Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company

by Tom Searcy, Barbara Weaver Smith

Using the ancient Inuit whale hunt as a metaphor for big sales, Whale Hunting gives you a clear nine-phase model for successfully finding, landing, and harvesting whale-sized sales accounts―the kind of sales that transform your business. Here, you’ll learn how to turn the dangerous endeavor of selling to large companies and big contracts into a strategy for continued success and growth. Stop wasting time with little accounts and start landing monster accounts.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2008

Reviews

[Akshay · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was recommended by a colleague and I struggled to finish it because I find the whale hunting analogy to be so cheesy. However, it works, and I recommend this to small companies looking to start fishing for substantially bigger accounts ("whales").

Particularly insightful was the observation that while vendors are pitching product-benefits, the whale's natural instinct is to fear four things: change, conflict, work, and failure (p118). One cannot succeed without understanding and addressing those fears.

There are a number of sales process diagrams here that I plan to borrow from, as well as questionnaires and grids.

[Padraic O Maille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the analogy of whale hunting. It can permeate every aspect of growing a business. It’s a massively powerful message.

As above.

I loved the analogy of whale hunting. It can permeate every aspect of the growth of a business. This is a massively powerful message told very powerfully.

[Thomas Port · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, a little outdated, I’m sure the strategy that the author laid out works for them. But everyone has a different playbook as long as yours works, who cares?

Wouldn’t recommend the read, could read other great business books.,

[Andriy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a solution architect this book helped me to figure out how the sell process should be established.

[Laurentiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book and excellent and practical tips about how to approach enterprise selling as and individual as well as a company / start-up. It offers an excellent perspective for reps and managers too.

[Nathan Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm fairly new to the genre of sales literature and I've always found it harder to be critical as a neophyte. Nonetheless, I sought to read this book as critically as possible and found it remarkably convincing and helpful.

Searcy and Smith argue that small companies (companies with less than $25 million in annual sales) are unlikely to see significant growth until they adopt a paradigm shift from business as usual to what he calls "whale hunting." Using an extended metaphor of the process Inuit hunters used to hunt an harvest a whale. They define a whale as "a very big deal, 10 to 20 times large than your average deal, typically with a company that is bigger than yours."

Whale hunting is carried out in 9 sequential phases that can be clustered into the three primary phases of scouting, hunting, and harvesting. The scouting phase includes: 1.) Know 2.) Seek 3.) Harpoon. The Hunting phase: 1.) Ride 2.) Capture 3.) Sew. The Harvest phase: 1.) Beach 2.) Honor 3.) Celebrate.

Whale Hunting is a no-nonsense realistic plan to help your company achieve whale-size sales. It is in this point that the book really shines. Though the authors are remarkably confident that their whale hunting techniques will be effective for any qualified company, their language is refreshingly devoid of overstatement and exaggeration. This is a welcome distinction from most of the business literature I've encountered.

The book filled with surprisingly helpful helpful examples from a variety of industries and will assist the reader in translating all this business speak into practical manageable steps. Though the book does have a heavy bent towards the sales process (scouting/hunting), many management techniques are addressed making the book applicable to other organizations. I walked away with several helpful insights to apply to my non-profit organization.

I would imagine that different people will find different portions of this book most helpful because of one's role in his company. Due to my responsibilities and interests, I found the earlier discussion regarding how to seek and harpoon a whale to be most helpful.

The primary benefits of this book include its step-by-step instructions, concise prose, and a powerful paradigm that provides a whole taxonomy of language for your staff to adopt. Assuming you are a business with internal stability who has had a steady diet of small deals, I give it my highest recommendation.

The Kindle edition was highly readable and formatted well. Many of the charts and forms are small, but there are no formatting blunders that should cause anyone to avoid the Kindle edition.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good solid book on sales particularly for those calling on corporate accounts

[Lizz · Rating 3 out of 5]

My CEO gave this book to me so I had to read it. A good book about hunting for large deals. This is one of the better books on sales I've read in a while.

[Jonathan Card · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good so far, but I'm not sure how to digest it yet....

[Danette DiAntonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best business book I've ever read. I was a reluctant reader but it was prep work for a training call. Sure glad it was required.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book.

[V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tuis book in easy and narrative form tells how to prepare your company for hunting big accounts. It is not only about sales but also about leadership, account managements, etc.