Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Last Sunday, driving from early morning mass and on my way to my personal weekly reward, which is searching out sales at my favorite store, Home Depot, I noticed 20 feet ahead two turkeys feeding on late fall garden scraps on the left side of the road.  As I slowed down, I also noticed this small yellow sign noting "turkeys crossing" over to the right.  And then, as if on cue, 20ish turkeys hopped up on the stone wall, walked across the road right in front of my car and joined the others in the garden.   Which, of course, got me to thinking about Sales...

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

MassTLC (short for Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council) keeps doing everything perfectly! Having run a number of business associations such as SBANE, ACGBoston and the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge, I personally know how very hard it is to keep things new, exciting, and constantly refreshed.   Members want to feel engaged, sponsors need to feel loved, and new prospects want to join only if "the cool kids" belong.

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales management, sales enablement, sales planning, sales effictiveness, sales management boot camp, sales boot camps

30 years ago, during one of my "I think I will once again try to live in Vermont" sojourns, I remember working high on a mountain ridge one cold, wet fall morning pouring cement that we had laboriously carted up by buckets in ATVs for the footings on a microwave tower.  It was November and long gone were the colorful fall leaves and smiling tourists visiting the antiques fair down in the postcard-pretty town Weston.  It was back to the hardscrabble work of running a commercial masonry company building a series of towers all along the spine of Vermont.  That November and December, we worked until the ground froze hard with most daybreaks spent chopping through the ice that had crusted over our water storage from the overnight freeze.  It was during that period of what seemed to be a never-ending expedition of increasingly cold, wind-whipped, ugly, steel-gray days that I made a decision that I was moving back to Boston and would do everything I could to avoid November in Vermont. 

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

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

 Fall is more than in the air in Vermont.  It's in my  aching back from last weekend's hauling, cutting and  splitting three huge trees which fell in my woodlot as a  result of the big blow two weeks ago.  It's also been in  my head all this week as a result of my unexpected  discovery just before I left Vermont on Sunday of  three more equally big trees that had fallen out of    sight on the other side of the ridge.  As a result, in my  never-ending quest of "a clean forest is a happy  forest",  I'll find myself back in VT tomorrow, crack of dawn, up on the ridge, steam billowing from the tractor in the 40 degree air, the sound of the chainsaw ripping through the stillness and focused on "gettin' her done" since the seasons in VT and its inevitable snow wait for no one.  

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

 Middle of September.  Definitely frost on the pumpkin this morning and, with
 the leaves already beginning to turn both in Vermont and on the beach, I  realized as I was driving into Boston today, the music switch inside my head
 had selected Donovan's '60s hit song, "Season of the Witch" to let me know
 that Halloween, the first of the fall holidays, was right around the corner.   Yea, good rhythm and mystical lyrics, but more importantly for me that "announcement" in my head was telling me that the fall selling season is well underway.  

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

Living on the beach and in Boston, I see a fair amount of Mercedes' SMART cars. Cute, clean, fun, and head- turning, many SMART owners go on to accessorize their cars with their personal brands through vanity plates.

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Best Practices, sales, sales effectiveness, sales enablement

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