On day three of the #OverTen campaign, our topic was increasing sales.  Contributors talked about methods, about how to treat your existing customers, and about how to get noticed.

Do you want to increase your sales to over $10 million? Listen to ideas from Margie Traylor, CEO of Sitewire and The Whale Hunters (and also named by the SBA as 2010 business owner of the year for Arizona!)

Our friend Chris Conrey (author of the “Conrey is for Closers” blog and co-host of Don’t Sell Me Bro’ podcast) says:  How do you increase customers? Be good to the old ones.

My personal contribution to the campaign is about how to get noticed.

And to hear more all of the #OverTen contributors,  follow @GingerSell/overten on Twitter.

Have you checked out any of these video tips?  I’d love to hear what you think.

You can’t grow a business to more than $10 million in annual revenue without taking risks.  But how do you know when to take a risk?  Or which risk to take?

In the second day of the #OverTen campaign, we heard from four business leaders on the topic of risk management:  Here are links to their videos:

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh answers, “How do you know when a risk is worth taking?

What does it mean to really fail?  Michael R. Hunter, co-founder of EntourageMarketing responds.

Cynthia Figge, co-founder and COO of CSRHUB explains how to evaluate risk.

Why don’t women take more business risks?  Holly Buchanan, co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth, weighs in.

How about you–what’s your strategy for balancing risk and caution?

Today we want to highlight a podcast called “The RFP Whale Hunt.” Take a few minutes out of your day to listen to this podcast. Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith explains 10 ways to win an RFP. As we often say, sometimes the winning strategy may be to walk away. These do’s and don’ts will help you with winning tactics for getting that competitive edge.

Are you ready? Sit back, turn up your volume, click here and take a listen. Enjoy!

You can also reference this 2010 article about six questions to ask before responding to an RFP.

You can find more articles about improving your win rate and submitting government RFPs by joining our online community. Happy Monday!

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Earlier this week, in the blog post by @jolewitz he talks about how critical people are to a business’ success. In the comments he and @RaynaNyc talked about how your team is one of the biggest unique selling propositions (USP). It’s so true, and it got me thinking.

The “grey matter” of your team is what matters. In a recent article on Entrepreneur.com, Richard Branson gives similar advice to small business owners:

It turned out that people who work in a friendly environment that is tolerant of mistakes, and who are empowered to make decisions about how they do their jobs, arrive at the best possible solutions for serving customers.

Remember that how you treat the customer will form the basis of your corporate culture. Put your staff first, listen to them, and follow up on their ideas and suggestions.

Great thoughts from a guy who clearly did something right in the early days of the Virgin empire!  All of this may seem counter to the customer-focused business world we live in today. Especially in tech startups, it seems nothing is developed or launched without first the ideas and critique of customers. While this is one approach, consider that some successful companies have traditionally only innovated internally. Alessandro Di Fiore recently wrote “The Power of Proposition Innovation” about bucking the customer-centric trend and focusing on employees for creativity. He uses the example of a range hood company called Elica.

Elica transformed itself from a low-end supplier to an innovative organization by proposing — and imposing — a radically different vision on the international market.

How did they do this? By relying on and investing in their people. They understood that their team could be the greatest source of innovation for the company. They used art and travel to help their employees generate new ideas.  There’s a lot of talk right now about the value of talent that left Corporate America being hired on by small businesses. Are your employees your competitive edge? Go ahead! Trust and empower your team! That’s the advice from Guy Kawasaki in this short video on improving company culture. (Although he also says that at some point, the CEO has to make the tough calls).

How much do you rely on the ideas of your employees to drive your business forward? How can you improve? We’d love to hear from you!

Today’s Guest Blogger is Joseph Olewitz, Founder and CEO of 22^nd Story Strategies, Inc. Joseph is well known for his mastery of Revenue Growth in Relationship Sales, Marketing & Business Development using best practices in pitches, messaging, and team building. Joseph shares his years of experience winning large professional services deals in the agency and consulting world on his Intentional Growth™ blog. His original post for The Whale Hunters on “Big Deals in Professional Services” can be read here.

Many managers (whether in small, mid-sized or large businesses) who survived the very difficult last few years are working hard to come back strong. You may currently be: restructuring, hiring new talent, revitalizing your marketing plan, becoming more creative with staff resources and how best to maximize them, all while making the best of technology from the Internet to mobile to social media and various data analytics tools.

My advice if you would like to transcend the competitive landscape is to think about Intentional Growth™ and create a plan to establish, highlight, and promote how you are unique as you grow into the future. The critical word here is “grow” and the focus of this post is how your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) will support and fuel that growth.

Here are the basics:

1. Think about this truth: Every business doesn’t need to grow. The current marketplace presents an opportunity to improve profitability without growth. For example, you could get rid of troublesome or unprofitable customers and products, laser-focus your product or service for efficiency, re-define your ideal target customer, or increase prices.
2. Understand where you are now and where you want to go. Complete a clear strategy statement that is based on a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and includes measurable short and long-term goals, establishing and promoting your added-value offering. Be clear about why you’re in business. For money? Fun? Your child’s education? To keep busy? What’s your reason? Anything is OK – just be clear and specific.

3. Establish and promote your USP. Then if you are still convinced you need to grow, focus on re-defining your “remarkable benefit.” The best example I’ve ever found to explain the concept of USP is FedEx whose business was built on the shoulders of their USP: “If it absolutely, positively, has to be there overnight.” Think about that statement:

• As the customer you understand the value offered and can easily make a decision whether to buy
• As an employee you know exactly what’s expected of you (there’s a frequently told story about a remote FedEx manager who made a unilateral decision to charter a helicopter to complete a promised delivery.)
• As a manager you have a serious guideline by which to make decisions
• And all the other services that came afterwards were consistent with their USP (including 2-day, 3-day, early morning, and even the decision to buy Kinko’s).

Keep it simple, and keep moving forward. The best USP won’t help if you don’t back it up with all the other actions that create a successful business. And all businesses should be doing this more regularly – it’s part of annual/quarterly strategic planning.

As an example of developing a successful USP and a plan to launch it, I recently worked with a client whose business was already hugely successful. The challenges they faced, included that adding new clients would present operational challenges so we first re-visited their desires. We discussed: did they want to sell the business and retire? How would they like to grow and why? We conducted a ruthless whiteboard SWOT exercise. We named and analyzed the competition. We reviewed carefully the present and past client successes and failures. We described the ideal target client. We built measurable KPI metrics. Then we spent significant time crafting a USP statement that clearly identified the USP as a value they would bring to anyone that hired them. And last, but by no means least, we created a sales and marketing plan that establishes them as the clear leader in delivering on that USP.

The NY agency Beeby Clark+Meyler has a brand integration case studydescribing how they articulated a USP for Gas South. As a customer, are you confused about how gas services are priced? Would you more easily buy from someone who cleared it up for you? Their campaign was called the “Clear Price Promise (just another way Gas South helps you get comfortable).” Simple, eh? Sometimes the USP defines clear, simple messaging about an otherwise complicated offer externally focused on the buyers’ needs.

So, what’s your USP? If you’re stuck saying “everyone in my business offers the same services – there’s nothing unique” then you are missing the opportunity to differentiate. Uniqueness is, by definition, rare and coming up with unique features described as benefits can be very difficult. Actually, you already know best what your USP should be – just work at defining it.

I’m not so single minded as to suggest that creating or re-defining your USP statement is a panacea. Of course there are many other things to do to improve your business…but don’t even think about any other steps to increase your sales until you complete steps 1-3 above.

Please share your growth and USP success stories for the benefit of others by commenting on this post.

Today’s post is brought to us by Ron Wille of Black Tab Group in Rochester, NY. Learn more about Ron below. Thanks for sharing your expertise with us today, Ron!

Courage is such a strong word to use in the business environment but it can be fitting.  I recently decided it was time for me to start my own company after working for two wonderful people for 9 years.  I know I am not running into burning buildings or facing enemy fire but I do know it took a lot for me to make this leap.

If I am being honest I think deep down I knew I should have left about 3 years ago.  But I could always come up with a reason to stay, a reason to let my fear of the unknown, of failing, overcome my desire to take the leap.  In the end, while not heroic, it did take courage for me to do what I knew was right.

I am excited to say my company is growing and that things are going very well. After spending some time reflecting on what took me so long to take this leap, I decide to share my feeling on courage in business and specifically how it can impact sales.

First, I believe courage is needed in business to overcome lots of different fears and pressures:

• The fear to do what is right over what is popular.
• The fear to make decisions and take action with imperfect information.
• The fear to follow through when something “better” comes along.
• The fear to actually manage your staff.
• The fear of failing.

While many of these fears will also impact the sales professional we need to overcome a few different fears and pressures:

• The fear to make a call.
• The fear of being rejected.
• The fear to truly qualify and move on.
• The fear of discussing the “big” issue that has not come up yet.
• The fear to discuss “the numbers” either cost or budget.
• The fear of going after the BIG Sale, the Whale.

So how do you overcome these fears? How do you get the courage to take action?  How do you get the courage to go after the large accounts?

The following outlines what people can do in order to take action and actually go after the big one.

1. First you need to recognize fear. Is your inaction really fear?  Is your questioning and gossiping about the new sales plan really fear? Is your “prepping” for calls and “extra” time creating “perfect” proposals really just fear of making the new calls you need? You need to be honest with yourself and perhaps the best way to do this is to have the courage to admit what is really going on.  This is perhaps the perfect place to start being courageous.
2. Second you need to get perspective.  You are not running into burning buildings or facing enemy fire.  You are calling someone, someone with his or her own fears of making decisions, of taking action, of failing. So perhaps if you think about the person on the other end of the line as someone just like you it will give you a different perspective.
3. Change the word “selling” or “hunting” with HELPING.  If you are truly selling something of value, something that will help the buyer address a need they have, then you are just helping them to be successful to succeed.  Really if you think about it you might be helping them to overcome their own little voices.
4. Think of your personal goals.  Whether they are financial, prestige, security, family or perhaps the new car, it does not matter.  You just need to let them help you over your inaction; let them be the reason for your courage.
5. Find a Courage Partner.  Sometimes you just need to chat with someone for a minute or two to get it out and then get to work.  Just don’t let this become yet another distracter.  Limit this to 5 minutes once per day.
6. Positive Affirmation.  You know what…. you have a family you would like to provide for, you work hard, you are well trained, you are well prepared so aren’t you deserving?  Why not you? You are just as smart and deserving as the Reps who always win Presidents Club so let’s start acting like it.  Isn’t your company as experienced and as deserving as your competitor that is winning all the large accounts?  So write these affirmations down in what I call an Affirmation Statement.
7. Break things down into smaller chucks.  I know you have to make 100 calls today.  Well you really only have to make 10 block of 10 call each but gees 10 blocks does not sound that bad.  Between blocks walk to the window, review your goals, look at pictures of your kids or read your affirmation statement. Do something quick just to regroup and then start the next block.
8. Surround yourself with positive things, stories and people.  I read every issue of Success Magazine cover to cover as soon as they come out.  I then listen to the Success CD that is included with each issue when I drive between appointments and when I am running my kids all over town.  It works for me.
9. Know that you are not in this alone.  You have an entire “Village” behind you doing their parts.
10. Finally, it really comes down to action.  Do something, anything that moves you in the right direction.  In the end we all have voices and we all have fears, even the super successful person sitting next to you of the leader of the company down the street.  You really just need to keep trying new things until you find something that moves you beyond your specific fears that allows you to take action to be courageous.

Just to let you in on a little secret.  I still get scared. I still have voices and feelings of doubt but I also have better ways of getting back to taking action sooner. I have found my perspective and it allows me to take action.  You just need to spend the time and have the dedication to find yours.   Happy Helping.

Ron Wille is a Certified Partner with The Whale Hunters. He has been helping organizations better leverage their technology to achieve superior performance for almost 20 years. Prior to founding BlackTab, Ron was the coCEO of NimbleUser.

We believe that this old adage is for the most part true, but not quite so simple. Really, is anything ever that so simple? The more I thought about this saying, the more I realized that it fits quite nicely with what we teach to small businesses.

• Companies don’t make buying decisions, people (plural) make buying decisions.
• People like when you’ve done your homework, when you know something about their business.
• People like when you value a face to face conversation with them.
• People like knowing YOU as an individual and your personal values/ethics.
• People like understanding how a future relationship would be mutually beneficial.
• People like when it’s about them, not just about you.
• People like when you continually value them and serve them as a client, not just a prospect.

So, yes, if you demonstrate all of these things, these “people” you’re selling to will like you and hopefully buy from you. This is all very similar to a recent post by our good friend, Chris Conrey. He wrote “A Manifesto for Post Modern Sales.” I highly recommend you read it several times.

I also just recently came upon this quote that applies to this conversation:

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversation with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.” –Thomas Moore

Really, trust is at the core of all this “liking.” How can anyone like you if they don’t first trust you? We talk a lot about overcoming a buyer’s fears in complex B2B sales. Only after you overcome a buyer’s fears can you sell on your advantages as a small company. The same is true on a more personal level. Only when you can demonstrate through your actions that you are to be trusted, can someone begin to value you and your relationship. For more on creating that comfort zone, please check out a recent post by Dave Cooke called, “The Pleasant Comfort of Trust.”

I also agree with Thomas Moore that it does involve courage and risk to be vulnerable and real with your prospects. Human beings absolutely can sense and will respond positively to this kind of open dialogue.  What are you doing to have these kinds of conversations? What advice do you have for building trust and becoming more well liked? We’d love to hear from you! Share your comments below.

Let’s talk about being hungry. You want this. You want to be successful. Grow your company. Close that deal. Are you motivated? Yes. Inspired? If you’re like most entrepreneurs, some days are better than others. Many entrepreneurs work so hard for so long, soon the “spirit” part of their entrepreneurial spirit is gone. In order to keep it real, sometimes you need a break (hard to admit for workoholics, I know). Just a breather. Renew the sense of purpose with which you started this endeavor. Even taking the smallest moment to get re-energized will help you bring more to the table in your conversations, partnerships and strategy.

I’ve compiled a list of must-watch videos for your viewing pleasure. Get your inspiration on! Do it!

What inspires you? – 30 Second MBA from Fast Company

How Great Leaders Inspire Action – Simon Sinek, TEDTalks

No Excuses – Matt Scott for Nike

The 99% Experience: Insights in Putting Your Ideas into Actions

A special shout out to Tyler Hurst for finding inspiration with The Whale Hunters. Do you have a video or quote that gets you charged up and ready to tackle the day? Share it with us below!

There’s a friction in the land of sales between “old school” sales and current sales thought leaders. I’ve had many conversations lately about common perceptions about sales; I figured I’d write about it. There’s this perception out there that sales is a dirty word, a dirty profession. Are you picturing a used car salesman? I thought so.

The whole reason that our company is called The Whale Hunters is because of the metaphor we use to teach our process.  The purpose for the Inuit people hunting whales is that one whale would feed the village for an entire year. Similarly, a large client, an increase in revenue can “feed” or grow a small business.

We teach that sales is not dirty, it’s part of how/why companies exist! Sales and selling is how mutually beneficial relationships are created, products and services exchanged. Maybe we need to remove the word sales and just talk about the function? Business Development? Client Development?

Within the sales community, especially within B2B, exists a loud conversation about gratitude, excellence, trust, communication, and relationship building. It’s not about swindling clients or just hitting your quota. Among the true sale experts, there’s actual quite a backlash against that old mentality. Not only that, those philosophies/tactics are not successful!

I recently participated in an Integrity Selling training. The first conversation we had was about selling values. In particular, I was drawn to this one particular value statement:

“Ethics and values contribute more to sales success than do techniques or strategies.”

You’re most likely going to find unsavory individuals in any profession. Sales is no exception. Just know there are many true professionals working to change the perception of sales from the used car salesman. From Google’s Ten Things:

“You can make money without doing evil.”

Not all sales people are scum of the earth. They do the work for businesses to thrive, create jobs, build connections and grow. So, if you’re in sales (or whatever you do), don’t be evil. And if you’re not in sales, please don’t be too quick to judge. There are a lot of sales professionals out there doing great work!

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.

Recently all of you out in the blogosphere have been finding us via the search term “business development tactics.” Curiosity hasn’t killed this cat yet, so I did my own search to see how we stack up against the competition.

I’m happy to report, you have a lot of good options out there. Surprisingly relevant information. One blog post by Larry Bodine (who focuses on biz dev for law firms) gives you this list of ranked activities from a survey:

1. 1. Visiting clients – 61%
2. Organizational involvement – 12%
3. Other – 10%
4. Firm-sponsored seminars – 9%
5. Speeches – 3%
6. Newsletter – 3%
7. Website – 2%
8. Bylined articles – 0%

Peter Darling ranks highest today for the search term “business development tactics” and he’s got a great post on white boarding. No, not water boarding your prospects. White boarding (i.e. high school algebra classroom). This visual demonstration takes the conversation from “selling” to problem solving.

Anne Scarlett writes about a topic very familiar to whale hunters… a content strategy! The article gives great step-by-step instructions on engaging technical people in writing content to drive business development. Our Founder, Barbara Weaver Smith has written on this topic quite a bit lately. I’d encourage you to also review her articles here.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find our very own Loretta Love Huff ranking for the same term. An avid blogger, we’re proud that Loretta’s blog show cases such great info for small business owners. Check out her articles on business development.

That’s more or less a summary of the good stuff on page one of Google. We’re in there, too, of course, for Barbara’s post on 5 Business Development Tactics That Don’t Change.

Thanks to all of those experts sharing their knowledge with the world! For those of you like me who are always looking for new ideas and research on sales strategy… search on my friends!

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.

At the start each consulting engagement, the first piece of our process covered with clients is called the Brand Promise Audit. The goal of the exercise is to determine what parts of your brand promise are truly unique. We often find that the majority of brand promises fall into average or above average categories.

We’ve realized over time that this exercise builds the connection between marketing and sales. Basically, what you’re projected out into the market is the first step to your sales process. Now, we understand friction exists in most organizations between sales and marketing. For more on that, check out Barbara’s recent blog post, Why Sales and Marketing Can’t Get Along.

I’m a huge fan of TED Talks. This talk given by Seth Godin about what it means to be truly remarkable is no exception. It speaks to the heart of the brand audit discussion we have so often with our clients. So, plug in those headphones and take a listen! Think about how the first steps to your whale hunt are affected by the messages you put into market. Does your company have a purple cow?

A special thanks to @tcspears for sharing it with me.

I’ve always loved this quote by Jim Collins, “If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.”

For today’s small business owners, it’s more important than ever. How many hats do you wear? Too often the day-to-day of small business gets in the way of big strategic moves. I bet you could use a little more simplicity. The Whale Hunters Process™ is all about defined goals, roles, and outcomes. We teach companies how to create a clear plan for business development. Why is clarity so important?

I’m always a fan of finding data supporting simple business strategies. According to a recent survey by Booz & Co., you and your five hats are not alone. Many executives need to adhere to the no-more-than-three-priorities rule. Here are some of the results from the 1,800 executives who completed the Coherence Profiler (to take it yourself, click here):

• Half of the executives (50%) consider setting a clear and differentiating strategy a significant challenge.
• In fact, most executives (52%) do not feel their company’s strategy will lead to success. Only 21% say their company has a right to win in all the markets in which it competes.
• Most executives (81%) say growth initiatives lead to waste, at least some of the time.
• The vast majority of executives (82%) say functional departments in their companies get competing demands from different business units.

Whoa! That sounds stressful to me! If you’re squirming in your chair, it probably sounds familiar to you. For the rest of the results, read on.  It’s important to note the perspectives on growth and alignment of internal resources towards corporate goals. We understand these hurdles and teach companies how to clearly articulate goals, invest the whole company in them, and align all functional teams. As the Booz & Co. report shows above, fewer goals has the potential to drive higher revenue growth.

A company too busy to bring on new clients or develop a laser-focused business development strategy is doomed to failure. For more on the symptoms of unfocused, stretched-too-thin organizations, read The Village is TOO Busy for Whales.

How many goals does your company have for 2011? More than 3?

Generating high-quality leads that fit your Target Filter requires strategic efforts.  If you randomly “market” your company, you may create leads, but they typically won’t be the kind you want.  Today’s post is about Tactic #3 from my article Ten Tactics to Drive B2B Sales with Social Media:  Learn how to use social media to generate high quality leads.

You might think social media activities are simply random, and you may wonder if you can really acquire B2B leads through social media sites.  But here are five proven ways to use social media to create leads in a B2B market:

1. Publicize Events.  Host a virtual or face-to-face event  on a topic that is important to your prospective customers.  It can be a seminar, a webinar,  a teleconference–many formats will work.  Your event can be free or paid.  If participants pay for the event, you will have smaller numbers, but they may be more highly targeted prospects.  Free events will generate greater response, and you will still have some great leads among your participants if you’ve chosen the right kind of topic.  Once you’ve planned your event, use Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to promote it.  Proof?  Jill Konrath orchestrated the Sales Productivity Summit with five other participants and attracted over 9500 registrations for two, 2-hour webinars.  Countless more will download the archive.
2. Join LinkedIn Groups.  I’m sure you have a LinkedIn profile (if not, you need to create one today!) and that you regularly connect with new business associates.  But there’s real lead generation power when you join groups whose members are, or may be, among your targeted prospects.  For example, I belong to sales groups, entrepreneur groups, small business groups, RFP group, women in business groups, regional groups.  These are great places to keep informed, meet prospective customers, and announce your events (and books, white papers, blog posts, etc.) that will be of interest to the group. If you haven’t joined The Whale Hunters LinkedIn group, do that today!
3. Comment on Blogs and Discussion Boards.  Build your reputation as a thought leader by amplifying, agreeing with, disagreeing with, or otherwise commenting on blogs and discussion boards hosted by others in your field or industry.  These are places where prospective clients are searching for knowledgeable information.
4. Blog.  Host a blog of your own or organize a company blog in which several employees contribute.  The key to this tactic is to add new content frequently.  Your blog will help you be found by prospective customers, and over time they will subscribe to your blog and even post their own comments.  If you need help in creating a corporate blog strategy with multiple authors (and other content publication tools), I highly recommend you contact my friends at Compendium.
   
5. Host a Community.  Many social media “do-it-yourself” options make it easy to convene prospects, allies, even competitors in a virtual conversation, dialog space.  Forming your own LinkedIn group is an easy way to start.  You can create community within and around your blog if you encourage comments and interact with readers.  WordPress is a great free platform to use for a blog (and easy to upgrade as you get popular!);  Ning will help you create a total community space with lots of options.

Here’s the thing.  How this works is that all these tactics will bring prospective customers into your sphere of influence.  Then it’s what you do NEXT that matters.  Call them.  Send an email.  Thank them for coming or commenting or asking.  Ask them how you can help.  All of the tactics you would use for cold calling you can suddenly do with a warm intro, since you reached out into social media space and met someone there.

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!

Many small businesses need to look bigger and act bigger in order to secure whale-sized business. Whales prospects are afraid of doing deals with businesses that look like a Mom and Pop shop. Is this you? Be honest. What can you do to look and act bigger? Solopreneurs and small businesses now have the advantages of technology to make them look and act bigger in order to win the bigger sales. (Being more efficient and eco-friendly can’t hurt either). Below are some suggestions for how to use technology to come across more polished and professional in order to win your next pitch and/or improve your company.

• EchoSign: Death to the fax machine. Use this tool to virtually sign and send your contracts. Tree killing and ink expenses not included. http://www.echosign.com/
• FreshBooks: Helps you with online invoicing, time tracking, managing clients and even contractors. They even say on their website they want to help you look like a Fortune 500 company! http://www.freshbooks.com/
• Salesforce: Manage your contact, customers, and follow up with more ease. This CRM has small business solutions priced right for you. http://www.salesforce.com/smallbusinesscenter/
• Evernote: If you’re like me and do a lot of brainstorming and note taking, you may want to check out this services that keeps all of your notes, files, ideas, images, organized all in one place. Your personal virtual assistant. http://www.evernote.com/
• ActionMethod: If your team struggles to keep on top of multiple projects (and the multiple email strings that go with them) consider using this superior, web-based project management tool as you work on your big pitch. http://www.actionmethod.com/
• Shoeboxed: Need a filing assistant? Are those piles of paperwork and receipts piling up? Shoeboxed can take care of that. They can even scan in all those business cards and add the contacts to your Salesforce account (if you have one). http://www.shoeboxed.com/

What other technology do you leverage to be more efficient and successful? We’d love to hear from you!

Implementing  comprehensive change is hard, even when you know you need it.  It’s really hard when it changes they way your company brings in revenue. As I’m finding with many small businesses, however, sometimes the implementation isn’t as difficult as just getting started. Sometimes just having an idea heard is as hard as doing the work. Even worse is when no one admits there’s a problem! In order for The Whale Hunters Process™ to work, both leadership and employees need to buy in to the program. In order for everyone to be on the same page, it can take some convincing.

We’ve been advising a lot of companies lately about jump-starting their strategic growth coming out of this recession. Many business leaders agree that they need a more strategic plan for sales, but they stop short of action. What we’re finding is they have personal or internal hurdles that keep them from action, decision, or even letting their ideas be heard!  In a recent podcast, Anne Morriss, from the Concire Leadership Institute, explained that sometimes acting like a great leader actually gets in the way of being a great leader. The need to look smart, the need to be decisive, gets in the way of rigorous decision-making. Has this happened to you? Or as the podcast asks, “What’s holding you back?”

Maybe it’s not the leadership that needs to overcome hurdles to implement change, maybe it’s more broad. Often we’ve found that culture is a critical factor in an organization’s ability to implement strategy or even be open to progressive ideas. In a fantastic article about building world-class culture, Pierre Beaudoin, CEO of Bombardier shares his experiences on getting buy-in and involving the entire company in cultural transformation. It’s very relevant to small business owners today, because as the economy slowed many of the problems within organizations came to the surface,  and now they need to be fixed.

The same was true for Bombardier. Everyone in the company knew they had a problem but couldn’t identify it. Bombardier was No. 1 in engineering and manufacturing, but as Beaudoin pointed out, “the customer doesn’t really care about the hardware; he cares about his flight.” They also struggled with silos and a management team that avoided talking about real issue.  They wanted to keep being No. 1 in manufacturing instead of changing to best serve their ultimate customers. Beaudoin says, “A culture change takes a little bit more time up front, but, once it starts moving, then it moves even faster because more people are engaged.”

Fortunately, Beaudoin was able to identify the problems within his company and work with the employees to gain buy-in and set goals moving forward. If you’re trying to implement change, sometimes your team may not even see that a problem exists. For this I turned to John Kotter who explains his See, Feel, and Change process for getting others within an organization to recognize an issue. Basically, if you want to get heard don’t just focus on logic and facts, but on how real people suffer from or are otherwise impacted by a problem. You can read more on his process here.

Take a look around. Is your internal culture standing in the way of a higher level of success? Do you need to get out of the way of each other? Or as a key decision maker, are you playing a part instead of doing what’s right? How are you and your company living in a place of “business as usual?” Cultural transformation takes time, but first fresh ideas need to be  evaluated and everyone needs to engage. As Beaudoin states in the interview, “We didn’t get it done rapidly; you don’t change a culture rapidly.”

What’s your growth strategy? (If you’re reading this, I hope it’s whale hunting.) What are you employing to take your business to the next level? Whatever your strategy or tactics, I think it really all starts with a “think big” mentality/philosophy. You have to first embrace a philosophy of growth before you start work on anything else. Some recent conversations have left me convinced some businesses don’t want to grow. Or, rather, their fear of change is bigger than the desire for growth. Now is not the time to be afraid of the future.

I’d invite you to take 15 minutes out of your day and listen to The Hoy Grail of Continuous Growth. It’s an HBR ideacast featuring Paul Nunes, executive director of research at the Accenture Institute for High Performance.  In the podcast, Paul states that only 7% of businesses recover from a stall in growth.  Almost all businesses that stall will take a nose dive or wither on the vine. Make sure that’s not you!

Just about a year ago, Darren Dahl wrote “How to Develop a Business Growth Strategy.” In the article, he cites a statistic that one-tenth of 1 percent of companies will ever reach $250 million in annual revenue.  Now, we love small business, but nobody wants their revenues to stay small (or stall!). Isn’t it really all about getting to the next level? Let’s talk about growth.

1.       Get Your Head Around It:  As I said earlier, I believe the first step to growth is being hungry for it. You must want to get there and overcome any fear of change that might hold back you and your team. Here at The Whale Hunters, we talk about why the Inuit people hunted whales…and the No. 1 reason is that, they were hungry!

2.       Have a Plan: In the article cited above, Darren offers a bunch of growth strategies. He lists a lot of the strategies you’ve heard before:  Market Penetration, Product Development, Acquisitions, Mergers. All are fine strategies; however, if you’re a small business looking to grow fast with little investment up front and with your team on board, then whale hunting is a growth strategy for you!

3.       Start Now:  In the beginning of the interview with HBR, Paul Nunes remarks that you need to plan for growth long before you’re ready. Before you reach the limits of your current business, you need to be thinking and planning for the next stage of your business. Take the plan for growth you’ve formulated in step 2 and get going. Don’t wait to be “ready.” I’ve always loved the philosophy, “begin with the end in mind.” It’s the same thing.

I’ll leave you with another recommendation to watch (if you haven’t before) Fast Company’s 30 Second MBA on Growth. Click here to view short snippets from entrepreneurs and business owners. One of the themes throughout these videos is that you can’t just want to grow and focus on growth. In order to drive growth, be smart about running your business and enable innovation. To get started, consider my three earlier points.   A good growth strategy will leverage the existing excellence in your organization and take it to the next level.

“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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One of the first and most influential business books I ever read was Good to Great by Jim Collins. Since publication not all the case studies stood the test of time, but one of the main principles is something I often consider—first you have to have the right people on the bus, then you can figure out where the bus is going. You must have the right people on the bus! It’s not just about people, it’s about the RIGHT people.

How many times have you seen examples of the wrong person on the bus? Or the right people in the exact wrong seats? Or companies that try to figure out a destination with the wrong bus driver? I bet you can come up with a long list.

This principle is especially critical for our clients, whale hunting companies. The success of implementing our process is very dependent on teamwork, leadership, dedication, and expertise. If you have the wrong people on your bus, it’s going to be a rough ride. It’s especially true of larger sales teams.

The Sales Executive Council just released data from a study on the effectiveness of individual coaching for sales reps. One of the most surprising take-aways? They found that even the best sales coaching had a “marginal impact on either the weakest or the strongest performers in the sales organization.” More simply put, “who your managers coach is just as important as how they coach.” Click here to view a graphic representing this research. Again, it goes back to the individuals within the organization.

If you’re like most small business owners who have big sales goals for 2011, you need the right team who is along for the wild ride! Ask yourself these questions:

• Do your employees genuinely embrace your vision and goals?
• Is the hassle of hiring/firing keeping you from replacing anyone?
• Does your team have the skills and/or adaptability to grow with your business?
• Who comprises your dream team? And why?

William Taylor, founder of the magazine Fast Company, recently wrote an article with this advice:  hire for attitude and train for skill. He goes on to give an example from a top executive at Southwest Airlines who says the first thing they look for is the “warrior spirit.” What a great attribute!

As we teach companies to become whale hunting organizations, we talk about what it means to be hungry for new business and what it means to have that same warrior spirit. Think about your team, and ask yourself, “Do I have the right people on the bus?” For small businesses that aspire to be in fast-growth mode, it’s a critical question.

I remember being in the 3^rd grade and playing the telephone game in the library. Our entire class would sit in one long line from one side of the building to the other. Our librarian would think of a statement and start the game. You played this game, too, I’m sure. And what was the best part? It was listening to the jumbled, inaudible words (if you can call them that) that came out of someone’s mouth halfway down the line. We compared that to what our librarian started with…and we all burst out laughing!

The same happened to me once after a kick-off meeting with an implementation team. We had hired a software company. We worked with the sales staff through the entire process until one fateful day we had our kick-off with the implementation team. Sure enough, after the first meeting, we burst out laughing! Why? Because what we were sold and what was delivered had about as much in common as what my old librarian had said and the gobbledygook at the end of the telephone game. Sound familiar?

If you’ve been the customer or the service provider in this situation, it’s frustrating. We’ve seen this most recently with agencies and software companies. Even in the smallest companies, silos still exist (shocker) between sales and delivery. And if we use the example of the telephone game, we can easily identify the problem. This post isn’t about communication entirely, however, it’s also about the handoff.  Some say communication is key…and the handoff is key! Your team needs to manage both.

In The Secret to Ensuring Follow-Through, Peter Bregman suggests one solution to resolving this issue—checklists! As an avid to-do-lister myself, I couldn’t agree more. The checklist is a step up from a to-do list because it creates organizational process (even in its most basic form). That’s one of the reasons that The Whale Hunters Process™ works—we help companies build the bridge between what’s sold and delivered through process.  Communication is great and can always be improved. Process on the other hand can be standardized, written down, charted out, measured and taught without the risk of mis-interpretation.

In Mr. Bregman’s article, he recommends a similar handoff checklist as a way to reduce mistakes and increase trust within an organization. You no longer need to be on the offensive, assuming that no one else understands the issue or priorities. With a standard checklist or process, everyone is on the same page. Check out this tool called See Through the FOG on our website to help your team clarify jumbled statements and turn them into important knowledge.

No more games of telephone.

This Wednesday I’ll be interviewing Dan Waldschmidt, author of the blog Edge of Explosion, about sales tactics for explosive growth. I’m really pumped for this call. I hope you’ll join me and share with your friends.

Seth’s Blog really came home to me this morning.  I read Seth Godin’s blog almost every day because I always learn something new that is both useful and thought-provoking.   Very little business advice consistently meets both of these standards that I attribute to Seth.

This morning I read his post “The Answer is Simple”.  In two short paragraphs Seth captured a dilemma faced by most small business owners and sales reps who sell any kind of service.  How can you compete with the people who promise simple solutions to complex problems, even though you know that there are no really simple solutions?

Seth says,  ”Take complicated overall answers and make them simple steps instead. Teach complexity over time, simply.”

His advice reminds me of what I have learned from The Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan, who always recommends that you devise your solution as a process and create a clear and simple visual representation of that process.  Dan’s advice was instrumental in helping us devise The Whale Hunters Process™, which is simple in terms of “Scout, Hunt, Harvest” but embeds a good bit of complexity within those simple terms.

My friend Hazel Walker of The Referral Institute  says about Whale Hunting, “It’s simple but it isn’t easy.”  An important part of our jobs is to make things easier for our clients and customers.  But the rub is that if we over-simplify or imply that the implementation is easier than we know it will be, we do no favors to ourselves or our customers.

And that’s why  it’s so important for you to take responsibility for making your solution not only  look and feel simple to your customers but also BE simple because it has been broken down into manageable steps.  When your customer asks, “What should I do next?”, she doesn’t want to hear “that depends” or “you could do it this way or that way or another way.”  He is counting on you to say, “Here is the next step.”  In the first consulting practice that I built, we literally promoted the slogan “We know what to do next.”

My clients struggle with the need for simplicity in their brand promises and in their marketing and sales materials.  As The Whale Hunters has been completing its 2011 strategic plan, our team has struggled to reduce ambiguity and be more directive in the “what should I do next” department.   How well can you represent the complexity of what you offer in a simple, step-by-step manner? 

I recommend it as an exercise to prepare for your 2011 sales explosion!

Marketing Sherpa released its 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, reporting that the #1 marketing challenge reported by survey participants is generating high quality leads.  78% of respondents named is as a significant issue.

When we teach The Whale Hunters Process™, we turn “lead generation” on its head.  Instead of focusing on how to get your message out to your market, we focus on three key steps:  (1) refine your brand promise; (2) define the ideal customer to value that brand promise; (3) research specific companies that meet your ideal target.  Lead generation then becomes a process of learning all you can about those targeted companies and finding relationships that can help you get in the door.

Once you’ve defined your Target Filter (a free download from our site), you need enter your criteria into one or more business research databases to locate the companies that will be your best fit.  My favortie research site is manta.com, a free service that currently includes entries on 60 million companies in the US and internationally.

Manta launched its search site in 2005 and within six months had reached 6 million monthly visitors.  Today that number has grown to 10 million!

How does it work?  Basically, you can choose multiple simultaneous criteria to get a list of companies that meet those criteria.  Then you can click on links to those company names to get key information about them.  Fast. simple. reliable.

Here’s an example.  I wanted to find privately-held software development companies in Arizona with annual revenues of $10 to $50 million.  I can choose “software development” as an industry, Arizona as a location, “private” as ownership, and both $10 to $20 million and $20 to $50 milllion as annual revenues.  That search yielded 33 companies–each one meeting my key search criteria.  Those are now “leads.”

When I click through to any one of the companies, I find contact information, detailed company information including years in business and an estimate of annual revenue and number of employees, and possibly the names of key executives.  This database is especially useful as a research tool for privately-held companies.  Once we have a targeted list of companies, we use additional research tools and social media sites to find relevant connections and relationships.  My “lead generation” process so far has cost me about 10 minutes of time and no money.

Manta encourages companies to “claim” their Manta profile, updating it and adding relevant information.  I did that for The Whale Hunters, and I recommend you do that as well for your company so that you can be found.

On Thursday, December 16, I am hosting a webinar on “How to Scout Your Target Whales and Beat Your Competitors.”  The webinar is live at 9 am Pacific, 10 am Mountain, 11 am Central and noon Eastern time.  As a holiday special, we are offering a free download of a companion webinar “Using the Target Filter to Find and Start Hunting Your Ideal Customers.”

So if you believe that your 2011 revenue success depends on increasing your ability to generate high-quality leads, I invite you to explore manta.com and register for our Scouting webinar.  What are your favorite tools for generating leads?  Love to have your comments!