Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Each of the three CEOs I met with on Monday used the same term, “crunch time” to describe the end of the quarter this Friday.   A software company, a financial services firm and a retail product manufacturer-the industry didn’t make any difference; it was the same phrase, “crunch time”.  Every month, every quarter, in almost every industry we work in, it always comes down to this last week.  It is what it is, and it’s what we deal with as managers every year, which, of course, doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just brings too many decisions down to too little time leaving no room for errors.  The bottom line of which, in any crunch situation, is that unfortunately something somewhere gets squeezed out and falls through the cracks.  I guess I could paint an analogy to the Red Sox here, but that crunch time story is just too depressing and painful.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training

Last year was my first winter living on the New Hampshire beach.  Commuting to Boston for work and to Vermont on the weekends to snowboard proved not to be such a big deal, and I had this stupid belief that living on the ocean would not produce as much snow.  My brain kept tossing around phrases like "Gulf Stream"  which I then very nicely translated into "less snow". In reality, the beach yielded just as much snow as the 120 inches we received in Vermont.  The key difference (I learned the hard way) was that Vermont possesses one very important component that's missing in the tight confines of a NH beach, and that's plenty of space to plow and dump the stuff.  I also quickly learned that even in The Live Free or Die State, there are zoning laws about when, where and at what volume one can actually move snow.  In Vermont, snow is snow, and the only law is just dump it anywhere...and quickly...because there's more coming tomorrow.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training, small business management, October, strategic planning

With anxiety and the fear of the unknown, I headed to Vermont last Friday night for the first time since the floods to see for myself what had happened to our house.  Since friends had already walked the property and checked things out, I knew that we were one of the lucky ones and had no damage.  With our road now fully reconstructed, it was now time to venture into the bustling metropolis of Bondville, population 647, at the base of Stratton Mountain. After confirming that the house was okay, I drove to the general store in stunned silence shocked by the surrounding damage that our tiny river had caused ripping out bridges and tossing 100 pound rocks by the hundreds into our field which, at the height of the storm, had been under five feet of water.   

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training, management

“It’s been dirty, and it will be a little tough, but we’ll be fine.”

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training

As we wind down the last few days of summer, and I was reading The Globe on the beach yesterday, I was drawn to Red’s comment about the end of summer.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training

Walking along the beach this morning, I was asking myself “What’s it all about?” for a number of reasons.  Is my master plan to be the best sales guy?  Probably not-I’m good, but far from the best.  Is it to be the best sales manager?  It used to be, but time has passed me by on that, and I’ll never be as good as some of the people I coach.  Then maybe, it’s to be the best coach?  I think so, but I also realize that in many aspects, I’m still a student, not the Zen Master I want to be...yet. This actually drives me in a lot of what I do reading all of the time, studying harder, and it’s why I specifically teach at MIT and Tufts. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, Sales quota, sales training, small business management, management

Just walked in from my early morning walk on the beach.  Good weather and bad, summer and winter, whenever, I have the luxury of not going into the office first thing, I walk the mile long, perfectly crescent-curved beach just outside our door.  With the constant sound and smell of the ocean all night, there’s a consistent tug in my head every morning to explore what the ocean delivered. Sometimes tons of seaweed, sometime lost seal pups like this guy earlier this month, and most often just the richness of the ocean.

While Jan, my wife, sea glass jewelry designer and watercolor artist, searches for the perfect pieces of sea glass, I set out on the much more plebian task of picking up trash washed in on the night tide.  I guess that I could euphemistically call it “flotsam & jetsam”, but I never can remember which is which, and, in reality, it’s just plain trash. When Dustin Hoffman, in The Graduate was told that all he needed to remember was the word “plastic” to ensure his success, I think that same word as I walk along, three foot gripper tongs in hand, picking up 20 pounds of daily plastic  either as abandoned beach toys or washed up debris from the lobster boats.  Anyways, it’s good for the ocean and my head.  Plus, it provides me the opportunity to get out early in the morning with an unstructured, quiet hour to think through various business issues.  

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, marketing effectiveness, marketing productivity, Sales quota, sales training

I’ve recently been receiving these short articles like the one below from ChiefExecutive.net.  Well written, to the point and solid factual data from the men and women who actually run businesses.  When I finished a hard day of field research on the beach yesterday, I found this not-surprising article in my Inbox, which fit nicely into my summer re-reading of Blue Ocean Strategy.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training

Just arrived in Vermont for a few days.  What a huge difference from the NH shore, and it’s just not the beach-mountain thing.  It’s the lushness of Vermont.  It’s not just that everything is green; it’s that green is everywhere, including the haying fields in front of the house that I thought for sure who be burned out just like our grass in NH.   It’s good to know that some things-like Vermont-never change and that a process is a process.

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training

A very tough day yesterday.  As if we didn’t have enough problems trying to sell stuff in The Dog Days of Summer, as I was driving to four different sales meetings yesterday, I kept listening to the news on Bloomberg.  I found that I literally had to take 10 minutes by myself before I walked into every account, using all of my Psyche Up Skills, to keep my head focused in the right place as the day wore on, and the market kept plummeting. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales, sales management, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, selling, improved sales management, sales management training, selling skills, closing sales, Sales quota, sales training