I’ve talked to so many company leaders and sales execs lately who are facing the same problem: before the recession, they acquired all of their new business through referrals. But ever since the economy weakened, the referral “pipeline” has dried up. They are frankly terrified because they have no processes in place to develop new business. This phenomenon […]
Podcast about how to locate and befriend key advocates for your company.
Nothing makes a stronger statement to your clients than “thank you.” Thank you is part of the customer experience. “Thank you” demonstrates appreciation, builds loyalty, and personalizes the relationship. After all, if you are not truly grateful for your client’s decision to enter into a business relationship with you, it is only a matter of time before your client will realize you expect their business and you don’t value it. “Thank you” is the easiest and most sincere way to initiate your gratitude for the opportunity to establish and continue a valued business relationship.
Are sales professionals trying to sell out of fear instead of quality? It seems they sell to “stay alive” just because they want to keep their jobs. More than ever, this is when we need to be sure everyone is on the boat! Sales team members can’t be expected to sell alone. If we expect sales professionals to land bigger deals, then we need to send them out with the tools to be successful, and the most powerful one, is a full boat!
What’s your growth strategy? (If you’re reading this, I hope its whale hunting.) What are you employing to take your business to the next level? Whatever your strategy or tactics, I think it really all starts with a “think big” mentality/philosophy. You have to first embrace a philosophy of growth before you start work on anything else. Some resent conversations have left me convinced some businesses don’t want to grow. Or, rather, their fear of change is bigger than the desire for growth. Now is not the time to be afraid of the future.
The Sunday Show for today features one of my all-time favorite podcasts–Fighting Barnacles. I always take a positive view of change, and I tend to be patient with people who need a lot of time in order to embrace new ways of doing business. After all, if what you’ve been doing has been successful, it’s […]
Today’s Guest Blogger is Rosemary DiDio Brehm, a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters. Learn more about Rosemary at the end of this post. Thanks Rosemary! This winter has been dreadful. Snow and ice interrupted everything from routine business trips to the Super Bowl where falling ice caused injury and delay. But, thermometers are starting […]
I started the day with Alltop to see what my favorite bloggers were talking about. I found a link from Guy Kawasaki to an article about story-telling–what intrigued me was the title: 7 Deadly Sins of Business Storytelling. It’s based on Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith’s book, The Dragonfly Effect. And it was a coincidental topic, since The Whale […]
Unlike the majority of the sale optimization posts out there, we’d recommend not focusing on lead management, some sort of funnel, or your web traffic. That’s not whale hunting. Instead, focus on mapping a process to go after bigger customers. Once you have exact steps and players at each step defined, go about making incremental improvements to what’s working. As Scott said in his article, you should focus more on what’s working than on what’s not working. A truly great sales process will come from continual improvement of what’s working… not just fixing what’s broken.
Should you take a small piece of business in hopes of getting more later? Not usually.
After my last post about a content strategy, Merlin U Ward [Twitter @merlinuward] asked me, “What about media aggregators?” An “aggregator” is someone (or in most cases today a set of software tools) that gathers content produced by others and makes it available to people who want easy access to good filtered content on that topic. […]
Recently Gini Dietrich predicted “All companies will become media companies.” If you’re in the marketing/PR business or if you’re a keen social media afficionado and follower, maybe you already know this. But I’ll bet for most of us, as small biz entrepreneurs and salespeople, that’s still news. What that means–becoming a “media company”– is that […]