Derby Management's "Competitive Edge" Blog

Superb weekend last weekend and clearly fall is in the air!  

The Corvette took me out for a drive to Vermont the weekend before, and the back roads were already packed with buses from Indiana and Ohio filled with Leaf-Peepers.  This is the season when The Boys on the Bench down at the Winhall General Store in the town where I live (population 647) are thinking long and hard about how to squeeze in their deer hunting trips before the first sightings of the New York City and Jersey skiers appear with their long lists of well-paying jobs that need to be done the hill opens at Thanksgiving.  

Tags: sales planning, business planning, strategic planning

A friend of mine just became the head of a large bank, which is one of our larger customers.  A solid and very comfortable guy that your first reaction to is... "I'd just like to sit around talking to to him".  Ex-football player from Dartmouth who now maxes out on a couple of Tough Mudders every year.  Great family man, just a nice guy, who is very focused on what he and his managers need to do in terms of performance and accountability. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, sales management training, sales training, sales plans, sales management boot camp, strategic planning

As we move through March and the end of the first quarter, I always regard this time of year as a critical experiment of the new ideas, new strategies, new tactics, new activities and new people that you and the team planned for way back in October and November.  I like to think that both company-wide business plans and departmental-specific sales plans always work because, whether or not they result in the actual forecasted numbers, the planning framework that has been created is actually more important than the results since it provides a consistent process and structure that you can refine and refine again during the balance of the year.  By keeping to this process consistently, I guarantee that you will ultimately get to your goals and objectives.

Tags: sales productivity, sales coaching, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, selling, Sales quota, sales training, sales management boot camp, strategic planning

Back to school, back to work, and back to all of the craziness and excitement between now and the end of the year closing deals and beginning the 2015 planning process.

Offsites with the team for a day or two at the Marriott, mini sessions in the big conference room out near the lobby, and then countless push & pull "discussions" with the accounting guys who always seem to be single minded-more results with less expense.  Maybe it's just part of earning the CFO badge, but, as keepers of the budget, CFOs orchestrate the annual dance trying to balance greater revenue growth while keeping expenses in check.

Tags: Sales Optimization, Sales Management Best Practices, sales management effectiveness, sales effectiveness, sales tools, sales training, strategic planning

Sometimes we make this strategic planning stuff much too difficult, too mysterious and too complex to be useful in the real, rough and tumble world of scaling a profitable growth business. 

Tags: sales and marketing best practices, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales effectiveness, sales management training, business planning, strategic planning, improving sales productivity

Just Three 2014 Things...

If there were just three things that you could improve on and be super successful at during 2014, what would they be?

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

I open each semester at Tufts by asking my students what my job is.  After a couple of awkward minutes including... "to teach us about marketing", to which I respond, "That might be a problem because I don't know that much about marketing", my real answer is..."to make sure that you get the highest paying jobs that you're going to find to be the most rewarding".   And, at the end of the day, that's really the most important result from any university. 

Tags: sales productivity, Sales Optimization, sales management effectiveness, sales plan process, sales management coach, sales effectiveness, sales enablement, selling, sales management training, selling skills, marketing effectiveness, sales training, sales jobs, finding sales jobs, sales boot camps, strategic planning, Tufts university, Tufts ELS

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

I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at Middlesex Bank’s CEO Forum last week.  A great bank, superb guests and for me, a fun opportunity to talk about something that I've fervently believed in ever since I started the company 22 years ago- how to build your competitive edge.  Aptly named, our long running newsletter, The Competitive Edge, and this blog speak to what I carry around as a religion in how I think about business in general and especially the world of sales.

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, business coaching, leadership, economic stimulus, The Competitive Edge, strategic planning

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