Today’s post is written by Barbara Weaver Smith.   I met Barbara through Twitter,  and have had a chance to connect F2F as well.  She is as much fun in person as she is on Twitter.   I am delighted to share her post today.

Do you ever feel like a minnow who can’t possibly go hunting a whale? The “minnow mindset” hits most small business owners at times. It’s the feeling that you have to match your expectations to your current size and capacity, maybe dreaming big but not actively planning to land an account ten times or twenty times your current average account.

I could say “be more confident” but that wouldn’t help. What helps is to develop a disciplined process that will build your confidence because you will be successful.

Small businesses have lots to offer to really big customers—focused attention, agility, innovation, and leading edge products and services. The problem is that we scare the whales. They are afraid that we don’t have the cash flow to work with them, cannot ramp up easily, may not be here next y ear, or may crumble under the pressure they exert. So their safest choice is to go with a tried and true provider.

How can you combat the whale’s fear of you?

• · Understand it. Know that it’s real and confront it directly, both internally and with the whale’s team. Take your team through an exercise of identifying all of the ways that your company might scare a whale and keep those things top of mind in every presentation.

• · Counteract it. Gather or create a set of “fear busters”—internal process documents, charts, pictures, testimonials, white papers, financials, analytics, etc. Lead with these tools in all of your conversations and presentations.
• · Manage it. In all your dealings with whales, control the lens through which they see you. Present yourself as the professional, organized, stable entity that you know yourself to be.

If you understand that the whale is scared of you, you can get over feeling like a minnow. Instead, you can feel like a confident whale hunter!

Thank you for visiting this post about Barbara Weaver Smith and Whale Hunting Women. We are offering a free giveaway to two people who comment during the tour and to the hosts where they posted. It is simple to be entered in the giveaway – just post a comment on any post about the tour and you will be entered. But, an interesting post is more likely to get our attention.

The host on the site where the winning comments are posted will also win a three-volume set of Whale Hunters Wisdom in audio format. Volumes include I: Mind of a Hunter, II: The Hunt, and III: The Whale Hunting Culture. This is a $90 value. To see the tour schedule visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2009/04/whale-hunting-with-barbara-weaver-smith.html

Barbara Weaver Smith’s website – http://www.thewhalehunters.com

Barbara Weaver Smith’s blog – http://blog.thewhalehunters.com

Order your copy of Whale Hunting Women – http://cli.gs/WHWEbook