GregDermond.com
Multi-passionate sales, marketing, and business professional focusing on problem-solving, strategic planning, and driving change through data analytics for better performance and growth.
Hi! My name is Greg Dermond.
I’m a sales professional who has worked in sales, marketing, finance, and business strategies for several years.
I strive to learn and love to fine-tune my craft and interests. I believe in pursuing truth in the learning sense and not thinking that one is a finished product.
In doing so, I have read hundreds of books, magazine articles, and research documents over the years. Friends, business associates and colleagues of mine would come to me with questions on specific topics, and they eventually urged me to share my thoughts and ideas on a public medium.
So, after I gave it some thought, here, I am.
My professional experience includes sales/ business development, marketing, and finance. My other interests and focus for some years now have been in professional and personal development.
I’m also interested in improving my writing and blogging, so I guess you can call me an eternal student. I’m not a “know-it-all” but can be considered a “learn-it-all.”
I think about the sales and marketing professions quite often. One of my missions is to ignite sales transformation, which means helping the broader sales profession with insights and actions to best support our prospects and customers.
The following quote has stuck with me for years because it’s the truth:
The world continues to change at an increasing pace, and keeping up with it is vital. One key is to keep investing in yourself, which also means doing so whether the company you work for invests in you or not.
I have earned sales awards with multiple companies during my career and in different industries. In one of my past positions, and with the help of talented team members, I surpassed $40M in product revenue during my tenure with a company, which was second all-time and the fastest over that span. The revenue includes expanding the user base of two major accounts by 10X by developing a flexible and customer-centric mix of products to fit the demand profile.
I point this out because I feel privileged to have worked for such a great company that allows you to use your entrepreneurial ideas to support the organizations you manage. This helps customers use the product in the most cost-efficient and productive way.
I’m a true believer that strong personal life habits correlate highly with professional success. This is especially relevant for sales professionals who must deal with a sea of rejections daily.
My formal education is in business. Finance was my first love, followed by an economics focus for my MBA. I then gravitated toward the personal finance side of business and went on to complete a second master’s degree that concentrated more on personal tax and financial planning. I wanted to make sure I knew how to manage money as effectively as possible.
From there, I learned that I could leverage my knowledge into revenue-producing activities by creating and structuring business opportunities. That is where my love for sales and marketing was born.
Selling and marketing, in all its dimensions – whether it’s pushing Fords on a car lot or presenting ideas in a meeting – has changed more in the last twenty years than the previous hundred.
Thus, besides being my profession, I have studied sales and marketing for years and watched and experienced the change before my very eyes. The more I read, the more I started to realize how other elements of the mental and even physical side impacted the success of the profession.
As you can probably guess, I’m a firm believer in constant and never-ending improvement. If you don’t continue to learn, grow, evolve, and adapt your skills to the demands of the market and workplace, you risk becoming obsolete, disposable, and unemployed.
Also, we need to consider learning outside formal education as a constant necessity for personal and professional growth.
More and more corporations are realizing that their top performers are self-directed learners. Thus, corporations are turning to recruiters seeking talent with natural learnability, which comes from personal motivation to grow professionally.
Or as Google puts it – “Learning Animals.”
Hence - Hungry Brain = More Career Opportunities
Unfortunately, we are taught and told at a relatively young age to pick a career or a major and then stay with that major and degree to get a job. As it turns out, most people make an average of nine job changes during their careers.
Consequently, if you aspire to only learn one skill or master one discipline throughout your career, you are severely disadvantaged in today’s ever-changing world.
For my audience, my work and writing content will leverage my interest (some say obsession) in multiple things. I will share insights and ideas from what I learned with you.
I plan to do this by providing relevant topics with the focus being the intersection of enhancing both professional and personal productivity habits as it relates to:
1. Sales and marketing:
How do we succeed in a profession with constant changes and mental challenges?
2. Productivity:
How can we achieve more in all facets of our life?
3. Habits:
How do we identify, improve, and instill habits we stick to?
4. Personal Finance:
How to understand, apply, and grow your wealth-building knowledge?
Let’s have some fun with it!