Would You Benefit from a Business Incubator?
Business incubators offer attractive services to early stage companies seeking to grow.
The push for Q4 Sales
The fourth quarter of the business year begins on the Tuesday after Labor Day. Finally, everyone is home from vacation. Kids are back in school. The bookends of summer–Memorial Day and Labor Day–are now closed. People will return your phone calls, meetings can be scheduled, and work can move on. What business development plans do […]
Whale Hunting and Leadership
One of The Whale Hunters’ new Certified Partners, Roslyn Courtney, blogs at Leadership Pundit: Success in the New Economy. Her new article Whale Hunter Leaders is about the role of small business in growing the economy and how Whale Hunting can help. Roslyn writes, “Early into my Whale Hunting boot camp (I’m now certified), I knew […]
Chamber of Commerce and Your Business
I had the pleasure of presenting a Whale Hunters workshop for the Academy Plus attendees at the annual training seminar hosted by the Western Alliance of Chamber Executives, headquartered in Sacramento, CA. These are experienced CEOs of local and regional Chambers of Commerce, dedicating time and energy to better serving their members and their communities. […]
Success is 90% Process
I circulated a new newsletter article today focused on how small companies can greatly improve their proposals–whether in response to RFPs or simply in their normal sales process–if they invest some time into documenting processes. My all-too-real world example comes from a current RFP that I am working on with a client. $900 million of […]
Business Development Milestone
Here we are at the end of Q2. Those of us in the U.S. are ready for a long Independence Day weekend. Then it’s back to work for the next big sales push. Where do you stand at midyear? Did you meet your revenue targets for last year? Did you meet your revenue targets for […]
Is email the best collaboration tool?
A blog site called All Collaboration posted an entry about 2/3 of respondents to a survey saying that email was the most effective collaboration tool. I thought that was interesting because I find email to be a horrible way to collaborate. All Collaboration co-founder Lokesh Datta posed the question on LinkedIn: Is email a collaboration […]
How to Reach Your Contact
Tamar Weinberg interviewed “influencers” about “how should someone get your attention?” Thirty-six responses (plus Tamar’s, for thirty-seven total) offer many wise suggestions that are relevant for whale hunters. In the first stage of your sales process (Scouting), you have developed a targeted list of companies that you would like to do business with. You may […]
Whale Hunting Practice #31: Sell New Business to Your Key Accounts
The best thing about large accounts is that they offer many opportunities to sell more business–you may have different products and services that would appeal to different departments or divisions of the whale company. Or you might have the opportunity to sell more of the same product or service to other divisions or locations. The […]
Whale Hunting Practice #18: Ask Better Questions
If you are going to build your Whale Hunting sales process on the basis of answers that you need from the whale buyers at every step, then your sales team [harpooners and subject matter experts] will need to become very proficient question designers. Asking great questions is an art; those who practice it successfully have […]
Whale Hunting Practice #14: Progressive Discovery
Most small and midsize company sales representatives lead with their story of benefits and advantages, even in conversations with a whale. Contrarily, The Whale Hunters Process proposes that you build your entire sales strategy around two core concepts: what you need to discover and what you need to disclose at every step. Today I am […]
Whale Hunting Practice #12: Control the Aperture of Perception
Like a camera lens that focuses where you point it, ignoring the unwanted images on either side, so you need to manage the whales’ perception of your company. It IS under your control how a prospective whale customer will perceive you and your team. Everything from how your phones are answered to your website, from […]