Corporate philanthropy has been around for hundreds of years. From the town groceries running a line of credit for local families to the local merchants who sponsor Little League to the corporate giants who established the Lilly and Rockefeller and Carnegie and Gates Foundations as well as many others, companies find ways to align…...
Testimonials from customers or supply-chain partners can serve as powerful differentiators. Building your brand on testimonials means you stand out from your competitors in customer loyalty and customer delight. Doing business with you makes people happy, or solves a big problem, or gives them new opportunities–or all of the above and more. And whatever product […]
Is timeliness an important part of your service? A good way for small companies to differentiate is by using their agility and flexibility to deliver goods and services faster than their competitors do. The more complex your service, the more a timely delivery may be a great selling point Of course, you have to be […]
Are you developing your products and services in concert with your customers, or are you internally focused?
Complexity in the sales story is a common flaw of young companies as they are growing. You’re afraid to turn away any business, so you try to do almost anything that any prospect wants you to do. Big mistake! First off, it doesn’t work, and it will cost you money and anguish before you finally learn that hard lesson.
So what’s the lesson? The asset is a customer walks into your office. How much more of an asset do you want? So don’t blow it by getting in the way. Leverage that asset by being a human being with them. Be present. Give them freedom. Don’t take it away.
Anthony Iannarino on the topic of how to avoid commoditization.
A lot of The Whale Hunters client companies believe they are playing in a totally price-driven market. They do not see any opportunities to compete other than on price. When they lose a deal, they assume they lost it on price.
The problems with that zero-sum game are that there are always limits to how low the market can drive prices (before vendors abandon the market) and that every vendor is vulnerable to price-cutting by any competitor at any time.
Whale Hunting is a great strategy to grow your company fast. But even fast-growing companies make on average 80% of their revenue from existing clients. So it’s much more important to keep existing whales than to hunt for new ones. How do you find out if there is a high probability that existing whales will work with you next year, too?
I received a very disconcerting email this morning from amazon.com. It was the typical occasional email that amazon.com customers receive, recommending books that I might enjoy.
Amazon, of course, is known for its ability to understand its customers’ taste and to make recommendations on that basis. The entire system is technology-based, not human-based. That is to say, amazon.com doesn’t really know me at all; it creates the illusion of knowing me by crunching data about my browsing and buying habits on its site.
Today’s guest blogger is Dave Cooke–more about Dave at the end of the post. Thanks, Dave, for sharing your words of wisdom with The Whale Hunters readers today. As businesses continue to drive their sales teams to bring new customers into the organization, they need to be mindful that revenue growth also involves the effective […]
The “brand promise audit” is a key feature of the scouting process, designed to position your company to land big sales. It’s a mandatory feature of your business development strategy! The brand promise audit focuses on how a small company can hone its message to market so as to be distinctive. In far too many […]