Lost my raven

I was working with a Harpooner and Shaman team the other day on a whale deal when a call from that very company came into the Harpooner letting him know that his Raven, (champion) at his whale was leaving the company. The Harpooner had worked hard to get the relationship with his Raven and now, after almost 5 months, the Harpooner was going to have to start over- Happens all the time.

What do you do? (Let's assume we agree that having just one contact at this stage in the whale hunt was the first mistake, but we are still stuck, so what do we do?)

1. Back up - Typically you came in a door with a series of contacts that got you to this Raven. Time to tap that list again and determine who is handling these responsibilities.
2. Push forward - Reach out to the Raven's boss. The call should sound something like this: "The Raven and I have been moving along for 5 months on a very important project- I would like to meet with you and give you an executive briefing on where we are and determine the best course of action for your company on these solutions." The answer will probably be something like- "Well, we really need to wait until we have the Raven's replacement. I wouldn't be prepared to do anything until then." Your response needs to be "Of course, that's why I want to have the executive briefing now, to bring you up to speed and determine the interim steps you want to take with the time and energy investments made by your company up until now."
3. Side step - Someone is picking up the interim responsibilities- probably a colleague of the Raven- while he replacement search is going on. Take the same approach as the Push Forward approach but at the interim player.

One of the reasons that we tell people to add contacts to the Buyer's Table as fast as possible is that the business world in which we live is volatile- a Rolodex' shelf life is shorter than ever- so having a single important contact inside of a whale is very risky.

What techniques have you used when you have lost your Raven?

I blew my last sales call-

It's true- I blew it.

It gets worse- I made rookie mistakes-
Here is the setup- We were in our offices with a buyer's table from the whale's side of 6 people- The Polar Bear, (ultimate buyer) who is also our raven, (champion). There were 4 other people who will be deeply involved in the program if we land it. We had a small team from our side- The meeting was mid-process in our sales process for a whale-sized engagement. We were exploring their needs, credentializing ourselves and discussing how we might work together. Where did I make my mistakes?

1. Talked when I should have asked - I cringe when I think about it- but we did not prepare our questions in advance to drive to the core issues of the other people in the room. Our polar bear was our raven- so the conversation focused on him- except he had ALREADY BOUGHT! So, we were working with him on the rest of his team- and that means asking, not telling.
   
2. Rushed the discussion - We knew we had a hard out for the meeting time, so I kept pushing to my agenda, the one in my head, instead of listening to their issues and the agenda in their head.
   
3. Didn't solve the fear - If you don't ask the right questions, you don't give the right answers- In this case, the fear we were answering was "will this work?" The fear that they had was "how long will this take to implement of my time?" Strong disconnect.
   

Errors happen all of the time- you try something and it doesn't work, so you learn and try something else. In this instance, I knew better... I just didn't do better. Anybody else out there make rookie mistakes?

So, my new resolution on old mistakes:

• Prepare my questions in advance so that I am focused and mentally accessible.
• Slow down-
  
• Identify, confirm and re-confirm what the issue is that you are addressing with the person you are addressing it throughout the meeting.

I wouldn't mind it if you had a rookie mistake you have made recently if you shared it here in this blog- It is painful enough to make them- it is even worse to think you are the only one who does.

One whale- many hunts

I was sitting with someone I consider to be a "master" Shaman. She is responsible for a sales organization that produces hundreds of millions of dollars in sales per year. We were discussing the challenges of big hunting boats - This occurs when you have a large whale with many different relationships and lots of sales opportunities. With so much opportunity on the table, so many different touch points and mini-buyer's tables and ongoing activity, how do you make certain that things do not slip through the cracks and that your boats are operating efficiently?

Supply chain management, transportation and logistics, computer solutions sales and many other industries struggle with this many touchpoint/many deal problem.

1. First, lots of boats, one Shaman - Set the organization up for one person to provide oversight to all of the hunts inside of a single whale. Too often, cross-functional areas put a company at risk because they do not have central coordination of all of the hunts. This scares and confuses, (and annoys) the whale because of the apparent ignorance in the hunters.
   
2. Shaman on the boats - Too often the Shaman manages the fleet of boats from the shore- trying to keep oversight through reports, emails and conference calls. You have to maximize the hunts by being on the boats.
3. Choose the Harpooners by hunt, not title - The most important quality for the Harpooner to have with this many hunts going on is the relationship with the whale- access to people and information. Make the decision early in each hunt who will serve as the Harpooner and let everyone on the boat know why.

What are your experiences with one whale/many hunts? What are the best practices you can share?

No surprises

I see that Jack Welch just body-slammed his hand-picked successor at GE, Jeff Immelt, in the media- Immelt broke sacred trust- he predicted he would hit earnings for the quarter and then surprised his investors by missing the projection.

Whales really don't like surprises- not that any one else does. But the stock markets have become ruthless about it- even if the news is better than what was projected to be. It comes down to this- no surprises, period. We see this get fouled up alot through these approaches-

1. Delay and hope for the best - people put off telling the client hoping that they can fix the problem and the client will never know, or that they can take steps that will mitigate the damages before the client finds out.
2. Spin doctor - create a story or a scenario where the problem looks like it is the client's fault and that we are actually the heroes.
3. As little as possible - this minimalist approach gives the client barely the basics of the problem and leaves them with a "trust me, I'll handle this" answer.

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I want to admit I have done all of these- and they have worked some of the time. The problem is that when they didn't, the blast-zone was so big that I have gone another way:

Full-disclosure with a chosen solution as early as possible.

I'm not preaching. It has just been my experience that going to the client with the real information along with the approach we are taking is best. Then following up with high-frequency and regularity as we are fixing the problem.

I had a utility company who did this along time ago- We had a power outage and they called back every hour on the hour to tell us what was being done and how much longer it would take, (this was back when phones were simple and came out of separate lines in your house to corded contraptions). Lot's of peace of mind, customer satisfaction and confidence.

Disrupting the Whale

Live Nation recently purchased Madonna's next 10 years of mega-tours from her for $100 million. They turned around and bought U2's next 10 years of mega-tours for $120 million- For the revenue from the tour ticket sales? Maybe... but the real strategy here is to target Ticketmaster and start chipping away at the monopoly Ticketmaster has on concert and event ticket sales.
Whales fighting whales can be very instructive. Most of us are attacking our whales from an outside in approach- or a head-to-head approach. That would be the same as opening up an on-line ticket sales website and trying to fight Ticketmaster in a fair market fight. Problem is that with their market position, it is impossible to have a fair fight- so you have to set up an unfair fight. By going after the events and the artists rather than the venues, Live Nation has changed the dynamics of the fight.
When we see clients take this type of game-changing approach to the marketplace- fight a different fight in a different way in the same market- market share moves to them quickly. Clients of The Whale Hunters on the front-end of the outsourcing and offshoring market shifts have cleaned up in their industries by changing the rules of the fight. How have you seen game-changing strategies work in your market or company? How can you develop one for market share grab?