Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales effictiveness, sales boot camps

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

 
 We're all squeezed for time. 

  No new news here.  We continuously balance our work and 
  personal time commitments.  We endlessly shuffle our
  schedules cutting off 15 minutes here and there to be able to 
 squeeze in another call, another meeting or just maybe a vacation day here and there.  We know that there is no such thing as Work-Life Balance except in the fantasy world of academics, and what always loses out in trying to create that balance is that over-rated sleep thing. 

Up at 4:00 yesterday, after a 2 hour trip, I found myself at a customer's at 8:00 and then spent the afternoon in Providence at a quarterly board meeting.  The company is doing great, and perhaps not coincidentally the meeting began and ended with comments from the senior management in this high-performing business about the fact that they were more stressed for time than ever before.  They commented that there customers' demands for their time were accelerating at a quicker pace and that those same customers were constantly being pressured themselves by their customers and the new normal of their retail markets for even quicker deliveries and faster design cycles. 

Arriving back in Boston just before a customer dinner at 7, I managed to squeeze in a few minutes with my friend Brian, a long term EVP at one of our customers.  With 5 weeks of vacation every year, he proudly told me that the only way that he had figured out how to use any of that time was to put himself on a regimen of taking Friday's off.  Cute idea, but in the reality of Brian's unforgiving schedule, let's see just how many weeks that works...as in NEVER!

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

Jack McAvoy, Lifeguard & Rock-Solid Marketing Guy!

A senior marketing executive at Parametric Technology, Jack and I met a few years ago out of our common love of caring for the beach.  Jack's been the senior lifeguard in Wallis Sands for a long time and is as passionate about taking care of this beach (Rated in the Top 5 cleanest beaches in the U.S. ) and its visitors as he is about the practice of marketing in the rapidly changing ecosystem of 2013. 

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, selling, selling skills, sales boot camp, sales listening, best sales practices;

My favorite blogger, especially at this time of year as we prepare to celebrate the 4th, is Benjamin Franklin.

An amazing patriot, which is why I always tie Franklin to the 4th.  An inventor, an entrepreneur, the creator of Poor Richard's Almanac (the leading blog of his day), an extraordinary statesman, a lover of good food and wine, and provider of wonderfully simple quotes such as...

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

So, this logic may not make sense to anyone else but me, but here goes...

Tags: summer networking; rolling stones, martha and the vandellas, Sales Optimization, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, improved sales management, closing sales, sales boot camp

I was sitting with the senior team at one of our most successful customers last Friday, and we were prepping for an upcoming sales and marketing planning meeting later this week. 

Status:      Solid first half performance
Status:      Great processes & people
Question:  How does everything fit for the 2nd half?

Tags: Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, selling, sales management training, sales training, sales listening, sales culture, sales boot camps

I was walking around Kendall Square late yesterday afternoon.  A perfect spring day with the added electricity in the rarified air of Cambridge due to the normal abnormality of MIT, multiple graduations happening this weekend, and entrepreneurs doing more deals than I've seen in years fueled by big money happenning on Wall Street.  A perfect day...until I realized that I was not hearing my normal, "Hey Jack..."  Not at CIC, not at Dunkin's, not even walking through the Cambridge Marriott's lobby.

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management effectiveness, sales coach, sales enablement, sales planning, sales management training, sales training, sales boot camp

Classes are over, final presentations to the management of this semester's companies are completed and, on Sunday, I finally...and reluctantly...punched the 'SUBMIT" button for submit grades.  For me, grading is always the worst part of being a professor.  With complex marketing projects this semester from companies such as Black Duck, Accounting Management Solutions, Nameplates for Industry, Paytronix, Boston Financial Management and Fraser Engineering, it's been an exceptional period with a very strong class of students.  Hence, my problem with having to define the exactness between a B+ and an A-.

Tags: making great presentations, sales coaching, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management effectiveness, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales planning, sales tools, sales management training, sales training, sales boot camp, sales checklists, Tufts ELS

Late Friday afternoon, I managed to squeeze into the Winhall General Store minutes before closing time and found myself waiting in line beside my friend, Mike, to order takeout.

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