In a famous quote, Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, said “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”
He meant, of course, that HP employees individually and in small teams had critical knowledge of the enterprise, the customers, and the market: research and development, processes, procedures, manufacturing, quality control, and so on. And all of this knowledge is of great value in the sales and business development processes as well as in R&D and customer service.
But this priceless individual knowledge wasn’t known collectively, so that it could not be brought to bear on each new issue, problem, or opportunity. Everything took longer than it should have because critical knowledge wasn't shared deliberately throughout the enterprise.
Surprisingly, this problem may be even more acute in smaller companies.
I just finished working with a small business team preparing a very significant proposal in response to a federal government RFP. This is a very successful company with significant technical expertise in their field, a track record of great success, and very apparent management excellence.
Yet, as we tried to put "into words" HOW they do what they do, they were stymied. They are so accustomed to doing it, it does not occur to them to explain, or to write down the steps, or--in essence--to capture the knowledge.
In fact, they almost think that to explain it step-by-step would be boring and insulting to the reader. "Doesn't everyone know how we would approach this? After all, it's just common sense."
No matter how small you are, or where you are in the development of explicit processes, I encourage you to be certain that everyone in your company "knows what you company knows."
Whenever your team is selling, whether face-to-face or through an RFP, you can use explicit processes to your great advantage in going up against larger competitors, who are more likely to have well-crafted process materials.
And that means paying some special attention to documenting and sharing "how we do it here." Your proposals will get better; they will get easier; and you company's knowledge base will explode.
Do you have an example to share about "knowing what you know?" If so, please post it below.
Rosemary Brehm and Brian Zaas are teaming up to launch Whale Hunters Chapters in the Tampa area. Their first chapter will begin in early April.
Here's how you can learn more.
They are hosting an Intro to Whale Hunting at 12:00 - 1:00 pm. This is a free event with light refreshments served. You can register for this event here: Open Registration--Free Event
Later in the same day you are invited to cocktails and hors d'oeuves at Capital Grille from 4:30-5:30 pm. This event requires a $30 registration fee for food and beverages. You can register here: Open Registration
Rosemary Brehm, president of turningpoints2results, is an entrepreneur and expert in helping organizations accelerate their potential into profitable results by focusing on five key shifts in their businesses: strategic business performance; leadership alignment; team dynamics; customer intimacy, and competitive positioning. In addition to her consulting services, Rosemary is certified as a Professional Facilitator (CPF) through the International Association of Facilitators.
Rosemary was founding Chair of the Tampa Bay Women President’s Organization and served that group from 2003-2009. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators; the Senior HRD Forum; ASTD; and the Organizational Development SIG. She holds a Certificate in Training and Development from New York University and a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo.
With over 22 years of experience in leading business development and sales efforts for Technology, Software, and Outsourcing solutions, Brian Zaas has a background in business operations optimization, systems integration, custom application development and technology leadership. He has been responsible for driving global business development and professional service efforts for leading Fortune 500 corporations including Fujitsu, CA, and MCI-Worldcom as well as start-up growth for Pilgrim Software, Best Programs Telcordia, and most recently is leading efforts for Enterprise Solutions with Avineon.
He has led strategic and innovative solution areas for Fortune 500 and emerging growth customers in need of IT, technology, outsourcing and the infrastructure management. Brian has also consulted with market leaders across a number of industries on leadership, pipeline development, innovation, and sales in new product development and market penetration focusing on large, complex deals.
The Whale Hunters are proud to introduce these new Certified Whale Hunters Patners who will provide services to the Tampa business community.
Anita Grantham is a Certified Whale Hunters Partner in Phoenix, AZ. Anita is recruiting members now for her Whale Hunters Chapter which will convene early in March.
Anita is a native of Phoenix and has been Chief People Officer for
Anita is passionate about helping business owners be successful and achieve their goals. She has worked with numerous entrepreneurs to help them grow both business and talents. She also works with college students who are preparing for their careers and their first job.
For more information about The Whale Hunters Chapters, please click here.
Our local Chapter Chairs are now recruiting members in Denver, Detroit/Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, Naples, St. Louis, Phoenix, and Tampa. More cities are coming on board weekly; let us know if you are interested.
Click here for more information on a Whale Hunters Chapter.
Do you know how to interpret economic and business development news? Do you feel as if we walk a tightrope between hype and despair? Are we headed for disaster or beginning a recovery? As small/midsize business leaders, how can we tell, and where should we look for helpful information?
I am pleased to announce the monthly Whale Hunters Expert Series teleconference on Wednesday February 17 at 12 noon Eastern time (that's 11 am Central, 10 am Mountain, and 9 am Pacific) , with our featured guest Jason DeRose, Supervising Editor, NPR's Economic Training Project.
We'll be discussing some guidelines for processing economic news as small business owners plan for their companies’ short term and long term directions. Much of today's economic news is hype and hyperbole. Instead, we will be talking about what kind of evidence we should look for, how can we tell if a report is sensible, how can we best interpret the information that we hear, see, and read. And we'll have this conversation in the company of an expert who is responsible for training journalists to improve their ecoomic news coverage, especially at the local level.
Jason DeRose is the Supervising Editor for National Public Radio's (NPR) Economic Training Project. He works with local member station reporters as an editor, trainer and mentor to improve business and economics coverage throughout the public radio system. He is based at NPR West in Culver City, California.
Prior to his current position, Jason worked as an editor on NPR's mid-day news magazine Day to Day, as a reporter and producer at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., and as an editor, host, reporter and producer at member stations in Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Tampa.
He's served as a mentor and trainer for NPR's "Next Generation Radio Project" and Chicago Public Radio's "Ear to the Ground Project" — programs that teach aspiring high school and college students public radio's unique reporting style.
Outside of public radio, Jason has worked as an oral history interviewer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and as a journalism trainer at the International Center for Journalists. He has also taught journalism ethics, radio reporting, multimedia storytelling and religion reporting at DePaul University in Chicago and at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
Jason graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, with majors in religion and English. He also holds a master's degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School and studied at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
The call is free but you need to register first at http://thewhalehuntersexpertseries.eventbrite.com/ -- you will receive dial-in information. Call format is 45-minutes of interview with Jason followed by 15-minutes of Q & A with the participants.
I believe small business is the future of the American economy. This discussion is all about how we can get news and information that s relevant to our needs and how we can intrepret that news.I hope you will join us!
Yet small business absolutely runs on trust. It is the key differentiator between your company and your large competitors. But that will only be apparent to the whales if you actively work on the trust relationship all of the time.
Here are some suggestions:
(1) Get with your team on a regular basis to audit the trust relationships. Assess whether you are gaining or losing trust over time.
(2) Look for the weakest links in your chain. Whatever department or service creates the most hassle for the whale is the one that will determine the whale's overall sense of your trustworthiness.
(3) Discuss whether there are any inadvertent "trust busters" in your company--throw-away lines to the whale that pit one area of your company against another. These are communications like "Well, customer service is always trying to cover themselves" or "I hear that training is really backed up" or "If they don't take care of you, just call me." Often these are well-meaning phrases but they lead to a reduction in trust.
(4) Remind your team that "the village survives because we hunt." Whale-sized customers are difficult. They have high expectations. They do thinks differently than you may be accustomed to and they challenge your team's good will and your resources. Nevertheless, it's better if everyone develops an attitude that the whale is what feeds the village.
In The Whale Hunters model, business development does not end with the sale. You will not be successful at growing your company unless your service delivery matches--and especially exceeds--the promised you made during the sales cycle.
How is your company doing on trust with your key accounts?
By their nature, whale-sized accounts are complex. Invariably, delivering your products and services requires the coordination of many people in your company with many more people in the whale company. You have an opportunity to greatly improve your internal processes and controls each time you serve a new whale.
The most important thing for members of your team to remember is that their counterparts on the whale side are accustomed to a very high level of formal communication, which is the norm in a large, most likely bureaucratic, organization. In contrast, communication at your company is likely to be much more informal and delivered in meetings or emails rather than formal memos or documents.
Even if you do a good job of managing the account, failing to manage the formal communication of your control processes can do you in. Here’s how to plan:
· Determine the key people on the whale team who need to be informed of progress on the account
· Establish a regular reporting schedule, weekly or bi-weekly, with an internal “owner” on your team.
· Ensure that each team leader on your side reports key progress, issues, or hold-ups to the internal owner on a clear deadline.
· Develop a simple template for the “controls” report or project update.
· Distribute to your team and to the whale team on a predictable, regular basis.
This discipline will accomplish two very important things. First, it will keep your team on track with the deliverables and on the same page regarding the entire deal. Second, it will communicate to everyone on the whale team that you are a professionally managed company that understands and accommodates their need for information.
When problems are called out in a regular, routine report, they become routine—not cause for alarm but simply for action. It's one more example of how the sale will not result in business development unless you deliver at the highest level. Your business growth requires a balance between the sales cycle and the delivery.
In many industries, price has become the only apparent differentiating factor in contract awards. Pricing wars put small and mid size business at a disadvantage because larger competitors can low-ball a bid in order to freeze you out.
How will you know if you are in a pricing war? And if you are, how can you respond?
In an RFP circumstance, you should intend to be the lowest cost suitable provider or to decline to bid. Unless,
- you can beat the field on unique past experience (and don't kid yourself!)
- you can beat the field on a unique plan of work (which will save money)
- you know what the current provider is being paid (and you can beat it)
- you are the incumbent (and you can leverage the relationship)
So how will you prepare your pricing strategy? Here are some ideas:
- Explore your bidding history. What are the proposals in which you have lost out on price? Do you have detailed feedback on pricing and other elements of your proposal? If so, use them going forward.
- Find and use data. Be certain that you understand standard pricing for sales in your industry, especially pricing among your large competitors.
- Hire a consultant. Use a pricing expert to help you consider options and to understand the competition.
- Take more training. For government contracts especially, many training programs are available for your team to learn more about costs and pricing for government business at the local, state, and federal levels.
- Match your deliverables to the requirements. When you must compete on price, don't add any frills or "nice to haves." Stick with the minimum requirements and price aggressively.
We would love to hear your personal strategies for winning the pricing wars--or examples of coming in second and lessons learned from that experience!
Like all whale hunters activity, this one needs to be scrupulously planned and managed, from the moment the whale team arrives in your city to the moment they get back in their car or on the plane.
To plan The Big Show, you need an event script that is re-usable. Specific details may change depending upon your prospect, but the overall process can be repeated. Schedule the timing of all your preparations, not only the event itself. Everyone who has a job to do, from ordering muffins to watering plants and straightening work areas, needs to know when their responsibilities must be completed.
The Big Show is a great way to get your entire employee group excited about new business development. It's a method to get your workplace refreshed and your staff renewed. Everyone will look around with fresh eyes at things that are cluttered, dusty, or old.
Many of your staff members should have a speaking role with the prospects. On a plant tour or office tour, someone in the work area should greet the visitors and explain his/her role. Preparing for that assignment adds credibility to their positions and capability to their contributions.
When you host a flawless Big Show, you demonstrate your ability to bring a new client on board seamlessly and collaboratively and you appear to be more in control and more process-oriented than perhaps you are! And each time you do it, you become more in control.
We had a client with a call center business, a business that traditionally operates behind the scenes rather than in public. Even when they moved into attractive new office space, it had not occurred to them that prospective customers would want to see the call center or meet their staff. They were worried about how their staff would prepare and how they could really pull it off. A call center is a rah-rah place, noisy, very casual dress code--under the radar. But at our urging they decided to try a Big Show. They bought logo shirts for all the employees, spruced up the conference room, scheduled a walk-around plus interviews with key Subject Matter Experts, hired a limo for airport transportation, booked their best downtown club for dinner, and in general went all out.
The first try was so successful that they built The Big Show into their sales process for all whale accounts. Their success rate in closing big accounts skyrocketed, employee retention improved, and the accounts got bigger and more prestigious.
Have you ever hosted The Big Show? How did it work for you?
1. Own the room. Your most important tactic is to control the space in which you are meeting. If the presentation is at your headquarters, you can assign seats, issue name tags, and provide table tents. But if--more likely--your team is presenting at the prospective customer's site, how can you own the room?
- First, be absolutely certain that you know who will be in attendance. Check and double check with your key contact(s) and their staff.
- Match up your presenters with their attendees. Be certain that everyone on your team knows who they are responsible for on the whale buyers' team.
- Show up early. Bring table tents. Place them where you want them. Intersperse their team with your team.
- If you are providing handouts or presenting any kind of digital presentation, own your technology and arrive in plenty of time to be certain it will work in their space.
2. Surprise them. Everyone else who has presented to this buyers' table has led them through a boring power point deck of some kind. You need to be different!
- Only use slides if you have powerful visual images to present.
- Use no text on your slides--visual images only.
- Insert short audio or video into your slides.
- Ensure that no one on your team is watching the slides while they are being presented.
- Be sure that each person has his or her power tools, power points, and power questions.
- Rehearse with an internal and/or external team of supporters who will role play the potential client.
- Be very clear who on your team will field questions from the prospect and direct them to the appropriate person on your team. This person should not be the lead presenter.
Prepare everyone to speak comfortably in a sales/new business setting.
- Provide everyone with the confidence needed to present assertively.
- Communicate how important their performance is to your company's growth.
- Praise and reward great participation.
But this practice cannot happen successfully unless you devote some time to preparing. The harpooner (salesperson) needs to learn how to orchestrate a team presentation. No longer doing most of the talking, the sales lead introduces team members and manages all facets of the presentation, on the fly.
Likewise, key subject matter experts [SMEs] need to learn how to participate in a client-facing presentation. They will need the confidence that comes from knowing what is expected of them, having rehearsed, and understanding the whole plan.
We recommending preparing SMEs with three sets of material:
1. Power Points. Not a slide deck but a few key statements. Each SME should know the most important points about your company, your product/service, and their role in the delivery. And the harpooner should be prepared to ensure they have the opportunity to make their key points.
2. Power Tools. These are the fear-busters, those tangible pieces of evidence that calm the buyers and make you look capable of doing business with a whale. Power Tools are documents, white papers, testimonials, charts, graphs, diagrams, pictures, processes--brief but very professional representations of your company's capabilities in areas that are likely to make the buyers afraid.
3. Power Questions. The buyers want to know what YOU need to know in order to serve them well, and they will expect your presentation team to ask intelligent and probing questions. Be certain that each SME is prepared to ask one or more critical questions of the buying team, questions that will promote a lively discussion.
Teach your SMEs to incorporate power points, tools, and questions into the presentation. Rehearse so that they understand when to speak and when to listen. Invite other employees to role play the buyers and offer constructive feedback.
You will find that SMEs write better proposals and bring a new client on board faster and with fewer glitches and that your entire company becomes more excited about sales and business development. They will have a new respect for the sales process, a better understanding of the customers, and a bigger stake in your growth.
How do you engage SMEs in your sales process? We'd love your comments, tips and suggestions.
Really good questions have several characteristics:
- they are open-ended, inviting a discussion, not a short answer
- they are objective, requesting specific data and examples rather than speculation
- they are historical, seeking to learn about past behavior as a prediction of future behavior
- they are non-combative, inviting a thoughtful response rather than a defense
- they are narrative, asking the listener to tell a story
- they are process-oriented, focused on learning a sequence of steps in the decision-making
Original: "Who is the decision-maker in this process?"
Revised: "Can you tell me all of the people or departments who will be affected by your purchase decision?
Original: How will you make your purchase decision?
Revised: Will you help me sketch out the steps your typical buying process?
Original: Why do you want to change suppliers?
Revised: The last time you changed suppliers, what were the reasons that motivated your team to make a change?
You get the idea--frame your question in a way to get more detail, a more thoughtful response, a sense of their decision-making process and history, a story or context of what is motivating their sales discussion with your company.
We would love to have examples of your favorite questions! Your comments welcome.
I wrote yesterday that your early meetings with the Buyers should be all about them and what you need to learn. But the more you learn, the more you need to begin to disclose to them about your products, services, unique value proposition, your team, etc.
A strong sales process will identify what you intend to discover and what you intend to disclose at each step. Of course your plan is subject to modification depending upon the whale's agenda; however, the more you control the timing and the content, the better your company will be positioned to make a big sale.
Now is the time to keep in mind that whale buyers are not usually looking for the best or most creative or most innovative idea. They are looking for a reasonable solution that will work, meet their budget, cause the least resistance and the least internal disruption. In other words, a safe choice.
What does this mean to you? Your early disclosure should focus on these points:
- ease of transition--how many things will NOT change if they hire you
- short term ROI--what benefits can they expect to realize in the first few months that will make the buyers' team look good
- safety factors--what qualities of your company are persuasive that you are solid, predictable, stable, and financially sound
- how much your company and the whale company have in common re: sales and implementation processes, standards, systems etc.
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 writing about discovery--the logical application of the "two card questions" in my last post.
Wat do you need to learn in your first meeting in order to decide it's worth your time to have a second meeting? What do you need to know from the whale before you launch a boat, commit resources, engage subject matter experts and your village leaders in a sales hunt? How much of your business development process depends on what you can learn at each step?
If you can't answer these questions or have only fuzzy answers, you have great opportunity for improvement. We know that a whale hunt is expensive and time consuming. So the sooner you can learn if you are unlikely to make a sale at this time, the better off you will be financially and in opportunity cost. Send that whale "back to Baja" and pursue another for which the timing is more appropriate.
Focusing on what you need to discover will put you in the driver's seat while also reassuring the whale that you are deeply committed to understanding their needs, their practices, and their problems.
Likewise, in your sales process, there should be key questions to ask the whale in your early encounters so that you will know whether to pursue a deal or send the whale back to Baja. We call these your "2-Card Questions."
For example, here are questions that you may need to answer, early:
- do you have budget for the work we are proposing?
- have you ever done business with a company as [small, unknown] as us?
- when will you make your decision?
- is it possible you will select a provider that is not the lowest bidder?
- are you the ultimate decision maker?
- where does the budget reside for this project? when is that budget awarded?
- the last time you did business with a small company like us, what kind of experience did you have
- can you help me understand the steps in your process of selecting a vendor?
- the last tie you bought from a vendor who was not the lowest bidder, how did you arrive at that decision?
- who are the people who will be impacted by your decision? will you introduce my team to them?
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 your social media presence to your print materials, from your address to your physical location will send signals to the whale about you.
Now is the time to bring the aperture of perception under greater control. Your business development process as well as specific whale hunting sales will depend upon how well you manage the whale's "experience" of your company.
That means having every touch point under control. The goal is to present your company in the following ways:
- totally under control
- unruffled
- sophisticated in dealing with large customers
- process-driven
- safe, reliable, and long-lasting
- larger and safer than your peers
Do you have a story to share about how you mad your company appear bigger, smarter, or more solid than you really felt? Please comment!
The Whale Hunters Process doesn't include "cold calling." Let's face it: you are not going to land a new deal, ten to twenty times your average deal, by placing a phone call to the prospective buyer. That is an outmoded, old-fashioned, small-minded method of sales. It is not a strategic business development method.
So what would you do instead?
At this point in your Whale Hunting process, you have a great deal of information about a list of companies on your Whale Chart. Part of that information consists of the names and titles of key executives. Now's the time to put that knowledge to work in your network.
First, have your Scouts conduct deep Internet searches on all of the key execs that they've identified. Include Google searches, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook.
Next, bring your team to the table to find connections in professional associations, philanthropic boards, community interests and alumni associations. Look for connections between your target whales and your current clients.
Set Google alerts on key executives to bring forward news about their activities.
You will find a connection.
Do you have an example of a six-degrees connection? We'd love to hear it!
Whale Hunting is totally different. You select the ideal customers for you, research those customers and watch their behavior, then make your initial contact at a time that seems just right. You will chase fewer deals and bigger deals. You will invest more resources into the hunts that you launch, and your close rate will soar.
This business development method relies on what we call the Whale Chart, the list of prospective whale-sized customers that you have identified for the next period of time--say six months or one year.
Your Whale Chart is the culmination of the initial Scouting process. You've identified your criteria (Target Filter), found companies that match some of the criteria, made dossiers on those companies, scored them against your Target Filter, and came up with a list of the best ones for you. That's your Whale Chart.
It sounds like work, doesn't it. And it is work. But it's not the work of the executive team or the sales team. It's the work of the scouts (whether in-house or outsourced), and once you've completed the initial effort, it does not require too much time to keep it going. And you will position yourself far, far ahead of your competitors when it comes to your knowledge of the whale and your initial understanding of their business issues and opportunities.
Have you created a Whale Chart? If not, how do you decide which prospects to hunt?
It's a huge differentiator and a huge advantage--a company that studies its sales targets as a routine business development practice will outperform most other companies, who don't.
As a whale hunter, your business growth depends on selling much bigger deals to much bigger customers--customers that you have identified and targeted, not customers who accidentally come through your door. The big key to that advantage is your learning about those whales and their company.
Your scouts need to prepare thorough dossiers focused on your target filter criteria. But it doesn't stop there! They need to provide you with names and titles of key executives, then Google those names to find bio information, career history, etc. For public companies, the scouts should find the SEC filings, especially the 10K Form Management Discussion & Analysis (MD&A) by which company leadership interprets the current status and future directions.
Scouts are also looking for "6 degrees of separation" -- links from your company to key executives at the target company. Social media--especially LinkedIn and Facebook -- are good sources as well as Google searches to find articles and mentions. Sometimes the best connection is through a professional or trade association or philanthropic service.
When the scouts do their job well, your harpooner will be fully prepared to make an initial call on the proper person at the prospective whale account.
And if your company is small, that probably strikes terror in your heart. It sounds hard, and it sounds time-consuming, and it sounds expensive, right? Well it is time-consuming, but you can make it easy and inexpensive.
I always recommend that you team up with a college or university Business School to find a class that needs a real-world project or an intern who needs experience. If you have internal resources, this is a marketing or sales-support function.
The tip for today is to work with a student team, an internal team, or a librarian to assess your criteria within relevant business databases to produce lists of companies that meet your criteria.
Let me emphasize--at this stage all of your data should be free. If you decide later to purchase high-caliber sales data for a particular industry or market, that is fine, but at the outset you can find 95% of what you need by working through databases available at your local university or public library.
The research is all online, Internet based; however, it is worth a trip TO a library to talk with a reference librarian about what you are trying to accomplish. Don't forget your local or statewide Chamber of Commerce as another source of data.
How are you identifying your whale targets? Are you satisfied with your process?
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