Today’s post is about preparing for the tough questions. Sometimes you are tempted just to hope they won’t ask questions for which you don’t have a good answer, but that is a path to disaster. Everyone involved in the presentation needs to know WHO will answer each tough question and HOW the team will answer […]
When you’re preparing a sales presentation with your team, you should be telling a story. You need an introduction, a conclusion, and a middle that reinforces three main points. Three is a magic number because three points (or three outcomes or three reasons) are memorable. Two is not enough, and four is too many. Your audience–your […]
I have the privilege today of being a guest blogger for Jim Keenan, A Sales Guy. My post is called What Do Kevin Hart, Aristotle, and Jim Keenan have in common with your sales strategy? It’s my response to Jim’s post about the “Grammar Nazi’s”. And yes, it is about sales process and especially strategy. […]
Here’s another post in my continuing series on Crafting Your Brand Promise. Small business owners get a great deal of advice about how to avoid commoditization–how to bundle products and services that add value, thereby increasing the price you can charge. But some small businesses have a real edge in offering their customers a low-cost, […]
In my continuing series on differentiating your brand, I’m writing today about references and how you can develop them as a powerful way to stand out from your competitors. I’m not talking about testimonials from happy customers here; I wrote about that idea yesterday. References can be distinctly different from testimonials in positioning your brand […]
I’m happy to recommend a new book by my friend and colleague Nancy Bleeke–all about how to have “collaborative conversations” with your prospective customers. As you know, Whale Hunting is all about collaboration, and the “Hunt” stage is very focused on the nature of the conversation–what we’ve called Progressive Discovery and Progressive Disclosure. This book […]
Focusing on the outcomes of your work for customers can promote a clear differentiation from competitors. All buyers are interested in the end result–what will it look like/feel like/be like when you are done? This image (known as a 3D Knowledge Model) represents a future state where a number of disparate entities are aligned around […]
Everyone’s heard of a “niche” market as one way to differentiate your company from others. Perhaps you sell business-to-business, and you sell only to schools, or to salespeople, or to entrepreneurs, or to HR Directors, or to manufacturers. Or you sell to consumers, perhaps to men, or to teens, or to lawyers or gardeners.You might […]
A few days ago we had an air conditioning company come to the house for a seasonal check-up of our system. The guy who came out was polite and seemed knowledgeable and thorough, and after his inspection he told us about the few things that should be repaired or replaced. And, he said, since our…...
Are you one of the executives who still think social media is frivolous, trivial, and unrelated to your business? Think again! In this article, I explain the value of just one of the social media tools to find a personal introduction into a new large account prospect, to locate employees and past employees that you…...
A version of this post was originally published at BlogWorld. Many large companies have rigid policies prohibiting employees from any business-related social media activity. If that’s your practice, I recommend you reconsider. The Whale Hunters help B2B companies accelerate their growth by selling bigger deals to bigger customers. Most of our clients have a complex sale, such […]
I highly recommend Jill Konrath and Ardeth Albee’s new eBook: Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code. When The Whale Hunters work with our clients, we always encourage the leadership team and subject matter experts to create and/or improve their LinkedIn profile and activities. Few are coming even close to capturing the value in the network. That’s […]