Tips on the Final Presentation & Closing the Deal
It all comes down to this..
- The 13 week sales cycle ends a day like today
- Final Tufts management presentations today and next Wednesday
- Close the deals today and next week successfully, and everyone goes home with high marks
When I first started teaching Marketing at Tufts 10 years ago, I knew that I had to do something different because there was no way that I would hold the attention of 30 bright Millennials, who were not majoring in marketing, past one class, let alone 13. So, I took best practices that I had learned from Professor Jung-Hoon Chun at MIT, and, at that time, my 10 years of teaching business planning and marketing in his mechanical engineering course, where I continue to lecture. Those best practices provide...
You Need to be Direct in Sales! Straight Talk Always Wins!
Walt Garrison, who was a legendary football player at Oklahoma State and the Dallas Cowboys, often provided this quote when speaking about delivering straight talk...
Tags: sales productivity, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales jobs, sales management boot camp
3 Rules You Need to Know About Finance & About Sales
My first real job out of BC, after returning from three years in the Peace Corps, was as a Purchasing Expediter working for Honeywell's new minicomputer group. In a work-hard, work-harder, baptism-by-fire-environment in which you either performed or were fired, I quickly learned the realities of purchasing, inventory control and production. A great education and a great company...even though they missed the whole mini-computer thing..which prepared me well for a long career at Becton Dickinson Medical Systems-another great company with solid management development programs allowing me to eventually rise through the ranks.
But, all through that development process with more and more training, and more and more education programs, the complexities of P&L's and balance sheets always eluded me, but since I had by then become president of various companies, I had the luxury of hiring the best CFOs at Datamedix (Bob Badavas, currently CEO of Plum Tree, is a superb example) who were much better in Finance than I would ever be.
Those experiences led me to adopt a simple axiom that I use today with all of the managers in all of our customers:
"Your job is to hire people who are much better than you in their own skills"
Today, although I believe I'm now pretty fluent in everything Finance, my three simple Finance rules that always guide me to success are...
Tags: sales management, sales coach, sales management coach, sales management training, Sales quota
Are You an Effective Leader? How Do You Measure Up to These 3 Ideas?
So, what does it mean to be a leader?
Countless books and blogs consume oceans of silicon in attempting to define sales leadership, giving point-by-point tactics and hundreds of how-to's, and yet the issue of leadership often comes down to, "I know it when I see it".
Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales management, sales management coach, Sales Leadership in the Revolution
Only 3 Things to Think About Over the Next 15 Days
Tags: sales productivity, sales, sales coach, sales management coach
My Marketing Course at Tufts is quickly winding down with the first of the exam days yesterday afternoon. For the last 13 weeks, six teams of five very talented students have labored, learned, questioned, and, most importantly, collaborated on very complex marketing projects given to them by six companies at the beginning of July.
Presentations were made to the senior management of three of the companies yesterday, and the same will happen next Wednesday with the last three companies. Basically, every piece of marketing content, strategy and tactic that was taught over the semester has been incorporated into these marketing plans complete with market and competitive research, primary inbound and outbound strategies and a host of carefully planned and budgeted tactical recommendations.
Lots of very hard work, a number of speed bumps and surprises, like the unplanned acquisition of one of the companies mid-semester, but overall, very successful both for the companies in that they've received marketing deliverables that would have cost them thousands, and for the students, who have been paid both in real world experience and in grades.
Tags: sales, sales management, sales management coach, selling, improved sales management, sales plans
I have The Very Best Students for Sales & Marketing Hires
Every time I actually think about the fact that I'm a Professor of the Practice at Tufts, where I teach Marketing and Sales, I need to stop, take a breath and realize that I have the best of all possible jobs.
Tags: sales, sales management coach, sales plans, business planning
Every morning, I leave the beach very early and make the one hour trek into Boston so that I'm able to be at the club when it opens for my daily workout . Good to start the day off with a bit of structure, plus the drive gives me the opportunity to think through the day while listening to Bloomberg News from London. For the last couple of days, a good portion of those news stories have been about the massive Greek debt problem which everyone, except the Greek government, seems to understand. Pretty simple problem to understand-less than 50% of the population doesn't pay any taxes. All I know is that this problem, created by a second-rate country 10,000 miles away, has had a negative effect on everyone's stock portfolio and is a speeding train wreck headed for the cliff.
Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales planning, sales management training, sales plans, sales management boot camp
I had the privilege of having David Meerman Scott come to my Tufts marketing class yesterday and talk about the future of marketing. Actually, to be truthful, his coming to the class had very little to do with me, and 99% to do with my students.
Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Management Best Practices, sales coach, sales management coach, selling skills, marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, sales listening, sales culture, marketing