Whale hunting is not about killing. What a bad analogy that would be! It’s actually about serving. Honoring the whale. Celebrating the whale. Doing your best work in service to the whale. That’s why the Inuit whale hunting story is at the heart of our practice. I call it ancient wisdom for modern business. […]
Chad Root discusses why marketing should not be left to your sales department.
Nothing is more critical to the sustainable success of a business than its abilities to galvanize the organizational team around their accountabilities for growth. While so many businesses place a high emphasis and dependence upon the functional responsibility of the sales teams for their growth, sustainable businesses recognize that increases in revenues are best accomplished through the retention of existing clients and the efficiency with which their team attracts and converts new clients. Sustainable revenue growth is about focusing on developing and maintaining great relationships that add value to the firm and to the client. That is not a sales function—it is an organizational accountability.
Once upon a time, businesses everywhere searched high and low for the right big account. They marched through the forest and didn’t see the trees. They scoured the earth and met with saber-toothed tigers and vicious lions that sent them scurrying back to their caves. They set out day after day with great optimism only to return home with little or no luck. Until one day, they looked out across the wide ocean and asked, “How do the ancient traditions of sea-faring nations feed and clothe their families during the long and arduous winters?” And they discovered the key of Whale Hunting!
Many sales people give up on their dreams because they worry about and try to avoid that feeling of rejection that comes when a prospect says “No”. It’s a natural concern. No one really wants to feel like a reject in life. However, it is a word that successful sales people must navigate past if they are to close deals, especially big ones.
When you hear “No”, it’s important to discern the story behind the “No”.
When I started in “sales”, I didn’t want the word sales in my title. In 1993, I graduated from Architecture school and took a job as “Sales Engineer” for a custom returnable packaging company. Yes – I was responsible for selling, but I never really saw myself as a salesperson. I saw myself more as a “figure out a way to solve customer problems in a way that my company could make money” person. This became especially true as I grew in responsibility to become a business manager and owner of my own businesses. Here are three lessons I’d like to shar
As this economy brings changing market conditions, the process of scouting, or honing in on the preferred customer, becomes essential. It is the dedication to a focused, strategic business development process for targeting that ideal customer that may mean the difference between accelerated growth versus business as usual.
Whether you are a die hard whale hunter or follow some other sales methodology, success in sales really comes down to following a defined sales process. I am not going to get into the specifics about any one process, but I would like to talk about the value in pairing your process with the right technology. I look at technology as a tool and not an end in and of itself. Like any tool, when it is used correctly, it can help you do great things.
Podcast about how to locate and befriend key advocates for your company.
I started the day with Alltop to see what my favorite bloggers were talking about. I found a link from Guy Kawasaki to an article about story-telling–what intrigued me was the title: 7 Deadly Sins of Business Storytelling. It’s based on Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith’s book, The Dragonfly Effect. And it was a coincidental topic, since The Whale […]
In a recent article on Entrepreneur.com, Tom Black gave this piece of advice: Understand the sales process. A sale happens, he says, when there’s a transfer of feeling and when you bring people to a point of decision. Of course, we’re all about sales process, but sometimes, even when you’ve done everything right you get […]
The Whale Hunters Expert Series call on Wednesday, November 17, features a discussion of how to sell large contracts to the biggest of all whales–the United States government. My guest is Major General Vincent E. Boles, U.S. Army, ret., who was commissioned second lieutenant of Ordnance in 1976 and was selected as Brigadier General in […]