Scouting the Whale

Although we know the time of year, we don’t know exactly when the whales are coming. So our village sends out scouts. Every boy between the ages of seven and twelve is dispatched along the coast for miles. Well before dawn and long after dusk, the scouts look for the signs of a whale. Every man who is out hunting for caribou, anyone who is fishing in a kayak, is looking out across the coast to see the “whale sign.”

It is a difficult place to spot whales. There are few hours of sunlight in a day. The water appears gray. The sky is gray. The land around us is gray. And we are looking for whales. They are gray, too.

You are probably wondering why it would be hard to spot the largest mammal on earth; and probably you have in your mind a picture of a whale spouting or breaching. But if our first glimpse of the whale is when it expels air and water through its blowhole, or when it propels its entire body wholly above the water, we are already too late. It will take too long to launch a boat and catch a whale at this point in its migration. The whales will be way beyond a point where we can catch them. Our scouts need to look for the signs of the whales before they are visible.

Our scouts know that the first sign of whales is the flocks of birds that precede them. The birds feed on the small fish that are swimming north as part of their migration. The small fish are chased by larger fish and still larger fish. Finally will come the whales.

In our village, everyone awaits the news of whale sign. One morning, a boy runs into the village, electrifying us with the news, “I have the whale sign.”

Hunting the Whale

You are the harpooner. As the captain of your boat, you rally your shaman and six other oarsmen to lift the boat and launch. Your boat is called an umiak. It is 36 feet long, made of cypress wood, and covered in sealskin. That boat is sacred, as is everything related to the whale hunt. It’s all been scrubbed down with fresh water from a river some distance away from the village—the boat, the tackle, the harpoon, the line, everything—so as to keep it pure and clean. Everything that touches the water for the hunt, everything that touches the whale, must be pure, to observe the tradition of our ancestors.

Now we lift the boat from all sides and launch it into the water. At the front, you sit as the harpooner responsible for directing the boat close to the whale. In the back is the shaman, our spiritual leader, who provides for everyone the tradition and history. The shaman knows which chants to sing, which poems to recite, and which practices to follow to ensure that we have a safe and successful whale hunt.

There are six oarsmen in our boat as well. Each crew member has dual responsibilities: one, to row the boat and, two, to serve the hunt. One minds the tackle. Another minds the line. Several fish and prepare food along the journey. The hunt will take weeks out on the open water, and there is much work to accomplish along the way.

Finally, we spot a whale. The harpooner’s job is to direct the boat as close as possible to the whale. Perhaps you can imagine hurling your harpoon toward the whale. But that’s a fiction. A 60-pound harpoon would bounce off 100,000 pounds of blubber. We need to get right next to the whale—even jump on top of the whale. And, as harpooner, you have to drive that harpoon in at just the right spot. You have been practicing all winter for just this moment. And you are successful. Your harpoon penetrates deep into the whale’s blubber, and your umiak is now connected to the whale by a strong line made to withstand the wild and dangerous ride ahead.

Now the whale will do one of three things. It might pull away from the coastline and head deep into the ocean, taking us on a two- to four-day ride in and out of darkness, in and out of ice floes, in a very dangerous place and at a great distance from our village. Or the whale might dive as deep as 650 feet down into the water. And it can wait, silently, as long as four hours. When it surfaces, it can emerge straight up under our boat, dislodging us. But if you are very skillful, and have put your harpoon in exactly the right place, the whale will pull toward the coastline and run along the coast until it tires. On that four-day run, everyone on the boat has a job. Tending the line is critical. If you let out the line too fast, the whale can get free. If you let it out too slowly, the boat may go under, or the line will break. Anyone who gets tangled in the line will be pulled overboard.

Finally, the whale tires. We pull the boat next to the whale and dispatch it. There is still one more job for a crew member. He needs to jump over the side, into the frigid waters, and sew the whale’s mouth shut. If the mouth is left open, the whale fills with water and sinks to the bottom.

Now we must bring this whale to shore. The odds are not in our favor: a 100,000-pound whale against a 3,500-pound boat. Hauling the whale against the tide does not work. Rather, we have to work with the natural forces, the wind and the tide, to steer the whale and beach it.

While we are bringing in the whale, our young scouts are watching the coast to spot our boat. When they see us, they run back to the village to point out where the whale will be beached.

Harvesting the Whale

Everyone in the village heads to the coast as fast as possible. They bring sleds, buckets, and pots. The same tides, the same winds that brought in our whale can take it back out. Left in the open air, the whale will begin to rot. We need to harvest it quickly.

Once the whale has been beached and secured, the entire community helps with the harvest. From the age of four on, everyone has a job. At four, the children learn to harvest the whale oil from the blubber. Later, they are taught how to harvest the blubber and the skin and the meat. Eventually, they learn to handle the bone. We use every part of the whale, except for its head.

The head is preserved and kept free. When the harvest is over, the boat sets out one more time. It takes the whale’s head back out to sea, where it will sink deep within the ocean and be reborn. Our village does not see the whale as a victim of our hunt. Rather, it is a gift from the gods sent to sustain us.

The leaders decide which parts of the whale go to which members of the village. The food is divided based on each one’s contribution to the hunt and what the village needs for the coming year.

After all has been divided, we return to our village for a great celebration. But we do not celebrate the great hunters. We do not celebrate the boat or even the harpooner. The celebration is for the whale. The whale is what gives us life and the opportunity to thrive.

Why do we endure such difficulty and danger to hunt whales? People have been killed hunting whales in this manner, century after century. But when we hunt walrus or caribou, seals or a string of fish, we can eat only for a day or a week or two.

A whale can feed our entire village for a year.

Signs of the Times

THE ANCIENT INUIT KNEW EXACTLY THE RIGHT TIME TO HUNT WHALES. It was spring. The ice was breaking. The whales were moving north through the body of water now known as the Bering Sea. We can well imagine that whale hunters wished the whales would move in July or August when the days were never-ending and the temperatures were balmy. Driven by forces beyond their control or knowledge, however, the whales moved during the time when the wind was treacherous, the temperatures below freezing, the ice floes moving erratically, the waves mountainous, and the daylight sharply limited. And so year after year, the Inuit braved these conditions and hunted the whales because it was the right time to do so.

Today’s businesspeople do not have such obvious, unmistakable signs of the correct times to shift their company’s focus from smaller accounts to those 10 to 20 times larger. But if you know where to look, you will see indications that whale hunting should be on your agenda.

In the business environment of the early twenty-first century, we observe signs of the spring’s ice breaking in multiple layers. Ice is breaking at the global level, at a societal level, and within the smaller realms of your industry and your business. Whales are moving. It is time to hunt them. Here is how we know.

Whale hunting, in the business context, is all about smaller companies learning to sell and to deliver big deals with big companies, which we define as whales. It is important, therefore, that smaller companies first understand the whales’ habitat. We are looking especially at how changes in the global business environment have mandated changes in sales and procurement processes.

The international business environment has experienced sea changes in the past 30 years, driven by a host of interrelated factors. Information technology has been and continues to be a prime mover of these changes, creating a new set of both problems and opportunities for big companies, including such diverse issues as financial stress, just-in-time (JIT) inventory, quality control, and consumer capabilities. Let’s look briefly at how these factors have affected how whale-sized companies do business with their suppliers, beginning with the concept of JIT.

Changing Business Environment

JIT was first articulated by Henry Ford, as described in his My Life and Work (Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, NY, 1922). It did not become part of business culture, however, until the 1950s when Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan adopted and publicized the practice as an answer to its limited access to capital. In the United States, financial stress provided the impetus to adopt JIT. Traditionally, manufacturers had stockpiled inventories and recorded them as assets on the balance sheet. But that view of warehoused inventories as assets began to change in the 1970s and 1980s. The cash invested in large inventories put a drag on a company’s financial well-being, as did costs for space, utilities, and insurance. In some cases, parts were becoming obsolete before they could be sold. Financial managers and stockholders began applying pressure to business executives to find a better way to manage availability of parts. One solution was to move products back into suppliers’ warehouses and order them when they were needed.

The concept of just-in-time inventory is simple and can be summed up in a few words: having the right product in the right place at the right time and in the exact amount required. Its implementation, however, is not so simple. Once the major manufacturers (whales) emptied their warehouses of inventory, suppliers (smaller companies) were left with the task of having enough material on hand to meet demands—but not so much that the bottom line of their balance sheets became skewed. Suppliers were accustomed to a process of producing goods, sending them to a warehouse, and being paid on delivery. This business model transition required them to rethink their entire business. Instead of setting their own timetables for delivery and payment for goods, they had to cut back on their production but be meticulous about the quality of everything they produced. They had to store any surplus goods themselves. And, of course, since they didn’t get paid until the goods were needed, they had to develop new processes that ensured an intricate system of timing, quality, and pricing.

Demand for quality increased dramatically when supplies of any goods were sharply limited. Under the previous model, another item was available in the vast warehouses of parts. But with the implementation of this model, every part had to be precisely correct so that it could be sold and paid for on demand. New technology systems were developed to meet these demands, intricate systems that followed an item from the original request for proposal (RFP) or order through its delivery to the manufacturer. Quality control activities, many based on statistical models, were required at each step of manufacturing.

Information technology introduced more than just sophisticated inventory management systems. It opened the door to a world of information that few business leaders had previously imagined. Whereas whale-sized companies knew about a handful of vendors before, now they could find information on the Internet about hundreds of vendors around the world. End-use consumers could choose from a multitude of companies, rather than just those in close physical proximity. One size no longer fit all. If the manufacturer did not produce the product as desired, the end customer went elsewhere. An age of consumer-driven business possibilities had begun.

Information—and its use, storage, and owner—became a saleable good in itself. Companies that developed systems to obtain, control, and disseminate information were in great demand. Manipulating information became a major business. Consider, for example, the history of the airline industry. For many years, very little money has been made from the physical act of transporting passengers from one place to another. It is the companies that manage the information and reservations systems that are making real money.

All of these complex issues made a dramatic impact on large manufacturers and their suppliers. Both were forced to adopt new processes and attitudes and learn new ways to work together profitably. Gone were the days when a major manufacturer produced widgets in one size and color only; had rigidly structured processes for every conceivable activity; finalized deals one on one in the proverbial smoky room; organized departments in such a way that only members had access to the department’s knowledge; and stockpiled inventory, hoarded all the engineers, and relied on one person in accounting for all financial information. Gone were the days when a supplier produced parts in advance of demand and was paid immediately for them; was haphazard about quality of materials or parts, because more were readily available; and could rely on 5- to 10-year contracts.

Perhaps one of the greatest differences experienced by companies was the change in the organization and structure of the business itself. The emphasis on quality demanded interaction among employees that had not been present before. The product development cycle had to include representatives of many departments: financial, information technology, operations, human resources, and engineers. Yet the highly developed silos of the twentieth-century corporation, based on concepts of specialization, were ineffective at meeting the new demands of the marketplace. Transparency, collaboration, and quality control were the new buzzwords of business activity.

Impact on Small Business Sales

So how does this history impact today’s small to midsize company that wants to achieve rapid and sustainable growth? The companies that supply products and services to whales have changed dramatically in order to accommodate fluctuating requirements of their whale-sized customers. But the one area in which suppliers have not adjusted to participate fully in the current environment is sales. Too many suppliers rely on methods that have been used for decades, methods that do not work in the ocean of whales they wish to hunt. Let’s look at some signs that your oceans have changed and your whales have adopted new ways of buying.

As the Inuit had signs of approaching whales every spring, small companies wishing to grow have signs that indicate it is time to hunt whales. As your company grows beyond a certain level, it will attract different competitors, and you will discover that whales have unique buying habits that you did not previously understand. Here are some examples:

• New faces. You are finding new competitors, smaller lesser-known firms, for the opportunities that you are pursuing. The newcomers seem agile and fast.

• Thunder without rain. You are swamped by what seem to be new RFPs, and while you have made your way onto the list of qualified companies that bid out large business, you remain too small to win. You frequently come in second.

• Red flags. Bigger players are moving into your niche and, perhaps, claiming it. As you try to grow, you attract the attention of larger competitors that previously ignored you.

• Bobbing in the ocean. Your annual revenues go up and down like a buoy, over several years. You perceive a ceiling of revenue that you cannot break through. You are at the mercy of the sales ocean, rather than steering your way through it.

• Trading places. Your company is losing large accounts at a rate similar to the rate it is adding new ones.

Perhaps you have reacted to these signs by restructuring your organizational chart, hoping for greater productivity, or have replaced or reassigned staff members you consider to be your least-effective performers. You may have considered or completed acquisitions or mergers in order to achieve size, capital, and leverage. Perhaps you are developing a new product you hope will be attractive to buyers. Or maybe you are expanding into markets in which you currently have little presence. All these options sound attractive, but they demand significant financial investment; they require a marked distraction from your current client base, and based on business statistics, they have a low probability of success.

Another option is whale hunting—the organized and process-driven effort to seek, hunt, and harvest major accounts from companies that are much larger than yours. Whale hunting differs from a traditional sales approach. It works by understanding the complexity of the modern sales process and using it to the advantage of both buyer and seller.

Is Whale Hunting for You?

If your company can meet the following requirements, you might be a candidate for whale hunting.

• Leadership will focus the entire company.

• People will learn new roles and pursue them effectively.

• You are willing to prepare extensively.

• You will manage your sales process aggressively.

• You will no longer tolerate the uncertainty of traditional sales efforts.