Whale Hunting Women, Volume I
June 15th, 2009Whale Hunting Women, Volume I, by Dr. Barbara Weaver Smith, celebrates how women do big deals in business and community. It’s about the unique talents that women bring to whale hunting–doing big deals–, such as a preference for collaboration and cooperation, a willingness to mentor their team, and an ability to empower others. It’s also about the special challenges that women sometimes face, such as a reluctance to claim their expertise, a lack of confidence, or the feeling that their organization is too small to hunt.Big deals are big sales. They are big projects. They are big events. They are lofty goals and big ideas. How you go about accomplishing a big deal is the same whether you are a salesperson, a business owner, an executive, a board member, an educator, a community leader, or part of a team that does big deals.
If you do big deals, or if you want to do big deals, this is the book for you!
Purchase your download copy now!
25% discount throughout the Virtual Blog Tour!
The Buzz about Whale Hunting Women
Whale Hunting Women Summit, Indianapolis, June 4 2009
Read an Excerpt: Hanging from Your Own Rope
Table of Contents
Dates and Places: The Virtual Blog Tour for Whale Hunting Women
The Buzz About Whale Hunting Women
Visit with Joyce Anthony, Books and Authors Blog
Interview with MaAnna Stephenson for Just the FAQs
Interview with Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World
Book Review by Wayne Hurlbert Blog Business World
“I highly recommend Whale Hunting Women: How Women Do Big Deals by Barbara Weaver Smith, to any women business owners or managers who seek to transform their companies from small bit players to major sales and marketing organizations. Through practical and hands on advice, the author shows a clear path for landing those major corporate whales, and growing a small business into a much larger company.
Read Whale Hunting Women: How Women Do Big Deals by Barbara Weaver Smith, and discover the power and importance of devoting a small percentage of the sales and marketing budget on pursuing very large customers. Simply landing one of these whale sized clients will change a business bottom line overnight. Stop thinking like a minnow, and go after and land the whales.” Wayne Hurlbert
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
How Women Hunt Whales
Only A Minnow (In A Sea Of Whales)
Small Fish Hunting Whales
Radical Culture: Take A Rival To Lunch
Radical Culture: Money Is Cheap
Radical Culture: Kill Some Commandments
Who Do You Trust?
Hanging From Your Own Rope
Fast Times
Whale Hunting Resolutions
Conclusion
Whale Hunting Glossary
EXCERPT FROM WHALE HUNTING WOMEN, VOLUME 1.
“Commoditization” represents a massive shift in today’s economy. It’s an ugly word that reflects an even uglier situation. Many whale hunters are struggling to fight it.
A commodity is a product for which there is market demand but that is relatively undifferentiated by brand. Think of unprocessed produce like rice, corn, soy beans. Market price fluctuates on the basis of supply and demand, not features and benefits. There’s nothing wrong with commodities-markets need them and companies make money buying and selling them.
The trouble comes when a product or service that was once considered “premium” loses its cachet, and buyers start treating it like a commodity.
All kinds of companies in all kinds of markets are fighting this trend. Products and services that were once highly differentiated based upon their value proposition or were in short supply are regularly undercut–”commoditized”–by innovation, new supply, and cheaper methods of conducting the transaction. Within any industry vertical, you will find companies struggling to avoid the commodity trap. Perhaps you are one of them. The ubiquitous “solution sale,” [sell “the solution” - not the product or service ] a typical method to fight commoditization, is becoming a commodity itself. Not that there’s anything wrong with providing a solution to a customer’s problem, but if everything is promoted as a “solution,” the term becomes meaningless.
But the most dangerous position of all is when you unintentionally “commoditize” yourself, as I see clients do all too often. It can happen like this:
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“Free consulting.” Give away too much of your wisdom up front and your buyer will not value what you have left to sell. This is the biggest danger in writing proposals and responding to RFP/RFQ requirements. You run the great risk of giving away your methods, processes and prices , enabling an unscrupulous buyer to implement without you or hand off to your competitor.
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“Cut rate.” The buyer will not value your product or service more than you do. If you lead with a discounted price, you seriously undermine your value proposition. Buyers may want a discount and may even expect a discount, but if everything is “discounted” you have no real price point. The buyer will continue to want it for less, and you will become very disgruntled with that customer, perhaps providing lackluster service, which further commoditizes you. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer products or services at various price levels if that’s part of your sales plan. But they should be differentiated, not simply discounted. If the buyer is going to select a vendor based solely on price, you don’t want to win that business unless you are selling a commodity.
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“Earn It.” Accept a contract for a small piece of business in hopes of “earning” the right to do more. In our experience, this strategy usually leaves you pigeonholed in a small vendor space from which you can’t escape. The kind of work you accept teaches the customer who you are and what you provide. If you are inadvertently teaching “small”, “local,” and “niche,” that’s how the buyer will identify you. National firms don’t buy from the companies that make small sales to their local outlets. It is very hard and therefore very costly to move from one silo to another inside of a large company.
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“Not on target.” When you violate your target filter by going after business that is wrong for you, you devalue yourself and what you are selling. It means you don’t trust your strategy, you don’t trust the image you intended to present to your market, and you don’t trust your ability to sell the right things to the right customers. Every client has stories about the “killer whale” - the one you landed that was all wrong for you. Most of the time, if you’re honest with yourself, you knew it wasn’t a good deal for you.
If you suffer from commoditizing yourself, what can you do about it?
- Understand it as a danger and take active steps to avoid it. Be sure you are clear about the steps in your sales process and what you need to learn from the whale at every step. Be sure the whale understands how you sell and that you learn how the whale buys. Vigorously research who is at the Buyers’ Table and get to know how they make decisions. If it’s not a good fit, send it Back to Baja.
- Be very choosy about answering RFPs. Be sure you understand how the RFP will be handled and how your rights and intellectual property will be protected during the process. Do your best to know the solicitor and determine whether it is trustworthy. Test the RFP against the “Dirty Dozen” flaws that spell trouble for you.
- Review and if necessary revise your Target Filter. Be certain that you have the right criteria that will lead you to the best possible whales. Each time you consider a new prospect, compare it to your target filter Don’t put it on your Whale Chart if it doesn’t fit.
Markets are constantly commoditizing products and services-it’s a natural outcome of innovation and globalization. If you sell something unique or differentiated, make sure you’re not helping the market commoditize you.
