We’re up to reason #8 of the Ten Ways You Can Lose Even When You’re the Best!  And reason #8 is:  Your company is too modest.

This one is sooooo hard for me to understand. But yes, we have clients who think that promoting the background and talents of their team, or documenting a few of their wins, or identifying key brands in their customer portfolio is inappropriate bragging.

This flaw can raise its ugly head near the very end of the sales process, when the buyers are making their final selection. You may have put a terrific proposal in front of them, quite likely better than the proposal from your closest competitor.  But the competitor included bio details about company leadership and key team members, success stories from several prestigious customers, a few succinct testimonials, and unique experiences or background that set them apart.

You’ve heard me say that you shouldn’t lead with the “all about us” stories.  But before you close the sale, the buyers should know what sets you apart as a delivery team.  Even having these things on your website and LinkedIn profiles is helpful because the buyers are going to check it out again when they make their final call.

A couple of examples.  One client reports on their website that “the founding partners, combine more than eighty years of color separation and printing experience.”  Well, let’s have their names and their particular background experiences–there are three partners and each brings unique talent and background to a project.  Further, this company has produced catalogs for some of the most exciting brands in North America, but they don’t mention it.  True, some customers will not permit you to brag about them.  But others will approve certain kinds of publicity.  If you have great clients and don’t mention them, others will assume that you do not have name brand experience.

We talked with leaders of a company that provides security services for industry, hospitals, airports, etc.  Their website mentions that the founding partners have US military experience, but does not include that at least two of them were in Special Forces units. To me that background would set them apart as an elite security team whose leaders have mastered the highest levels of security practice–not just theory.

The key here is to be specific. Citing some details of your past accomplishments and those of specific team members, calling attention to key customers that you have served well, and including some honest testimonials is not bragging.  Rather, it is helping your prospective new customer to feel safe in hiring you.  There’s no need to spin the details or embellish them, just put them forward.  Don’t force the buyers to put your story together for you–spell it out.

An earlier version of this post was published on the agencyside blog in July 2010.

Here are five key points to consider in preparation to make your initial call on a prospective customer.   No, they’re not about putting brochures in a folder or loading up the power point!

1. Know the customer.  Some sales people call on prospective customers with little more than a “lead”—maybe only an address and a name scribbled on a post-it note.  But whale hunters do not call on a large prospect until they have a complete dossier prepared by a Scout, someone in sales support, marketing or administrative assistance who has been trained to conduct the essential research. Your dossier should include a complete description of the company and its history.  You need to know its major customers and competitors, key products and services, and its market position.  Record three years of data on revenue, gross margin, and operating margin.  Total assets and total debt help you create a snapshot of the company’s current position.What is the company’s current market strategy?  Are they gaining or losing market share?  Are they poised to introduce new products or services?  Are they B-to-B or B-to-C?  What kind of  budget have they had historically?  Who is or has been their incumbent provider?
2. Think like a buyer.  We tend to have a huge need to talk about US.  We blab about our services, our track record, our cool tools and metrics and stuff that we do.  And the more innovative, the more creative, the more bells and whistles we can present, the better we like it.Large account buyers, however, are not really looking for the best of all possible solutions.  They want a reasonable solution that will work.  They want a solution that will not cost them too much money or work or time or change or internal conflict.  They want to choose a provider that will not embarrass them or get them into trouble.  So they have a huge preference for big agencies, with big brands, that are well known and comfortable.

   If you are a smaller company or a company unknown or little known to them, you need to learn to think from their point of view.  They are afraid of you.  Your job is to make them unafraid.  (For more on this topic, join our Pier9 library and read Think Like a Buyer.)They cannot hear your value proposition until they become less afraid of you.  So what can you do?

3. Ask great questions.  Instead of leading off with what you can do, lead off with rich, meaty questions about their circumstance.  I don’t mean just the ordinary questions to discover their “pain points.”  What are their aspirations?  What do they want or need to accomplish?  What obstacles are in their way?  How can you help them define and/or scope out their hopes in terms that make sense to an agency?Great questions invite your prospect to talk about how things have gone in the past.  How things are going now.  What is the typical way his or her company responds to the current set of needs, challenges, or aspirations?  How have they handled this need previously?  What has gone well and what didn’t work previously?

   Of course your questions are about the company.  However, your challenge is to frame those questions in the context of the individual or team that you are currently talking to.  Make it personal; keep it personal.

4. Listen.  When you ask great questions, you will typically get very useful answers.  If you don’t get good answers, or if the person you’re talking to doesn’t really want to interact with you and your questions, it’s a good sign to walk away from this deal at this time.  So the first point of listening is to listen for signs that you do not want to pursue this relationship at this time.But when you have asked great questions and listened to your counterpart’s answers for 30 to 45 minutes, that person begins to believe you are wise and knowledgeable.  You have learned valuable insights about what the prospect needs, wants, and hopes to accomplish.  You may have told very little about your company’s capabilities.  Nevertheless, you have proven that you “understand” the needs and desires of the buyer.
5. Ask for a process commitment.  A key ingredient in large account selling is to get commitments from the prospect and test whether they can and will keep their commitments.  A very easy and significant commitment is the process map.  This is a simple exercise that you can conduct on a note pad or on their flip chart or white board.  Map out the steps in their buying process.  Find out who needs to be involved at each step and whether the person you’re talking with is willing to get the important people involved.  See if your contact knows the buying process and if their process is compatible with your sales process.

Follow these five steps and you will have more productive first meetings with large-scale prospects.  Then you will be armed key understandings to share with your team to begin designing solutions.

I published this post 2 years ago and resurrected & modified it based on more recent experiences.

We had a great whale hunting session working with the Asia/Pacific sales team of an international company. This company specializes in “spend management.”  They help their customers significantly reduce their purchasing costs for many goods and services.

In the course of the workshop, this team reached a very interesting and unexpected insight about their most promising business deals, which was this:

We are not closing the proposals that demonstrate the very best ROI for our prospects. In fact, on our very best proposals, where we believe we can have the biggest positive impact for our customers, we are only closing 20%.  

How would we explain that apparent anomaly? Something’s going on that they don’t understand.

From a logical standpoint, the solution they offer in these best-of-class cases is a slam-dunk no brainer for the client. Yet after they present these proposals, the whales stall, ask for more time to consider, postpone their decision.  They back off from the whole deal.  In whale hunting terms, the whale is afraid of something or perhaps many somethings.

If you’re making great cost-savings proposals that your prospects are not buying, here are some underlying reasons that you might consider.  I’ve also suggested “fear busters,” ways to alleviate each of the fears:

• Your proposal sounds “too good to be true.” The whale is afraid you cannot or will not make good on your promise.  [This fear is alleviated by customer testimonials.]
• The whale does not fully understand how you will go about achieving this benefit and is afraid that your solution may cause unforeseen problems with their employees or vendors. [This fear is alleviated by process maps and illustrations to demonstrate the simplicity of your implementation.]
• The whale is afraid of making a mistake, leaving it with an untried system or process or solution or product which might produce a short-term gain but will soon become obsolete and dysfunctional.  [This fear is alleviated by white papers, case studies, and customer testimonials.]
• The whale is afraid that your solution is better suited for a different kind of enterprise than the whale’s.  [This fear is alleviated by multiple case studies from different industries and by a clear process illustration that is not industry-specific.]
• The whale does not need “the best” solution and the potential disruption that its implementation might cause–it only needs a “good enough” solution.  [This fear is alleviated by evidence of your solution's simplicy and elegance.]
• The whale has other pains, problems, and opportunities that are more urgent or more important than the issue you propose to solve.  [This fear is alleviated with conversation and empathy.]

If you ever experience this kind resistance in your sales process, work with your team to brainstorm all of the possible explanations for the whale’s resistance. Even better, talk to the whales that have resisted your proposal and find out why.  You may be amazed at the reasons you did not anticipate.

And once you better understand the fears, work hard to identify “fear busters” that you can put on the table to alleviate those fears.  I invite you to download our “whale fears” and “fear busters” worksheets to guide your team in figuring out how you are scaring the whales and how you can overcome their fears.

Today we’re re-posting an article by Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith from our archives. Enjoy!

The trickiest part of whale hunting for small and midsize companies is to capture your sale: deliver your products and services as promised once you’ve made the sale. Big contracts with big customers are not business as usual for many companies. Smaller companies are often long on energy and enthusiasm but short on operational processes, policies, and rules. And big customers have higher expectations than many of your smaller customers have.

So, how do you bring a new whale on board smoothly?

• Collaborate. You need a seamless handoff from the sales and contract negotiation team to the delivery team(s). The more complex the sale, the more people need to be involved in the on-boarding process. Depending on your size, it’s an individual, a team leader, or an area head that needs to be represented on the intake team.
• Document. If you don’t have a detailed intake process, create one as you are serving this new whale. Assign someone to assist the project manager by capturing all the details of what your teams are doing, what the whale team is asking for, and how things are moving forward. Document any pitfalls or unforeseen problems.
• Communicate. Share progress on at least a weekly basis; daily if necessary in the earliest stages. Communicate internally with your team and externally with the whale’s team. Implement a formal process of communication and document all of your interactions.
• Escalate. If anyone or any team runs into problems, these need to be brought to the attention of higher management immediately. Leaders need to cultivate a culture in which people are encouraged to report problems rather than fearful of being criticized or worse. If a serious problem occurs, such as a serious lapse in your ability to deliver at the next step, your CEO should address it promptly and honestly with the whale while the team sets about to rectify.
• Debrief. Regularly discuss your progress with an eye to improving for the next time. Note problems and successes. Pay attention to deficiencies on the whale team as well as problems and opportunities on your own side. If the whale team is hard to pin down, for example, that may indicate a typical problem that you will encounter for which you need to devise more effective tactics. Include everyone who touches the whale in the debrief sessions.

When you master your intake process for new large accounts, your whales will be happy and give you repeat business, your team will gain confidence and poise, and your company will grow.

When you are engaged in a complex sales process in which you are meeting face-to-face with the potential buyers, you know how to interpret what The Whale Hunters calls “The Buyers’ Table“–the literal and figurative table around which your team interacts with people from the whale’s team who will influence the final decision of whether or not to buy from your company.

But when you are engaged in responding to an RFP or RFQ, are you still paying as much attention to the buyers?

Whether you can see them and talk to them or not, there remain many buyers who will influence the final decision.  And their influence makes itself known at very different stages of the review process.  Here’s a guide to the RFP Buyers’ Table:

1. Early Review Team 
   1. RFP Consultant.  Is the company to whom you are responding making use of an RFP consultant?  If so, that consultant wields a great deal of power over the early reviews.  In addition to coaching and perhaps writing the RFP specs, the consultant most likely has a stable of vendors that they will encourage to apply.  They have a vested interest in one of their client vendors being chosen.  If you don’t know the consultant and you’re not among their preferred referrals, your odds of winning are greatly diminished.
   2. Compliance Gatekeeper.  Someone or some group of people have responsibility to review proposals simply to ensure that you followed all the rules.  Did you submit all required documents with appropriate signatures?  Did you follow rules for number of pages, number of words, margins and font size?  Did you answer every single question?  Does your proposal follow exactly the format in which questions were presented?  The compliance person is looking for a trivial reason to exclude your response, especially if the organization has received a large number of responses.  Not fair?  Maybe not.  But it’s absolutely the way things work.
2. Procurement/Buyers Review.
   There is a professional buyer or buyer team responsible for reviewing and vetting each response.  They decide which bids to forward to the end users and other influencers.  They have a great deal of authority, but how closely they work with the end users varies considerably from one organization to another.  But you can be certain that if your proposal does not satisfy the procurement officers, it will not go forward to the people who will actually use your products and services.
3. The “Caribou.”
   Several people serve in roles as “technical buyers.”  They are typically the people who engage with your team in delivery and project management, or people who are advisors to them, such as HR, IT, Contracts, Training, Customer Service, and so forth.  All of these people will weigh in on the decision once your proposal has passed the Procurement review.  If you are responding to a federal or state RFP, there may be an external review committee whose subject matter expertise and (possibly) political views influence how they score your proposal.  External reviews are conducted by the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, H.U.D., and many more.  Small Business Research Grants (SBIR) proposals are subject to external review committees.  The better you understand how your response will be judged and who will be involved in its evaluation, the better you can respond (OR decide not to respond)!Incumbents and other “eels” may also be involved at this step.  Incumbents are sometimes provided with bid information from competitors (which I consider to be highly unethical, but that is a topic for another day) and may be consulted by some of the caribou.  If your prospect has or could have the capability to perform your service in house, people in those departments may lobby for in-house rather than outsourcing, acting as eels to you.
4. The Polar Bear(s)
   The caribou make their recommendations upline to a person or persons who are responsible for the final decisions.  In a corporate environment this may be a joint decision by Purchasing and a senior VP of the division that is buying.  In a government environment it will be a Contract Officer, who is being advised by a senior official with decision-making authority.  Legal and fiscal personnel are involved at this level, many of whom have the ability to reject or revoke a deal or demand changes in terms.  Financial negotiations may be extensive at this point in decision-making as well as decisions about delivery schedules.

Sometimes during an RFP process, if you find yourself among the top three to five bidders, your team will be asked to make a live presentation.  Prepare for this long before you get the call–by then you may only have a day or two to get ready.  Always assume that your team will be invited to sit at the Buyers’ Table, and you will improve your win rate with RFP responses.

When you are deciding whether or not to respond to an RFP, understand that the more people you know and with whom you have an established good relationship at the Buyers’ Table, the better your chances of winning.  Conversely, if you don’t know any of them, and they don’t know you, it’s a real long shot.  So keep that in mind whenever you decide to invest precious resources in preparing a bid, as well as making yourself vulnerable by putting a detailed bid in fron of people whom you don’t know.  The RFP process is a must to master in many industries.  Finding and cultivating the Buyers’ Table is an essential feature of your process for winning.

Today we’re excited to feature our marketing intern, Ginger Whitesell as our guest blogger. Ginger shares with us her first whale hunt! Thanks for contributing Ginger!

When I entered my junior year at Arizona State University, the last thing I thought I’d be doing was starting an entrepreneurial venture. But, when a friend of mine, Tyler Eltringham, came up with an idea, OneShot, and needed someone to help him execute it, I was eager to help apply my skills as a marketing and sustainability major and move forward with this endeavor.

What exactly is this project? OneShot is a nonprofit organization that seeks to provide meningococcal meningitis vaccines to college students living in dormitories and university housing, while also addressing the global issue at hand. For every single vaccination administered stateside, OneShot will donate a vaccine to the meningitis belt of Africa. OneShot hopes to prevent the preventable by providing vaccines and educating the public on the importance of getting vaccinated.

Our concept was huge, with an impact spanning across continents, and we needed an initial source of funding equally as large to help jumpstart our project. We determined that we needed our investor to be as vested in Arizona State University as we were, and that it needed to desire an impact and growth as significant as we were hoping for. So, what was our whale? The ASU Innovation Challenge, a competitive grant program in its second year at ASU that invited undergraduate and graduate students alike to submit their ideas for innovation. Winners were awarded up to $10,000 to implement their innovative ideas, and they were chosen based off of a two-round series. The first comprised a proposal that outlined the innovation, impact and implementation of the idea. If a group made it past the first round of selection, they were then required to present their ideas to a panel of judges, justifying in just five minutes why their proposal deserved funding. We knew that this whale was the perfect chance for OneShot to prove itself to the local community, and that if we didn’t go after it now, it would be a while before another opportunity came along.

Before composing our proposal, we examined our whale, the ASU Innovation Challenge, and its criteria in selecting a candidate worthy of its funds. We were on the hunt, keen to show that OneShot was the answer that the ASU Innovation Challenge was looking for, and we sought ways to connect our concept to its ideals. With this in mind, we composed a business proposal that was perfectly tailored to the ASU Innovation Challenge’s needs, giving no doubt that our goals were in line with one other. The hours of fine tuning and attention to detail in our paper paid off when we successfully made it past the first round of judgments, and our initial success became a catalyst in putting forth a large effort to create a memorable presentation.  This too, became a commitment to not only explain our idea, but to do so in a way that would make the ASU Innovation Challenge see that OneShot was an investment worth making. Each member of our five-person team wrote a script that addressed a different facet of our organization and how it related to the ASU Innovation Challenge’s needs.

The day of our big elevator pitch came and we presented fiercely within the five minutes we were allocated, hitting hard on the points that coincided with what our whale wanted.  Although we were confident that we put our best effort forth, we did not receive any feedback in that moment and would not know until the announcement ceremony if it were enough.  The award ceremony two days later could not come soon enough, and the OneShot team gathered to await their decision.

The ASU Innovation Challenge ceremony was a conglomerate of anxious ASU entrepreneurial-minded students, ASU deans and officials and outstanding members of the local community. The room was alive with excitement and anticipation as the winners were announced one by one, along with the monetary value of their award. I, along with the rest of the OneShot executive team, sat on the edge of my seat, eager to hear whether our efforts in this whale hunt had been successful, whether we had the funds to move our organization forward. Finally, OneShot’s name was announced, and we exploded out of our seats to shake the hands of our benefactors and join the other winners lined up on one side of the room. As we congratulated one another on a job well done, we glanced down at the certificate stating the value of our reward. OneShot received $10,000! Another rush of exhilaration flooded through our bodies as we realized that we finally had our whale, and with it the support of ASU.

The past few months have been a whirl of excitement, hard work and organization as OneShot really defines itself and creates a foundation for success. We are determined to make a positive impact on the ASU community and the world, and are excited to continue to prove ourselves to the ASU Innovation Challenge.

Today’s post is brought to us by our partner in Munich, Germany, Dr. Michael Franz.  Learn more about Dr. Franz below. Enjoy!

Let‘s say you want to get a bigger client. Like a huge international group. And you want to sell something, that is so big, that you have do deal with the board of directors, to get it signed. How do you navigate and align all those people that are involved in the sale?

Start with the Org Chart

I always advise my clients to get an org chart of the target organization. Even if you do not have it, you can assume from your experience how many and what kind of people will be involved. Ok, get the Org Chart and do the following:

1. Mark every person, that might be involved in the sales. First, identify obvious decision makers like CEO, COO, VPs, Directors. Second, identify influencers like subject matter experts, personal assistants and users of what you sell deep down in the organization.
2. Tag every person involved with green, yellow or red, to indicate whether they are in favor, neutral or against you.
3. Use arrows to indicate which people like each other and who hates each other. Never forget, there is much animosity in huge organizations and you need to know about that.

If your are in a 01 situation, you usually have big white spots in your chart. That is normal and should motivate you to gather intelligence about your target. For that you create a coverage map.

Second build a coverage map.

The coverage map answers the question: Who will talk to whom (and when) in the target organization to gather what kind of information?

Create an excel sheet and fill the first three columns you put the name of the person covered, their formal position and their role within the sales process. Then you do the following together with your team:

1. Decide who from your organization will cover whom from the target organization. (Column D) Obviously your CEO should cover the target CEO and from their you got down the org chart.
2. Decide when, how often you are going to cover these person. (Column E to G) Contact frequency depends largely on the position of the target person in the hierarchy. The higher the person ranks, the lower the frequency. The how can be a telephone call, emails contact, business lunch, meeting, workshop, site visit.
3. Decide what kind of information you want gather. Generically you need to know: What they want to achieve with your project – for their company and for themselves. What they fear about this project – e.g. what should not happen, what do they not want to experience? Likes and Dislikes with the other people involved in the buying process. Further, are they in favour, neutral or against your project? Of course, you need to find answers to specific questions related to the nature of your project.

With the information gathered you close the white spots in your org chart.

The result of this exercise?

You have a crystal clear overview, who are the white spots in the target organisation. And you have a plan when and how to close these spots. Start to systematically cover everyone involved in the buying process and your chances of getting the deal doubles.

Dr. Michael Franz founded a sales process consulting firm targeting franchise, real estate, manufacturing and consulting companies to double their sales figures.  He is author of the german edition of the bestseller “High Probability Selling” and writes regularly about professionals sales in business magazines and on his blog.

I can’t tell you how many owners and CEOs I talk to who are looking for a rock star with a rolodex to save their sales.  But today’s complex B2B sales require thoughtful, analytic team players who can put ego aside and involve their company’s subject matter experts in the sales process.

Recently Gart Hart of SalesDuJour wrote a great blog post about what he calls the next iteration of sales:  E2E (eye to eye).  His post is about how buyers want salespeople to stay behind the keyboard and not enter their space!  This is an excellent analysis of today’s buyers, and I heartily recommend it.  Gary’s point is that buyers do not want to get their information from sellers.  They would prefer to “disintermediate” and get their information directly from your website (or someone else’s), social media sites, product review sites, and the like.

However, this is not the end of sales!  It’s simply another changing circumstance that’s been going on for a long time.  Gary Hart talks about the importance of “E2E” contact with buyers—that’s “eye to eye.”  But E2E contact is harder than ever to achieve.

So let me offer a suggestion.  In a large company considering a large deal, there are many buyers—many people who will influence the ultimate decision.  Although they are not thrilled with talking to a sales rep, they do want to meet their counterparts at your company, your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).  Teaching your SMEs how to participate in the sales process, and teaching your sales professionals how to orchestrate a team sale, will give you a huge advantage and lots of E2E time.

The Whale Hunters offers several free, downloadable tools  to help you teach your team, including the Buyers’ Table Tool (how to identify and understand all of the buyers) and Power Your Boat (how to prepare SMEs to participate in an E2E experience with the buyers.  Pier9 registration (basic membership) is required to access these materials.

Also on this topic is our article Elvis is Dead, about the rock star salesperson, archived in The Whale Hunters Pier9 community (registration is required).  You’ll find it in the section labeled Articles about Sales and the Sales Process.  The article describes the characteristics you should look for in a great salesperson who would lead a sales team effectively.

The world of large account sales continues to change and will continue to do so.  You gain credibility and E2E time with buyers when you educate and prepare your team as active participants.  Email me Barbara (at) thewhalehunters dot com if you’d like some help!

Today’s post is by the lovely Jo Seidel from the Indianapolis, IN area. We’re thrilled to have this contribution of Jo’s expertise. Thanks Jo!

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.

Scouting is an iterative process.  It generates leads; helps companies learn to say no to customers that will only drain resources rather than produce profits; and, works as a strategic management tool.  Scouting and the creation of a great target filter that fits the criteria below, means the difference between developing a strategic process to conduct and generate new business and one that is haphazard and not embedded within the business culture.

There are four characteristics of a great target filter:

• Narrow
• Focused
• Data-driven
• Realistic

In order to develop a collaborative team and environment for developing great target filters that will prioritize and generate quality leads and sales over time, process tools are necessary.  One of the first rules at sea for scouting is that of setting up a conducive environment as a foundation for great scouting to occur.  It starts with rules of engagement to prevent mutiny when seas are rough and a tight meeting protocol to drive improvement and action throughout the business development cycle.

To prepare the right foundation for great scouting, rules of engagement for team meetings must be established.  This not only sets high expectations, but also keeps tight focus on priorities. Rules to guide team behavior support development of shared responsibility by all on the team to engage and develop ownership in the business development process to land that big sale that will propel the company forward.

One way I have found that teams find engaging to begin this process is with the Cotter Question*:  What could this group do to assure that our team fails?  Assign the team to take a moment to chart their greatest irritations with company or departmental meetings.  This usually generates some laughter or at least raised eyebrows, but soon the team discovers that had they considered these behaviors that need to be avoided prior to having their scouting meetings, their team and meeting experiences would have generated quite different results.  From this list of negatives, the group will be ready to identify five to seven key priorities to guide meeting behavior.  A few priorities that are helpful are as follows:

• Meetings will start on time and end on time.
• We will come to all meetings with assignments completed and be prepared to productively contribute to discussions and decisions.
• Meetings are not for reporting, but reserved for action.
• We will observe time limits.
• We will be nice.  This doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t have important conversations where points of view differ, but we will stay focused on ideas and be courteous in our interchanges.

Once these guiding principles for team behavior are generated, consensus needs to be gained and the rules of engagement posted for every meeting.

A series of tight, action-oriented meetings form a process that leads to continuous improvement in the way a company does business over time.  There are four key elements in developing a meeting plan.  These elements are:

1. A clearly stated purpose and objective for meeting, i.e., to develop the criteria of the preferred whale customer for the target filter tool,

2. Logistics that are standardized.  Ongoing team meetings need standardized meeting dates, times, and places so that thinking energy can be focused on content and purpose and distractions kept to a minimum.

3. An explicit written agenda needs to be developed for each meeting in the process that communicates the meeting purpose, what action items will be covered, how much time will be allotted for each agenda item, and who will be involved or who will be responsible for that agenda item during the meeting (including the preparation prior to meeting).  An example might be, Jo will bring a completed dossier for team review on a key company that the team had identified was a priority from their target filter.  This agenda needs to be circulated to each team member prior to the meeting to ensure thorough preparation and clear assignments.

4. Communication parameters need to be established, such as how people will be informed about the meeting, the meeting’s purpose and their role, i.e., a timekeeper to adhere to allotted time constraints per agenda item, a facilitator to keep things moving and members focused, and a recorder to document the meeting actions/discussions. In addition, a standardized communication form needs to be established and then circulated in the same way for each meeting.  Will members receive an electronic copy, an interdepartmental memo, or some more efficient format? This ensures that all members will become accustomed to expecting the agenda prior to the meeting.  Who will be responsible for this communication and when it will happen needs to be established as well.

To increase efficiency and effectiveness, I suggest a one page standardized agenda format for all meetings with room allotted for flex items and next steps to prepare the agenda for the following meeting.  This guarantees that all have a voice in creating a prioritized, realistic agenda.  It also guarantees that each team member’s role in the next meeting and responsibility for action between meetings is clearly communicated and documented.  It is important to hold members accountable for preparation and completion of assignments between meetings.

A focused agenda ensures one last aspect essential to scouting.  It surfaces the need for any assistance or support team members may require between meetings to accomplish their assignment and expedite the scouting process.  For example, scouting involves deep research.  Scouts may need to learn ways to mine sites such as Manta.com for key company dossier information.  This needs to be revealed and supported or the scouting process cannot move forward in a timely fashion and dossier documentation will not be robust enough for key decision-making.

And lastly, what is an agenda flex item?  It is important in this market of rapid change, that agendas remain timely and prioritized on the strategic few actions that will create the greatest gain and business growth.  To assure this, flex items become paramount.  During the agenda review, flag a flex item or two on the agenda that the entire group agrees may be eliminated, postponed, or dealt with in a different way should time run out at the meeting or discussion become more lengthy than the time limit identifies.  This flex item may also change to represent a more pressing issue that needs to move to the forefront of the meeting agenda based on the current sales strategy.

These are but a few tips that may assist your company in preparing for meetings that drive results, are officially recorded so that meeting decisions and actions can be reviewed/debriefed, revised, and improved over time.  The last meeting in the process should focus on analyzing results and debriefing ways to refocus and tighten the overall meeting process to guide scouting actions.

Meetings guided by protocols and action-driven agendas are great ways to strengthen your business development process and to build evidence/data that can be reviewed for continuous improvement, i.e., metrics on how long it took to produce an in-depth dossier on a preferred whale customer as evidenced by agenda item analysis.  With a few key modifications, meetings can change from being points of pain to tools for accelerated gain.  They can work to a company’s advantage as a means for re-energizing team members who begin to view meetings as opportunities for productive, engaging, collaborative work shared among thinking colleagues.

*Named for its creator, Maury Cotter, University of Wisconsin, Office for Quality Improvement

Jo Seidel is a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters. As a consultant and coach, she works with clients throughout the country. Her work focuses on systemic improvement centered on needs analysis to promote collaboration, professional learning, and accelerated sales growth.

Last week I was talking with a VP of sales, who had just returned from a “big deal” sales pitch across the country.  Expecting that his team was to present a multi-million dollar sales proposal to the senior executives of the prospect, he found instead a disjointed quasi-meeting.  The meeting started 90 minutes late.  The chief buyer did not remain in the meeting, but ducked in and out and finally left, turning it over to a team of others who had little idea of what to do or why this meeting was taking place and who, by then, were ready for lunch.  The VP said to me, “That was the most expensive sales call I’ve ever made.”  We flew in five people from around the country, in addition to our two locals, and we didn’t even get to make a pitch!  How could that get so out of hand?”

That’s a great question!  And the answer is, there was no system to prevent it from getting out of hand.  Here’s the circumstance.  In this company, a number of sales managers report to the VP, and individual sales reps report to the sales managers. 

In this scenario, the Sales Rep presented his case to his sales manager.  He characterized the opportunity as a “big deal” and asked for corporate support to close it.  He needed technical and training support plus pricing incentives, and he wanted the corporate sales VP as the trump card.  The sales manager agreed that it was a big enough deal to warrant that support, and went about securing the commitments.

The first thing that went wrong is that the salesperson misread the opportunity.  Clearly the prospective customer was not expecting nor prepared for a formal proposal presentation.  The salesperson did not “guarantee” the meeting with follow up phone calls or a formal agenda.  He did not take into consideration the history of his encounters with this buyer.  He did not request a formal list of attendees to share with his representatives, nor did he provide a formal list of atttendees to the customer.

At the next step, the sales manager failed to validate the information coming from the sales rep.  She should have asked key questions.  Is the prospect pre-qualified on pricing and timeline for decision?  With whom have you met to date?  Is there any influencer with whom you have yet to meet?  How can you be sure who will be at the meeting?  What have you done to ensure that it will happen as you plan?  How about if I go with you on a call before we bring in our VP?

And the Sales VP should have quizzed the sales manager more thoroughly.  How well do you know this prospect?  What are the signs of readiness to buy?  What makes you sure this is a big deal for us at this time?  What have you and the sales rep done to ensure full attendance at the meeting?  What is the agenda?  What role do you expect me to play?  What is the likelihood of closing this deal within the next month?

This is a classic case of management losing control of the sales process.  For a team to invest in a meeting this costly, there must be multiple check points, or hurdles, that the sales team should clear before calling in the big guns.  The Whale Hunters call this process map progressive discovery/progressive disclosure.  For each step in your sales process, there should be clear guidelines for the following:

• What do you need to discover (from the whale)?
• What do you need to disclose (to the whale)?
• Who from the whale’s team needs to be at the table?
• Who from your team needs to be at the table?
• How do we know when this step is complete?

If the salesperson is reporting regularly to the sales manager about progress according to steps like these, the manager will have much greater insight into how quickly the deal is moving along and whether it is as big and/or as ready as the sales rep reports.  What did you learn at the last meeting?  Who was there?  Did everyone come who was invited?  Who was missing? 

In an orderly sales process, there are few surprises like the one I described.  If all along the way, people are coming to the table as needed, and they are taking you seriously and paying attention, there is little risk that they will fail to show up for a significant meeting with your headquarters team.

Get your sales process under control, and you will stop wasting previous resources on “big deals” that are not big and not ready.

Today I’d like to draw your attention to our latest case study. We’re very proud of the work done by Anita Grantham (one of our Phoenix Certified Partners), Rudy Kolich and the team at Jokake. They were able to implement The Whale Hunters Process™ and win the largest contract in their firms history. It’s a remarkable story for many reason chief among them being Jokake’s geographic location and industry during this economic climate.

Construction companies in particular were feeling the pressure in the economic recession, and Jokake Construction was no exception. As construction opportunities became more and more limited and competition between companies intensified, Jokake realized the need to strategize and land a big client. After researching best methods on how to market and sell, Jokake Construction moved forward with a “unique business solution” that, as former Director of Healthcare remarks, “went right to the heart of everything” – The Whale Hunters Process™.  Learn how The Whale Hunters enabled Jokake to land a $40 million target client.

The Whale Hunters constantly preach about the The Buyers’ Table and the whale’s fears.  Understanding fear is a sales breakthrough. We have detailed processes to help your company’s cross-functional team identify all of the reasons that buyers might be afraid of you, and then detailed methods for creating the fear-busters that will help to put the fears at rest.  The bottom line is this: the whales (big company buyers) will not buy your advantages unless you can alleviate their fears.

Why is that so important to understand?  Because in a typical sale, your sellers go in the door touting the advantages of doing business with you; when, in fact, the buyers are only looking for the least risky solution, not the best.  The more “new,” the more “comprehensive,” the more “cutting edge” your services or products, the less likely you are to win.

I came across some fascinating, important research that both confirms The Whale Hunters Process™ and elaborates on our understanding of the buyers’ fears.  It’s a series of white papers based on extensive research about the BuyerSphere, how business buys from business.

The first paper in that series, Mapping the BuyerSphere, makes it clear that the buying process is irrational.  It’s about minimizing risk of two kinds:  risk to the organization (which is often mitigated through an RFP or other bid process) and personal risk to each individual buyer (which is much more significant and which you will have to work hard to mitigate).  The author writes that personal risk “creates different agendas and different evaluation criteria” among the buyers.  Interestingly, he discovered that “often, buyers are willing to pay a premium to eliminate a degree of risk . . . .”  Thanks to Holly Buchanan, author of The Soccer Mom Myth and Marketing to Women Online for bringing these studies to my attention.

But even if you do the work of identifying the whale fears, and if you do the work of defining and creating “fear busters,” how do you introduce the fear busters into your sales process?  You should do that thoughtfully and deliberately.

First, be sure to define a “fear buster” as something tangible.  It’s not just sales conversation.  A fear buster is a person, a process, or a technology.  It’s a graph or chart or white paper or testimonial or case study or web site or diagram or written example.

Second, understand that your most powerful fear buster is your team of subject matter experts (SMEs), who we call your “boat.”  In a complex B2B sale, the loner salesperson is no longer effective.  The buyers want to meet their counterparts on your team.  They want to know who they would be working with, whether they like these people, whether they respect your team’s intelligence and skill set.

Third, determine where the fear busters should be introduced during your sales process.  We call that process progressive discovery/progressive disclosure–what do you need to learn and what do you need to tell at each step in your process.  Build the fear busters into the specific steps.  Decide which SMEs need to be engaged at each step and what each should bring to the discussion.  We recommend a tool called the Power Boat to equip each of your SMEs with powerful questions, points, and tools that they are responsible to present.

If you follow this method, here’s what a step in your sales process map might look like:

Step 5.  First team visit to this prospect

What we need to discover:

• Pre-qualify who’s at the table
• Fact-finding mission
• Terms of engagement

What we need to disclose:

• Our SMEs (i.e., put a face on them)
• Our QC and compliance processes – fear driven questions
• Timing
• Capacity
• Ramp-up

Who are the buyers at this meeting?  CIO, COO, VP Sales/Marketing, VP Quality
What are they most afraid of at this step?

• The CIO is afraid of more work and is afraid of our systems
• The COO is afraid that we have not done a project of this scope before
• The VP of Sales and Marketing is afraid we can’t deliver the sales required
• The VP of Quality is afraid we are not good enough

Who from our team is at this meeting?  COO, CIO, CEO, VP Business Development

What fear busters will they present?

• Our CIO will present systems diagram, integration steps
• Our COO will present case studies about scope,  a standard ramp-up illustration, and quality assurance standards
• Our CEO will present  a published white paper about industry best practices
• Our  VP Business Development will present relevant testimonials and a timetable commitment

In this manner, you can integrate your sales process steps with your anticipation of their fears.  You can be specific about who is likely to have which fears.  You can match up your team with their counterparts so they will learn more about the buyers and their fears.

The buyers are not going to tell you directly that they are afraid of you, but your SMEs will be much better able to interpret and counteract their fears.  And only if your team can allay their fears will they be able to buy your advantages.

My post today first appeared at agencyside several months ago.

Recently we featured a guest post from Jill Konrath on how to get in the door for an appointment with a big-company buyer.  Follow Jill’s advice, and you’ll get that meeting.  Then what?  What should happen when you first meet with a new prospect? Here are five tips to make that first meeting a good one.

1. Know the customer.  Some sales people call on prospective customers with little more than a “lead”—maybe only an address and a name scribbled on a post-it note.  But whale hunters do not call on a large prospect until they have a complete dossier prepared by a Scout, someone in sales support, marketing or administrative assistance who has been trained to conduct the essential research.

Your dossier should include a complete description of the company and its history.  You need to know its major customers and competitors, key products and services, and its market position.   Record three years of data on revenue, gross margin, and operating margin.  Total assets and total debt help you create a snapshot of the company’s current position.

What is the company’s current market strategy?  Are they gaining or losing market share?  Are they poised to introduce new products or services?  Are they B-to-B or B-to-C? 

2.  Think like a buyer.  We tend to have a huge need to talk about US.  We blab about our services, our track record, our cool tools and metrics and stuff that we do.  And the more innovative, the more creative, the more bells and whistles we can present, the better we like it.

Large account buyers, however, are not really looking for the best of all possible solutions.  They want a reasonable solution that will work.  They want a solution that will not cost them too much money or work or time or change or internal conflict.  They want to choose a provider that will not embarrass them or get them into trouble.  So they have a huge preference for big agencies, with big brands, that are well known and comfortable.

If you are a smaller company, a company unknown to them or little known to them, you need to learn to think from their point of view.  They are afraid of you.  Your job is to make them unafraid.

They cannot hear your value proposition until they become less afraid of you.  So what can you do?

3.  Ask great questions.  Instead of leading off with what you can do, lead off with rich, meaty questions about their circumstance.  I don’t mean just the ordinary questions to discover their “pain points.”  What are their aspirations?  What do they want or need to accomplish?  What obstacles are in their way?  How can you help them define and/or scope out their hopes in terms that make sense to an agency?

Great questions invite your prospect to talk about how things have gone in the past.  How things are going now.  What is the typical way his or her company responds to the current set of needs, challenges, or aspirations?  How have they handled this need previously?  What has gone well and what didn’t work previously?

Of course your questions are about the company.  However, your challenge is to frame those questions in the context of the individual or team that you are currently talking to.  Make it personal; keep it personal.

4.  Listen.  When you ask great questions, you will typically get very useful answers.  If you don’t get good answers, or if the person you’re talking to doesn’t really want to interact with you and your questions, it’s a good sign to walk away from this deal at this time.  So the first point of listening is to listen for signs that you do not want to pursue this relationship at this time.

But when you have asked great questions and listened to your counterpart’s answers for 30 to 45 minutes, that person begins to believe you are wise and knowledgeable.  You have learned valuable insights about what the prospect needs, wants, and hopes to accomplish.  You may have told very little about your company’s capabilities.  Nevertheless, you have proven that you “understand” the needs and desires of the buyer.

5.  Ask for a process commitment.  A key ingredient in large account selling is to get commitments from the prospect and test whether they can and will keep their commitments.  A very easy and significant commitment is the process map.  This is a simple exercise that you can conduct on a note pad or on their flip chart or white board.  Map out the steps in their buying process.  Find out who needs to be involved at each step and whether the person you’re talking with is willing to get the important people involved.  See if your contact knows the buying process and if their process is compatible with your sales process.

Follow these five steps and you will have more productive first meetings with large-scale prospects.  Then you will be armed key understandings to share with your team to begin designing solutions.

Today we are pleased to feature a guest post by our friend Chris Conrey, chief sales honcho at Integrum.  You’ll enjoy Chris’s blog Conrey is for Closers.  Thanks for joining us today, Chris!

If you’ve been in a room with me for more than an hour or so, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ve heard me say the title to this blog post. If you’ve been in a sales meeting or a goal setting session with me it is certain that you’ve heard it. The words lead right to an important thought – in order to be truly successful you have to have some big goals. You’ve got to Think Big, Act Big, and Own It.

Think Big – Set big goals, dare to do the big scary things, reach high. If you’d asked me two years ago if I’d be recording a podcast weekly, blogging on my own blog and for folks like The Whale Hunters, and speaking regularly at local events, I’d have answered “Absolutely!” I’ve never been afraid to set big goals and then run at them. Big goals are intimidating, but motivating.

Act Big – Show no fear as you run after those big goals you thought up. There will be plenty of haters telling you that you can’t get it done, can’t close that deal, can’t write that article, etc etc. Ignore them. We’ve all been told to Act As If before, do it for real now (warning salty language in the video).

You have to act as if there is nothing that can stop you from hitting your goals. Once you realize that you’re the only person holding you back, it’s easy to get out of your own way.

Own It - Once you’re done Thinking Big and Acting Big, you’ll have people calling you egotistical, arrogant, and other mean words. But it’s ok. They’re a bit jealous of your ability to get outside of your normal complacency and start to really achieve. Own your goals and your actions, you’re going to love hitting them and setting even bigger more audacious ones next year.

Today’s guest post comes from Raylie Dunkel, a Whale Hunters Certified Partner who does business in the New York City metropolitan area.

New York City: The Big Apple filled with big buildings, big businesses and big egos! The line “If you can make it here you can make it anywhere” is a mantra.

So many people, so many competitors and a hectic pace of doing business can be daunting for anyone who is working in New York and its surrounding metropolitan area. From the outside it is a scary place, certainly no place that a small company can survive. Looking at the landscape an outsider would think that all those big buildings house BIG businesses. While NY is the capital of many enormous companies it is also home to a plethora of small ones. The secret is that most of the skyscrapers house small businesses in a seemingly unending variety of sectors: arts, fashion, finance, real estate, architecture, food, etc.

If NY bravado does one thing it is to keep people from thinking small. Everyone has to be prepared to be on a razor sharp competitive edge all the time. Being on a competitive edge means:

• Be prepared to prove yourself
• Be prepared to show your best effort
• Be prepared to deliver on what you promise

These companies are engaged in having their voice heard in a very noisy environment. However the good news is that the dramatic and crowded marketplace sharpens the senses and skills of everyone working here, especially anyone in sales. “NY Attitude” is a label with many negative connotations but worn as a badge of honor by New Yorkers. For every negative there are many positives. It is worth the effort to figure out what lessons can be learned.

Lesson One: The first thing learned in The Whale Hunters’ play book is to understand your “ocean”, meaning your marketplace: Know your competitors and where your company is in relation to them. Know your strengths and fix your weaknesses.

Lesson Two: Be prepared to articulate your company’s capacity by showing process and procedure, case study, problem solving ability and ease of building a relationship with clients. What does your web site look like, your promotional materials, your “insider” reports, your office?

Lesson Three: Understand the buyer’s table (the negotiation process): who should be there from both your team and the clients. Know what needs to be discovered and disclosed in the negotiation to position your company to win the contract.

Lesson Four: Make sure all processes the client interfaces with are as transparent and sharp as they can be to keep the business process moving to a smooth delivery of product or service.

Lesson Five: Acknowledge your clients contribution to the well being of your own company. Give credit and acknowledgement where it is due to your own staff as well as the client’s where it facilitated the successful completion of a contract.

So how can you be successful in the Big Apple? The same way you can in any other market:
• Know who you are
• Know your capacity and limitations
• Know how to communicate with your employees and clients
• Know how to give back to your employees, clients and community.

The only way not to look small is to BE BIG. Follow these lessons and you will be better, sharper and more competitive. Be big and you can make it anywhere, even in the Big Apple.

What would you pay to sit down for coffee with the Chief Procurement Officer of Coca Cola and learn about how they buy? If you’re trying to sell to Coca Cola, you’d probably pay a pretty penny. What would he likely tell you? “Be Different,” said Ken Carty in this 2010 article by Inc. Magazine.  His other basic advice? Get in early. Do your homework. Follow the process. Want more insider info on how to sell to big corporations? Here are interviews with the purchasing departments of six mega corporations published by Inc. Magazine.

• How to Sell to UPS
• How to Sell to Intuit
• How to Sell to Valero Energy
• How to Sell to Northrop Grumman
• How to Sell to Dell
• How to Sell to The Bama Companies

And if you are the visual, quick-study type, you can watch a slideshow with highlights from the interviews here. Even if you’re not trying to sell into these mega-corporations, I highly recommend you read these reports. I’m compiling them all here for your ease of access. All companies are different, but some purchasing pearls of wisdom apply across the board.

We were recently at a client training talking about big purchasing goofs. An honest account manager stood up and told us about trying to sell to DHL. When the DHL team came to visit the office, the firs thing they saw was a stack of FedEx boxes on the receptionist’s desk. He said they immediately turned around and walked out. Big oops!  That’s the advice in the UPS article. Know the likes and dislikes of the company you’re trying to sell. Think through every step.

Another point that The Whale Hunters stress is to look at your own company through a buyer’s eyes. Paula Marshall, CEO of The Bama Companies, advises small businesses to have a good website. She explains that an unprofessional website can leave a bad first impression. And we all know you never get a second chance…you get the idea.

In order to sell to Valero, they like to see you’ve done your research. If you’ve completed the scouting phase of whale hunting, this won’t be a problem. We teach companies how to thoroughly research their prospects before even starting a big pitch. Otherwise, you may miss the minimum requirements Valero has for all vendors regardless of size.

I’ve tried to pull some main points for you here, but I encourage you to read all the articles. If you’d like to hear how to sell to Sears, register for Pier9 Premium. To learn more about purchasing at big companies, check out our interview called The View from Purchasing.  In order to sell to the biggest companies, you first need to know how they buy!

Today’s post is brought to you by our friend, the very rad, Dave Cooke. Enjoy!

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.

What happened to the time honored tradition of building relationships through persistence and presence?  What happened to the strategic and tactical activities of investing some real time with your prospects to demonstrate your skills, abilities, and commitments to their business?  Making a few sales calls, sending a couple of emails, and dropping a proposal on someone’s desk is not an investment in building a relationship. Worse, it is not even good prospecting!  It is merely like day trading — betting on the short run in the hopes of a quick win.  News flash – great sales and exceptional prospect management requires an investment in time, energy, and persistence.  Just because a prospect is not interested now does not mean they will not be interested later.  When you love a prospect only when they are ready to buy, you will be outflanked and outmaneuvered by a smarter, more diligent professional who actually invested real time in getting the deal.

Instead of demanding instant results from your sales team, educate them on how to develop and manage a prospecting relationship.  Managing a prospecting relationship is even more fundamentally strategic and tactical than chasing and closing a deal.  For managing a prospecting relationship requires time, planning, diligence, and consistency.  Far too many of today’s sales pros do not have the mental or organizational horsepower to pull this off.  Of course, I blame this on management for hiring sales turkeys and I blame the transactionally oriented sales trainers who can only teach professionals how to close existing deals.

Here are my recommendations for organizing a professional team around strategically keeping prospects engaged before they become clients:

1. Only prospect for clients in markets, segments and demographic that reflect your ideal target customer.  If you do not know who your best future customers are, you need to.  Your sales team needs to invest their time and energy on businesses that would best value, appreciate, and utilize your services.  Not all business is good business.  Not all deals are good deals.  When you educate your team on how to identify, connect and communicate with your best prospects the pool of opportunity shrinks and they are forced to get really good at bringing in clients that are best for your business.
2. Educate your team on effective prospecting management techniques.  (Note: I did not use the word “train.”  “Train” is like running your team through the car wash –they get clean, but it doesn’t provide long term value.)  Prospect management involves creatively connecting with the prospect on a wide variety of tactical activities including personal notes, forwarding articles of interest, occasional drop-ins or phone calls, and the very, very occasional entertainment or lunch offering.    Unfortunately, entertainment is the favorite prospect management tool and it is the least effective, most time consuming, and most expensive to the company.  Having a great educational understanding of more productive and influential tactics saves everyone time and money and is much more productive.
   
3.  Engage management and executive leadership in the process. This is not about another level of wasted meetings or expensive entertainment activities.  This is about building connections throughout the prospect’s organization at all levels.  A wide range and levels of connections and relationships within a prospect firm opens up the sphere of influence and depth of information.  Management and executive level leadership need to participate in managing prospect relationships and need to be educated (item #2) on how to be effective in this regard.

Investing in managing a prospecting relationship provides a multitude of benefits over the long haul.   Besides the obvious benefit of validating and strengthening the value proposition, it demonstrates commitment to the prospect’s business and positions the sales professional closer to the action when a real opportunity surfaces.  Your sales people can waste their time chasing a lot of deals they won’t get or, if they do, are not as profitable; or, they can invest in building great relationships with great prospects that truly value and appreciate your organization’s product offering.  I encourage you to start educating to a better prospect management program.  It will pay bigger dividends.

Dave Cooke is CEO of Strategic Resource Group, llc.  Dave leverages over 25 years sales and marketing experience to provide businesses with educational programs and consulting services focused around sustainable growth strategies and effective relationship building behaviors.  Dave has developed the Sustainable Revenue Formula (SuRF) which provides an organizational program for increasing and stabilizing revenues.  His commitment and his passion are founded in the belief that businesses will grow only as effectively as the team is organized and committed to growing it. Dave is also part of a dynamic duo with Chris Conrey in producing the podcast series, Don’t Sell Me Bro.

Today I was reading the blog post by Sam Richter on Jill Konrath’s blog about sales intelligence.  I’ve been asked many times lately how I prepare for a call, so I thought it would be helpful to document some of the searching that can help you get your foot in the door, too. Sometimes getting that first contact is the hardest part! See some of my advice on researching prospects below. The goal is simple– high impact outreach.

• Ask for an introduction on Linkedin – If you have a mutual contact or are a 3^rd connection with someone on Linkedin, ask for the intro! Just go for it. We teach our clients to do a 6-Degrees of Separation search with all team members (assuming they are all on Linkedin) to find any pre-existing relationships.
• It’s Personal – Don’t ever do outreach to a prospect without searching for them on Linkedin, Google, Jigsaw, and even Facebook. You never know what you may find. Maybe you went to the same school or started out your careers at the same big firm. Maybe you both like hockey.
• Hot Off the Presses – When researching a prospect, don’t just read their company homepage. Take the time to read through the entire website and dig up the most recent press releases.  Awards, new hires, and product releases may all impact your pitch.  Most of the time, you’ll find much more relevant information about what’s really going on within the company.
• In the Public Eye – This may seem obvious, but if you’re preparing to call on a public company, make sure to look up the ticker symbol and all the publicly available reports. You can gain a lot by reading through SEC filings and 10k reports. Use Google Finance to track the competition and trends in a particular industry.
• Short Format – Today, some executives of big firms have established accounts on Twitter. This is a great way to figure out what they care about or what they are announcing. Make sure to follow all of the employees tweeting for a particular company AND respond! Over time listening to what they are saying pays off. Many owners and executives also write a company blog. Read it! You will get a sense of their personality and understanding of their business.

Now that you’re armed with all this intelligence, don’t blow it by sending a novel. Keep it short. Don’t try to tell them sell them, either. Make sure to keep your first email to a few jam-packed sentences totally focused on THEM! Also consider that most busy executives are getting your message on their phone. Your task is to grab their attention and make it immediately relevant. You’ll not only get your foot in the door, but show that you genuinely care about doing business with that company. It’s well worth it!

Looking for a pre-defined format to organize all of your research? We have what we call a “scouting” dossier for whale hunting companies available for free.

What else do you use to research prospects? We’d love to hear from you!

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.   This week on Wednesday, March 16, I will interview Joseph for our Expert Series call on the topic “Selling Big Professional Services Deals to Really Big Clients.”   I hope you will join us for this free call; more information and registration here.  Thanks for blogging today Joseph! 

As I work with clients developing an overall growth strategy, I am frequently asked what it takes to win really big deals. It’s a serious matter that requires a lot of thought and planning, and this post only addresses strategic concerns after you have decided to go for it.

1. 1.  Assess your position in the process. When driven by a large budget, every competitive search for a new professional services partner has certain required steps usually including: RFI, capabilities presentation, written proposal, “pitch” presentation, and some form of finalist process including Q&A for clarity.  If you are a passive participant in a big pitch, and you do the best you can to “respond” you will be ceding control of the process to the client and might win but only if you happen to hit the bulls-eye. Proactive winning requires placing yourself on the driver’s seat, as close to the wheel as possible, so you can not only see the path from the driver’s POV but also to influence her steering.
   
2. Frequently assess and nurture your relationships. Presumably you have identified client-side individuals who communicate openly, understand you and your offering and are involved in the final decision. In my experience it is rare to win big deals without those relationships. Over time, your allies can change pro to con and back – you ignore them day-to-day at your peril.
3. Know, respect and anticipate the competition. Assume that anything you think of may have already been included in their response.  Study their promo material for hints. Make your proposed solution stand out on merit as to quality and business impact. Never pitch against the competition or underestimate them!
4. Demonstrate your abilities with everything you do. Each action is a demonstration of your ability to deliver on a scale that you may not have addressed before. The client will react to any signs that you can’t handle the size.
5. Be Objective: This may be the toughest suggestion of all. The closer we get to the final submission/presentation the more emotionally involved we get in insuring our own survival. Don’t grasp at straws. Let the client’s needs determine what you pitch and who pitches it – don’t be led by what you’ve always done (regardless of your past success rate). Test everything with others outside the process – you may be too close to the trees to see the forest.
6. Consider the organizational impact: Realize that this effort can challenge your firm in ways it has never been challenged before. You may be asking people to do things they’ve never even thought of until now. I am convinced the best way to prepare the organization, while also creating positive change for the long run, is to involve everyone (see my recent blog post on creating a sales culture). Anyone in your organization could innocently turn out to be the weak link in this specific endeavor.
7. Be willing to be bold. Be passionate. Take a chance. Stand out. Most important: pitch only what you believe is right.
8. Anticipate questions & needs. If you’ve never dealt with big brands and big campaigns, figuratively get over on their side of the table and consider what you look like to the client. You must be prepared to answer this type question:
   • You’ve never had such a big account before, will you be able to handle it?  Will you drown in expectations and demands? Will you understand the need for detail and reporting?
   •  Will you be able to scale as the client’s needs grow? Can you rapidly add and/or assign new people as required for quantity or specific skill sets?
   • Will you be a support or a hindrance when bumping up against the internal politics?
   • Can you finance the relationship from carrying the receivables to backing up any fixed-price delivery promises
   • Will the client have to wait while you get up to speed on their business & industry segment? For example, are there legal requirements and/or complex technical subjects requiring an SME as frequently seen in Pharmaceuticals?
9. Most important, focus on serving the client: Do not tell them just what they want to hear. Be willing to lose over giving the type of advice that they will be paying you big money for. If they want an errand team, decline the opportunity at the earliest possible opportunity and walk away with your head high.

Reminder:  This week on Wednesday, March 16, I will interview Joseph for our Expert Series call on the topic “Selling Big Professional Services Deals to Really Big Clients.”  Please join us for this free call; more information and registration here.

Today’s blog post is by one of our Phoenix Certified Partners, Anita Grantham. Anita is in charge of business development at Diversified Human Resources.

In this economy, everyone wants and needs to grow their sales.  There are pressures from stakeholders to “stay alive” and beat out the competition driving down sales teams across the country.  Sales professionals seem to be tired, stressed out, and worried about making their goals. 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!

In whale hunting, we are scouting a more sophisticated client, a more demanding client and a client who in the end, expects more from us. The only way to win the business is to send the whole team together on the same boat!  Why? Subject matter experts are the key to a complex sale.

The whale client wants to know more about who will actually be delivering the product or service. Our experts can speak specifically to those questions the whale is asking.  This sounds easy, but it isn’t. There will be obstacles. Your subject matter experts became experts in their fields, not in sales, for a reason. Your executive team will be instrumental in inspiring them to go on the boat and become involved in business development.

Here are some key pieces to getting your subject matter expert (SME) on to the boat:

• Explain the big picture to them
• Make sure they know the benefits to the company and to themselves from landing a whale (perhaps, consider compensating them differently)
• Dissect their role in the sale; they are there to talk about what they are best at. That information by itself is what the whale is needing, the sales professional will do the rest

The executive team is the best group to ensure everyone is on the boat! With their support the sales team the SME’s will be more comfortable taking this approach.  One ingredient to getting the SME’s “comfortable” is to practice.  Practice is imperative! Make sure the team has ample time to know their roles in the meeting. They must rehearse their parts and know which questions will be directed at what member of the boat.

Believe it or not, this exercise is the best team building experience for a company. It gets all people on the same page moving towards a common goal and working together to grow the company. Eventually, your employees will not want to be left off the boat!

Our guest post today comes from our Certified Partner in Southern Florida, Barbara Hauser.

No heroes need apply….

Yours is a small business with the passion and enthusiasm to grow and conquer bigger and better sales opportunities. You’re convinced that if you can make the major sales, you gain the momentum you need to make your big, hairy audacious goals for the year. No one can keep that commitment along – you need a team that’s set up to work together for success.

Jane, president and owner of a boutique travel consultancy, identified her short list of target large accounts for the year, and landed on a formula that netted her not only profit but a culture of collaboration that has helped her score home runs year after year.

MINDSET FOR THE BIG SALE
She started by making her beliefs as an entrepreneur explicit for her team. If you want to play this game, she said, you’ll buy into these beliefs:
“We’re all responsible for sales – period.”
“The promises one person makes to a client are our promises….”
“If somewhere along the line, we don’t know what to do next, we’ll figure it out – together!”
Jane’s got a no nonsense approach and knows that people are free to have their own thinking – but if you want to be on her team, these beliefs are not optional.

SKILLSET FOR THE BIG SALE

Jane created high standards for all her personnel and trained them on the basic skill sets for getting work done with others, including:

• careful listening (clarify, clarify, clarify)
• making clear requests (Will you get me the report by Wednesday, the 16^th, before the end of business?)
• grounding your assessments (You’ve missed our last 2 meetings.  When you came to the meeting on Thursday you didn’t bring your agenda.  You have 5 inches of paperwork on your desk and when I ask for something you often can’t find it….I think you’re disorganized and that’s getting in the way of the team getting its work done.  Does that sound about right?)

TOOLSET FOR THE BIG SALE
Jane makes it easy for staff to collaborate by setting up systems that support teamwork:

• Outlook for scheduling and confirming attendance to meetings and client calls
• Google Site for sharing key information
• All hands meetings for coordinating actions and managing accountability
• Open spaces for spontaneous brainstorming and problem solving

In my experience clients who carefully create the conditions for collaboration get the results and the satisfaction they’re looking for!

Barbara Hauser is a Whale Hunter partner and business coach located in South Florida. With over 20 years experience with business clients worldwide, she specializes in leadership and communication.

“We must constantly fix what isn’t broken.” – Scott Belsky

This morning I read Scott Belsky’s Why You Should Be Optimizing blog post on one of my new favorite sites for ideas and tactics, The 99 Percent.  In the article, Scott writes about how technology or web design companies are constantly optimizing their projects. Or marketing companies are optimizing your web content. And he asks the question, why limit optimization to just technology projects?

“Good question!” I thought.  Because we all know that change doesn’t happen overnight. To really improve your sales process (or really anything), you’re not going to do a complete overhaul in one day. Rather, you’re going to make small improvements and tweaks over time. That is, of course, unless you don’t have a sales process at all (in which case, we need to talk). And having a sales process in your head doesn’t count.

I believe we often think of optimization at a high level of simply “make it better,” when it’s so much more technical than that. There are a lot of articles out there about optimizing…well… just about everything, but what Scott brings to light is that in order to implement “make it better” you need to have a process in place, make tweaks, and then test!

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.

Let’s say you are a web development company that would normally bring your senior developers (subject matter experts) to a client meeting on your 4^th step in your sales process. Set up a test for having them on the qualifying call in step two or test bringing different people to those meetings. Change just one variable to mitigate the risk. And then diligently track the results. Or think about introducing a new case study into your process at step one to see if that changes the dynamic of the conversation with your target customer.  Track and compare the results. Think about the old adage, “Whatever is measured, improves.”

In order to truly be amazing, we have to continually push the envelope and constantly improve. Comfort zones are for the mediocre.

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Today’s blog post is written by Margie Traylor, CEO of The Whale Hunters and also CEO of Sitewire, an interactive marketing agency.

Whale-sized rejection must be much worse than not catching smaller fish. How did you and your team bounce back from losing a large proposal?

Early on in our Whale Hunting experience, we spent 1200 hours pursuing PetSmart only to be told that they could not choose us because we weren’t a national digital agency.  Apparently, it was too risky to go with a small, local shop.  The initial shock of losing was hard on all of us.  We gave ourselves a couple of days to get used to the idea that we’d lost.  How we got over it was to use it as a learning experience.  We reached out to the team at PetSmart and asked them to participate in a post mortem.  We spent time interviewing their team about what we did right, wrong and what the competition did to win them over.  It was a very insightful and powerful learning and growth experience for the entire team.  We turned our loss into a learning experience and that helped us bounce back quickly.

Whale hunting can be a valuable experience win or lose. How did the learning experience for your team differ after losing than after winning?

Losing is humbling and I believe it opens you up to greater learning than when you win.  Winning makes you arrogant and you forget to reflect upon the good and bad of your performance.

Going on a whale hunt and losing is a tremendous risk. How should small companies mitigate that risk?

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.

What advice do you have for other small business owners to overcome the fear of whale hunting?

Whale hunting is a state of mind, a process and discipline.  Whale hunting is defined by how strategically and methodically you approach new business development.  Key to your success is having your entire team on board before you decide to Whale Hunt.  Your whale is defined by your team and shouldn’t be intimidating if you approach it like it is just a bigger version of the best customer you currently have.  The key is making sure that you are going after opportunities that fit your company best and thus, you will have the highest likelihood of winning. Know your unique selling proposition and separate your company from the pack through differentiation during the sales process.

What are the top three lessons you learned from being turned down? Or, what did you change for the next pitch?

1)     You can never ask enough discovery questions about the buying process and decision makers.

2)     That the deal isn’t done until the ink is dry on the contract – don’t celebrate without proof that you have won!

3)     Always, always, always take the time to learn from both your wins and your losses, you’ll be a better company in the end.

Any other thoughts or advice for other small business owners?

Hire a coach to help you implement the Whale Hunting methodology and to lead your team through your first few new business opportunities to ensure that you have early success.

This week’s podcast is Focus on the Hunt, a commentary on the differences between buffalo hunting and whale hunting.  Buffalo hunters were individual heros; whale hunters are teams.  It’s a useful analogy to bring to your team as you elevate your aspirations to sell bigger deals to bigger customers.

A thought for the week ahead!  How is the team sale working for you?