Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

 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

Deep into January, and already settling into the rhythms of the year...

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, sales management training, sales optomization, sales training, sales plans

-10 in Vermont this morning.  Not much better here in the sales world of Boston with the wind howling through the dark canyons of State Street.  BTW, remind to slap upside the head the first salesperson in July who I hear complaining about "Hot enough for ya?"

Tags: sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales optomization

Every good sales organization is charged with tension...especially right now.  Here we are only a couple of days away from closing Q3.  Friday night will define the tale of the tape against which we measure both our company's objectives and our own personal quotas.  Then, just to punch the tension up a notch, next Monday morning, at the crack of dawn, with a turn of the page and a click of the mouse, we're immediately thrust into the super-critical 63 selling days of Q4. 

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales coach, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, Sales quota, sales training, sales plans, sales jobs

Who's the Best?

Lots of interesting comments from my last blog on the Rolling Stones.  Everything from “You’re showing your age”, to “How can you put the Stones ahead of the Beatles…Bruce…Zeppelin…Hendrix…Black Eyed Peas...and so on?”   Since I wanted to get everyone thinking about how to keep themselves and their sales personas young, it looks like from all of the emails that I received that I hit a cord.   Sometime this fall, I’ll follow up with my favorite/most successful individual artist.   Someone who, like the Stones, is highly successful, always on the edge and keeps reinventing themselves...but is much younger.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, Sales quota, sales training, sales plans

I made the mistake of walking into Staples yesterday and was instantly slapped upside the head with Back to School sales, banners, specials and every possible promotion on pencils, paper, and...yes, even staples.  I'm still warming up for more reading time on the beach while my fellow sandmates are counting the days until their kids head back to school at the end of this month. 

Tags: sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales optomization

I've been a student of the comics forever and well remember waiting dutifully for my father to come every night and hand me the Boston Traveler, which I then immediately thumbed to the funnies.  Today, I'm still addicted to the comics although it's my iPad now that delivers my daily fix, since my daily download of BostonGlobe.com sadly does not include the comics.  Dilbert continues to be one of my favorites for the simple reason that the parallels to daily business life are so close to reality that they either make me laugh or cringe.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, sales plans, management, business tools, business planning, business coaching, strategic planning

Just sitting here on the beach, doing some field research of course, and thinking through the relationships of time and sales.  All of us who are in the profession of sales, no matter what our level or experience, are measured by some metric related to time.  Quota/month, Y/Y sales, ramp speed and countless other metrics measure our abilities to perform within  specific periods of time.  Time is the name of the game; it’s the measure of top of the pack and bottom of the heap; it’s how we get paid and it’s the one metric that measures us against our peers as to who goes to “Club” and who goes to “On Plan”.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales planning, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, sales plans, finding sales jobs

A superb 4^th of July week.  Great weather here in New England…not so in other states without power…and certainly the word “heat” was repeatedly in everyone’s vocabulary.  The other word that I often heard last week and especially on the 4^th was “leadership”, or more correctly, the “lack of leadership”. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, sales plans, finding sales jobs

Ran into church a bit late last Sunday to find everyone robustly singing “America the Beautiful”.  With those words and that spirit still ringing in my head when I returned home, I promptly finished decorating the house which now has flags and bunting covering both decks and enough other iParty stuff everywhere to make red, white and blue the official colors of the summer.   I’m not exactly sure why this patriotic spirit cascades in me every summer, except that I do know that it feels good.  It’s not because any one thing happened-we didn’t just joystick another Al Qaeda leader or anything like that.  It’s just because it’s simply the 4^th, business is pretty good, and I figure if we can stick it out through the long hot summer of politicians beating one another up, the economy should stabilize just a bit more after the elections. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, sales optomization, closing sales, sales training, sales plans, finding sales jobs