Sales Process - The Whale Hunters

March 21, 2011

Effective Prospecting – Investing for the Long Term

In today’s world “instant gratification” is a very strong mindset. It seems we may not have learned enough from the economic collapse of the past few years. “Instant gratification” is especially prevalent in the sales world these days, as well. It seems that the teachings of “getting to no” in conjunction with management pressures to close deals today have created a sales professional that is only interested in spending their time with prospects who are ready to buy now. Effective prospecting in sales has become what day trading is to the stock market – no one is investing for the long term.

Today’s prospecting behaviors involve finding someone who is ready to buy, submitting piles of proposals, or responding to RFQ’s (Request for Quote) that have little chance of being won.

March 14, 2011

Big Deals in Professional Services: 9 Strategic Considerations

Today’s Guest Blogger is Joseph Olewitz . Joseph has been there & done that in the area of new business development. In addition to being CEO and Principal Consultant at 22nd Story Strategies, Inc., Joseph currently shares experiences deriving from years of pitching large professional services deals on his Intentional Growth blog. As I […]

March 11, 2011

The Leadership that Drives Culture Change: 7 Critical Initiatives

Making a commitment to hunt whales is the beginning of a dramatic cultural shift. It’s more than just a new business development strategy. Embarking on this process successfully requires vision, planning, implementation and personal development from everyone involved, particularly the CEO.

March 9, 2011

Do One Thing . . . Define the Customer You Want Next

My colleague Lindsay Bayuk recently introduced me to the website Real Simple and the “Keep It Together” emails that they deliver. The subject line is “If You Do Just One Thing . . . [fill in the blank]. Actually, the first one I saw was “If you do just one thing . . . clean out […]

March 8, 2011

Why Can’t Sales and Marketing Get Along?

Of all the problems with company silos, the one hardest for me to imagine is a marketing silo and a sales silo. Yet I see these divisions all the time, even in small companies. Marketing complains that the sales team will not share information or fill out CRM reports. Sales complains that marketing is wasting time and wasting money and not delivering the right kinds of leads.

March 4, 2011

Get Over It: Overcoming Hurdles to Implement Culture Change

Implementing needed, comprehensive change is hard. It’s really hard when it changes they way your company brings in revenue. As I’m finding with many small businesses, however, sometimes the implementation isn’t as difficult as just getting started. Sometimes just having an idea really heard is just as hard and doing the work. Even worse is when no one admits there’s a problem! In order for The Whale Hunters Process™ to really work, both leadership and employees need to be bought into the program. In order for everyone to be on the same page, it can take some convincing.

February 27, 2011

Sunday Show: The Care and Feeding of Ravens

Podcast about how to locate and befriend key advocates for your company.

February 22, 2011

Is Everyone in the Same Boat on Sales?

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!

February 21, 2011

Today’s the Day! Embrace Your Growth Strategy

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.

February 14, 2011

Constantly Improve Your Sales Process

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.

February 11, 2011

Your Content Strategy–Whose Content?

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. […]

February 8, 2011

How to Overcome a Whale-Sized Loss

To mitigate the risk of losing, small companies must become incredibly disciplined about vetting new business opportunities against their target filter. The more selective you become about pursuing new business the greater your close rate will be. Don’t waste your time going after new business that isn’t a good fit and therefore you will have a low likelihood of winning.

Effective Prospecting – Investing for the Long Term

Big Deals in Professional Services: 9 Strategic Considerations

The Leadership that Drives Culture Change: 7 Critical Initiatives

Do One Thing . . . Define the Customer You Want Next

Why Can’t Sales and Marketing Get Along?

Get Over It: Overcoming Hurdles to Implement Culture Change

Is Everyone in the Same Boat on Sales?

Today’s the Day! Embrace Your Growth Strategy

Constantly Improve Your Sales Process

How to Overcome a Whale-Sized Loss

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