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

Foreword

WHALE HUNTING is a confluence of business writing, practical skills, and consumerism. It should resonate with anyone who runs a business—if not, they won’t be in business very long. Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith, through their unique partnership and history of successful entrepreneurship, serve up whale hunting as the DNA of service-focused organizations.

Whale Hunting has a mission and a message that are easy to understand. The book is interesting and fun. The authors’ method resonates in a way that other sales approaches don’t. Typical sales training doesn’t change the vernacular, but whale hunting, through its metaphor and language, gets people excited about thinking differently.

As I read the principles and ideals of the whale hunting philosophy expressed in this book, it struck me that every company faces the problems that Searcy and Smith illustrate, and then resolve.

I live on the service side of the business world; everything we do is about expanding and improving on the service to our customers. My company is quite large. We have 1,100 employees in the United States and 2,300 globally, and we are part of Omnicom Group, which employs more than 70,000 worldwide. In many regards, we’d easily be categorized as “the whale.” So, how can we push ourselves to remain nimble, creative, active, and prosperous?

It’s a real challenge. Big companies often develop a sense of confidence that little fish will get caught in our wake even if we are not working too hard. But ...