Bradley Schiller’s Wall Street Journal opinion piece resonated with me. He takes issue with Pres. Obama likening today’s economic circumstance to “the great depression.” I don’t want to quarrel with the president, and that’s not the purpose of my comments. What I DO want to say is that I totally agree with Schiller’s take on […]
This week my interactive marketing team has been coaching me on how to use Twitter as an arrow in the business development quiver. I’ve also invested time, training, and even dollars in Compendium Blogware (who support this blog) and other social media tools including LinkedIn, Plaxo, FaceBook, and Ryze. Twitter is in a class by itself. By far […]
New issue of Whale Hunters Wisdom out today. It’s about how to manage your prospects’ sense of whether you are large enough for them to do business with. Seven tips for getting this right. Our new eBook, Winning Whales with an RFP, is available for purchase and immediate download now. It’s a how-to on the […]
Famous quote from British author E. M. Forster — “only connect . . . the prose and the passion . . .” It speaks volumes for RFP writing and is a key component in RFP training–how to make your written proposal more powerful by forging the link between what the prospective customer wants (the prose) and what […]
For those of you who sell sometimes, often, or always through the RFP writing process, I’ve written a new eBook, available for download through our website www.thewhalehunters.com. It was my intent to focus on corporate RFP writing, which is typically accomplished by a team of contributors. The book will guide you in how to manage […]
Andrew Grove’s book Only the Paranoid Survive, published in 1999 while he was CEO of Intel, taught me a lot that keeps coming back to me in the midst of today’s economic woes. Grove was not about you and me or even him being paranoid–rather he urged that companies cultivate a paranoid world view alongside their more optimistic […]
In the last few weeks, I’ve consulted with clients on about a dozen RFP and RFI proposals. The art of business proposal writing is becoming more important even as it becomes more elusive to entrepreneurs and sales teams. I will write a series of blogs and newsletters on this topic in the coming weeks. Today’s […]
My coach Dan Sullivan (thestrategiccoach.com) says that the primary job of entrepreneurs is to protect their confidence. I wish the TV business show hosts had a coach like Dan! It is truly hard to remain confident in the face of the economic gloom-and-doom that bombards us daily. But if you’re an entrepreneur, a corporate executive, […]
We’re probably in for a long haul on the economic downturn. And clearly a lot of individuals, families, and businesses will suffer. So I want to talk about– what would fuel a recovery? Frankly, I don’t see government having the vision or capability. We continue to have a core of blue-chip American companies that will […]
In The Whale Hunters Process(tm), we define “harpooning” as “getting close” to the whale. The Harpooner is not the only one involved in completing a sale, but he or she is the one who gets in the door and gets the whale’s attention. We’ve also explained that in whale hunting, the harpooner couldn’t simply hurl […]
Instead of focusing on the DJIA ricochet like a pinball, let’s pause to count our (business) blessings in this week of Thanksgiving in the U.S. And if you’re not in the U.S., you’re still invited to give thanks with us. I’m thinking especially of how women entrepreneurs, business owners and executives, and other whale hunters, can make lemonade […]
A colleague recently pointed out to me the importance of the Whale Hunters concept that we call “launch the boat.” That’s the critical management decision to go or not go in pursuit of a particular whale or whale deal. In The Whale Hunters Process three key components–Scout, Hunt, Harvest–launching comes between Scout and Hunt. It’s not […]