Post by Barbara Weaver Smith, contributing Women On Business writer
Thanks to Susan for inviting me to join the team at Women on Business. I write about Whale Hunting—growing your business fast by selling bigger deals to bigger customers. And I’ve learned why women make exceptional whale hunters!
Whale hunting sounds like blood and guts, the law of the wild, kill or be killed. But to land a whale, the Inuit people built trustworthy teams, minimized risk, taught their children, and spent all year in patient preparation. They couldn’t overpower a whale—they had to outsmart and outmaneuver their target.
Women are socialized to excel at the traits that a whale hunting village requires–collaboration, teamwork, and mentoring. These so-called “soft skills” contrast with the hard-nosed traits of competition, do-it-yourself, and hoarding knowledge.
Closing big deals in today’s global business environment requires three gifts that women bring to the table: listening, aligning, and empathizing. Here’s why:
1. Listening. The old sales model was based on assertion: “my product or service is better, cheaper, easier, etc.” The pitch was often coupled with deal-making, discount brokering, and back-slapping relationships.
Today’s more sophisticated buying teams are charged to maintain a professional distance from their suppliers. Their bosses expect them to make buying decisions based on good process, unbiased judgment, and thorough research– or at least to present the appearance of these decision-making qualities. These requirements charge them to investigate all areas of the supplier’s company, not just the salesperson.
So to be successful, a sales team must listen and learn to assess carefully the whale’s buying team needs, resisting the temptation to talk more, to spar with the buyers, or to move too quickly towards closure. The salesperson shares the stage with subject matter experts whose contribution is critical to the sale. Whale hunting women know how to be still and listen to the prospect.
2. Aligning. Once you know what the buyer wants, you find a place where your interests and the whale’s interests. Does this whale need to have multiple suppliers in order to feel safe? If so, how can you become the broker on behalf of a powerfully aligned team of vendors? Does the whale need to feel safe regarding price, or feel clever in acquiring an innovative solution, or feel powerful in setting the contract terms?
Good whale hunting teams have uncanny abilities to align their deliverables with the whale’s interest. And Whale Hunting women know how to win by practicing their natural talent for alignment.
3. Empathizing. So you know the whale is big, you are smaller, they have all the advantage and you are an underdog. But think about the people who sit across from you at the Buyers’ Table. No matter how big and powerful the whale, each person on the buying team is vulnerable to the consequences of making a bad decision, or even a perceived bad decision.
Do you know how to put yourself in their position? Practice empathy. It’s more than saying to “I understand.” Literally, it means to feel what they are feeling. Once you learn the gift of empathy, you will have access to the power of connection with the individual people who populate the companies that you’d like to do business with. Empathy will give you wonderful ideas for how to better serve them, because you will feel as they feel. Whale hunting women were born with empathetic roots.
Bottom line for whale hunters: the rock star era of sales is over for serious companies who are doing big deals with whales. It’s the end of “all about me” and time for “we” and “they.” Whale hunting women will play well in this new world.
Read “The Whale Hunters Story” about the Inuit whale hunt and its application to modern business. Please follow me on Twitter!
Susan Gunelius
Susan Gunelius is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Women on Business. She is a 30-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored a dozen books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and is a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).
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Excellent Post Barbara.
I am currently working on a book regarding how men and women network and connect differently, here is our survey for the book, http://tinyurl.com/walker09.
Your post makes some of the observations about the Whale Hunting that we see when women are networking. They are great at building strong ongoing relationships with the people they network with. By nature they tend to be better listeners and they are much better at nurturing their network.
Big fish or little fish, women have a natural ability to be highly successful when comes to bring home the deal or developing a strong network!
Women definitely have the advantage of being naturally empathetic. Empathy helps to earn credibility which turns into evangelists of you and your business, which then turns into contracts.
I love the bit in this post about women hoarding information. I can’t tell you how much I research daily… Whether it be reading magazines, newspapers, blogs, Twitter, or other social networks, I can’t get enough information. This is beneficial not only to my company, but also very beneficial to my network. It helps with making educated decisions and being a resource to my clients and contacts. I enjoy being this.
In short, I am a whale hunter. I’m glad I read this post to put a name with my face. 🙂
Barbara, whale hunters is a great analogy for today’s business environment. The challenge for women is to make our strategic, business and financial acumen as visible as our listening, aligning and empathizing skills. Glad I found you through twitter…
I spent years working in an environment, surrounded by men and I completely agree with your assessment, women are better listeners, maybe because we are more observant.
My boss used to say I had the ability to listen between the lines, to hear things the clients didn’t say with their words, but literally screamed with their body language.
We often have to overcome barriers as women, to succeed we have to play to our strengths when we can.
Thank you so much for posting your comments, Susan, Nicki, and Hazel.
Hazel, I will be very interested in your networking book about gender differences. I think I have already taken your survey 🙂
Nicki, I’ve observed on Twitter that you are a wealth of information and very generous in sharing–proving my point! and thank you for being a whale hunter~
Susan, you are so right–we need the “hard” skills as well as the so-called “soft” ones.
Lorraine, I completely agree that we have had barriers to overcome, and often our strongest attributes have been undervalued. You were lucky to have a boss who recognized your empathetic listening! Thank you for posting your comment.
I have to get over my reflexive pro-whale sympathies whenever I read anything by Barbara (“Whale hunting? No!”), but it’s always worth it! I think you’re completely right about the skills of listening and empathizing. What I find is that I get so distracted by my fear of rejection or judgment (maybe the same thing?) that I have a hard time listening. It’s sometimes hard to hear anything over the fear. But I think maybe that’s where empathy comes in: to see the other person as a person and not as judge and jury. This is an excellent post, Barbara!
Catherine, thank you for understanding that I am also very “pro-whale”! And I’ve always thought the way the Inuit hunter — 6-8 people in a sealskin boat vs. 100,000 lb. mammal was a fair fight.
Your comment about fear getting in the way of listening is very pertinent and wise. Fear gets in the way of a lot of things, doesn’t it? And I believe that empathy is one way to overcome it. Thanks for your insight and for taking time to comment.
Catherine, I have the pro-whale problem too! But somehow have less problem with the Inuit example given than with examples from other cultures, perhaps because they treat the animals with respect, which is part of Barbara’s point, if I’ve understood her correctly.
Barbara, wonderful post! I completely agree! And I think it’s the feminine side of business that risks being lost by the desperate advocates of a classically understood ‘career lifestyle’. Women don’t have to become masculine to succeed, they just need to bring the skills they possess to the table.
tks very much for nice post