I love Mondays and what I do and have no intention of stopping, slowing down or doing anything else...except continuing to teach at Tufts and MIT for as long as they will have me.
On the investment side, when I was the chairman of the MIT Enterprise Forum (just a superb organization!), I remember asking a very well-known venture guy to talk at one of our standard monthly 10/250 meetings. I still clearly remember that he began his talk with... "as a venture capitalist, I've learned how to lose money". At the time, I cringed a bit and wondered where he was going with the rest of his talk, but he quickly came to the point of how he made investment decisions...good and bad...based on one or two key factors. Up to that point, I thought that all venture people had some secret formula and rarely lost money. What he did was to share with the audience his detailed decision-making criteria along with the resulting stats on his investments. It was at the point that I began to study the process of making early-stage investments along with the science of Marketing and Sales since I suspected then and know now they are tightly knit together. By-the-way, there's an interesting article on "Why Startups Fail" in the current edition of the Harvard Business Review. Definitely worth the read.
I think that I've finally learned a few of my own personal rules about venture success.
The bottom line is that in any company-and especially in startups-scalable success will be built on management's ability to efficiently and effectively sell not products, but the value of those products to specific personas and be able to do that again and again and again. And that requires formalized processes, tools, technology and math, which is what I practice in our consulting work and teach at Tufts.
Most everyone knows that I teach a marketing course at Tufts and have been doing so for a long time. The real success of that course is due to superb students, and the "content in context" format I use in my teaching,
Similar to my marketing course, I'll teach this with some of my alums who are now heads of sales in their own companies plus a few industry veterans. Right now, a full class of students are already signed up, and I's looking for companies to apply the same "content in context" formula as we do in the marketing course.
Potential projects could be:
...and any other thoughts about projects that you may have. The key for success is that the projects need to be complex since there will be a team of very bright students applied to your project over a period of 13 weeks. Across campus, my courses are known to require a lot of time and work...and they are always quickly filled with long wait lists. Not surprisingly, the majority of my students go on to have very successful sales and marketing careers.
If you're interested, just connect with me, and I'll send you the instructions today and set up a time to discuss and questions this week.
If you're interested in how to plan for a very impactful June and a dynamic end to the quarter, click HERE for our just updated Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2021.
If at any time, you have a need for a confidential sounding board for Sales or Marketing, just connect with me at any time. www.derbymanagement.com
Text or email me, and I'll quickly set up a call. I'm a pretty good listener, and we can get deep into tactics if you want.
Obviously, no cost for a call or two; just an opportunity to listen intently and make a few recommendations based on decades of experience.