Trusted Partner or Approved Vendor?

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Apr 28, 2010

It’s Wednesday morning, and I, just like every other salesperson, am out on the road focused on sales for the quarter. It actually looks like a very good next couple of weeks with a proposal going out today, numbers of client assignments scheduled plus a deal transaction narrowing down to a close, and a large number of other activities in the funnel to keep me and the boys busy for a while. So, why are there questions about selling rummaging around in my head this morning?

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales effectiveness, improved sales management

A Miserable Joy

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Tue, Apr 13, 2010

Doc Rivers was quoted on ESPN where he was asked about his career in coaching the Celtics, and he described it as “a miserable joy”, and anyone who has been a student of either pro basketball or became caught up in the most recent excitement of March Madness, knows exactly what this means. The cliffhanger of Duke’s final win in the NCAA championships this year, and the stunning upset of Kansas’ unexpected loss a couple of weeks ago bring all coaches to the point of either tearing their hair out- the misery- or basking in the glory of the final win and its accompanying praise -the joy.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management

Jack’s Vermont: Misery & Joy

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Tue, Apr 13, 2010

Tuesday, 4:30 AM

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management

Quarter by Quarter

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Mar 17, 2010

The good news is that, as a firm, we’ve had a very busy Q1. With budgets in place, almost every customer we’ve worked with in the first quarter held either business or sales planning sessions to think through and create detailed tactical plans. In some cases, these plans focused on Q1, while the majority of them typically detailed just the first half of the year. Only in a few companies, did we bother to define the second half of the year except to note the general financial plan assumptions that led up to the 2010 budget.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management

Defining Sales Management-Just what is power?

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Sun, Mar 14, 2010

The issue of “power” was front and center with me all this weekend. With two violent winter storms converging, the coast of NH was slammed with hurricane level, sheering winds and three days of flooding rain. All of which resulted in the loss of power at the house from Thursday through Saturday.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, improved sales management

Grades

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Mon, Feb 15, 2010

As everyone knows who reads these posts, in my “spare time”, I teach business planning and marketing as a lecturer at MIT and as a marketing professor at Tufts. I love the work and student involvement, plus it provides an excellent opportunity to integrate concepts into the real world of sales and marketing tactics, both for my students and for our companies at the firm since often they become case studies in the classes.

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Tags: Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales effectiveness

My Favorite Economist

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Fri, Jan 29, 2010

Very early yesterday morning, I drove to the picture-perfect New England town of Newport, New Hampshire. Since I had an early morning planning session with a key customer, I wanted to arrive early so that I could go over my notes, plus I wanted to talk to my favorite economist and her reaction to the Wednesday night Obama speech.

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Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, marketing management