of the fingers and a turn of the page of the calendar with lingering self promises that "next year, I'm going to plan my schedule better."  

Good luck on that btw...

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Tags: sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales coach, sales enablement, sales management boot camp

Time to talk about trash...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Aug 05, 2016

We just finished an assignment working with Paul and Craig, two solid, heavily experienced serial entrepreneurs who have developed breakthrough technology turning really big food waste (think food prep locations for major supermarket chains, universities and prisons, for examples) into small wafers that can be used as organic fertilizers. Great technology, superb ROI and heavily experienced entrepreneur owner managers attempting to change the world due to a major problem because...

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Tags: sales coaching, sales, Sales quota, sales plans

How to Create Party Lines...and Building Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Jun 17, 2016

I'm now going to date myself, but it's an important perspective in understanding just why I, you and the entire profession of sales need to keep rapidly evolving while it focuses, not on the practice of sales itself, but on the value that we bring to our customers.

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Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales coach, sales planning, sales tools