Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Good morning!  looks like a great Friday coming into a sunny weekend!

As I write this on a 14-degree sunny Saturday morning, I'm just in from snowblowing deep in the woods of Winhall (or Bondville) Vermont (pop.647).  Known by the State of Vermont, the town of Winhall is-according to the Feds-also the village of Winhall in the town Bondville.  Or maybe it's the other way around. Hard to figure.   

Already deep into January....

It's that time of year again...

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and while most normal people are already thinking about the 3 F's of Family, Friends, and Football, guys like me are calculating just how many selling days there are left in the year.  The Answer: 

at Best, there are 22 selling days left in the year !

- First, you should thankful that there are 22 !
- Second, 22 is a maximum number !
-The obvious days of this Wednesday & the immediate days after any of the holidays are not included.
- Even if you and your Champion are around post-Christmas, the probability of everyone involved in the process is zero !

-And, btw, there are a huge amount of other end-of-year distractions much more important than you between now and then.  
- So, now is the time to plan out every possible day that you can own of those 22 days. 

One of our most highly respected, most resourceful and most energetic sales leaders, Colleen Honan, CRO at Brainshark, refers to this detailed selling process as "Your Plan to Make Plan", which gets right down to what I call "Selling on Streets not States":

• In a quarter, in a month, and certainly in these 22 days, planning is not about strategy !
• It's about planning out next week's daily activities and the following week's tight travel and calls !
• It's planning travel at a street-by-street, city-by-city level travel to maximize your efficiency !
• It's about re-doing your Discovery Checklist and asking questions about prospect's holiday plans.
• Nothing is worse than having a commit and then learning that the Purchasing Manager is skiing.
• It's about taking today/tomorrow and making tons of calls and emails to get December meetings,
• At the very least, you should be reaching out to wish your prospects  "Happy Thanksgiving!" 

Had the occasion to have breakfast with my close friend, Dan Tyre, last Tuesday at Hubspot headquarters in Cambridge.  Picture I took sports Dan's Movember Stash.

Clearly, THE MOST ENERGETIC SALES LEADER I know anywhere, any company, at any time ! 

In addition to being a superb sales pro, a Hubspot evangelist and director, a highly experienced and acclaimed speaker, he has just published his most recent book on The Inbound Organization-How to Build Your Organization Using Inbound Principles, not just "another" inbound marketing book, but a fundamental guide for both selling and marketing in today's totally changed customer world !

Download now, skim over this weekend, see what nuggets you could use for these 22 days, then read it completely over the next couple of weeks !

So, that's it here on a Monday morning!  Time to get moving, but before you do...

Tufts- "Content in Context" Marketing projects

It's that time of year again, when I go out to our greater blog, LI, FB and Twitter communities and begin the process of soliciting complex, semester-long Marketing projects for next semester.

When I began teaching at MIT 20 years ago, and then at Tufts 13 years ago, I quickly realized that the only way I was going to provide any meaningful content...and keep my students awake...was to wrap that content within the context of real companies who needed new or updated marketing plans. 

Our clients for these courses range from tiny startups often looking for their first marketing plans to large public corporations who are launching new products or are looking for a different perspective from young adults.

• We're looking for six Marketing projects for the spring semester which starts mid January
• Your marketing project might be for an entire company or for a specific product
• Out clients' businesses range in size from startup companies to public corporations
• Each project will be assigned to a student team of four to six students
• At least two of each team will have solid prior marketing sales experience
• The project definitions and the syllabus are sent to the students on December 26th 
• There is research work that they will need to do in January before coming to class
• The deadline for applications to be submitted to me is December 7th 

If you are interested in participating, please just email me at jack.derby@tufts.com or text me (617-504-4222), and I will send you the instructions of how to participate. 

Have a great day selling something today!    

 Please stay connected!

Jack Derby, Director, TEC-Tufts Entrepreneurship Center
Cummings Family Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship
Spark-Incubate-Accelerate@Tufts
Come to our Events
Cell:  617-504-4222 jack.derby@tufts.edu  

Advisor, Derby Management, experts in-
-Sales & Marketing Productivity
-Business and Strategic Planning
WHAT WE DO AT DERBY MANAGEMENT    

At the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, in addition to shepherding 450 enthusiastic and curious students a semester among 16 wicked smart professors, I've been focusing on building an event structure throughout the year that leads up to our $100K New Venture Competition in the spring.  Right now, you should Mark April 5th in your calendar and come and participate in what Forbes ranks as one of "The top 15 business plan contests in the country." 

You cannot not like Michael Porter... 

The guy is just brilliant!  Been around for a long time.  Lots of books.  Got the Five Forces Thing down.  Senior professor at HBS.  Has a building on campus named after him.  And, he's a true Renaissance Man, who continues to do research, write and still actively teach. The Real Deal !

Maybe it's just the calendar as we race into March especially today sandwiched between the weekend nor'easter and tomorrow's nor'easter. Hard to believe that I was out raking in the NH yard in the sun on Sunday morning. Harder to believe that I was raking seaweed out of the grass after these waves went way over the seawall and closed the roads.

Maybe it was the bright 50 degree, sunny days just two weeks ago.  "In-Like-a-Lion" March lives up to its reputation this week

All I know is that just three months from now, Memorial Day marks the beginning of the summer, and the summer means the beach, and the beach means mega-reading and mega-writing. 

Nothing better for me, my psyche, my health and my curiosity than taking my overloaded beach bag out early on a Saturday morning and opening up a book about sales or marketing and taking out my writing tablet.

Each summer, I also use the time on the beach to rewrite our 115 page Writing the Winning Business Plan and our 50 page Writing the Winning Marketing Plan. If you want copies of either of these, just click on below.  Actually, if you do read these now, and you have ideas or comments, just let me know, and we will make sure that we will add those comments if we can and give you attribution, as you will note in the front of the Writing the Winning Business Plan book

Teaching Marketing at Tufts... 

• A consistent search for real life Marketing & Sales Plan projects for my students
• 5-6 person teams work for 13 weeks on complex marketing and sales plan assignments
• All of our academic content is woven into these assignments from real companies
• I teach the tools; company management provides the real life experiences

The results are very positive and dynamically exciting from everyone involved