There Are Whales and there are Whales
Why the biggest opportunities aren’t just larger, they’re different in kind. By Alan Weiss, PhD
Some years ago, I was hired to deliver a keynote speech for a group holding its conference at the River Rock Casino in Richmond, near Vancouver. I arrived at the front desk at about 10 pm the prior evening due to flight difficulties.
The desk clerk said, “The host organization has reserved a small suite for you, but since we’re packed and you’re only here tonight, I’m going to upgrade that.” I thanked him and headed for my room sans bellman.
As usual, when I opened the door, I couldn’t find the right light switches, but I groped for a few and found a couple of cavernous rooms. I found the master bath, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. When I awoke in the morning, with the sun streaming in, I found that I was in a “suite” with eight rooms, including a billiard room, kitchen, conference room, two other bedrooms, and four full bathrooms.
When I checked out, I asked the morning clerk what kind of room I had come from. “Oh,” he said, “that is one of our ‘whale suites.’” He went on to explain that the casino carefully developed very wealthy Asian clients who would fly across the Pacific on private planes and stay for a week or more, often gambling millions of dollars during their stay.
Hence, my focus in marketing on “whales.” But to me, these are relationships—the WhaleSale™—where everyone wins. The “house” is not holding superior odds in our case. We need these kinds of sales to raise our revenues, margins, valuation, and to create less labor and far more discretionary time. But the big suite and the limos and the free meals are how you carefully support the whales you’ve attracted.
The harder skill and greater requirement is attracting them in the first place, with better offers, higher brands and repute, and manifest value.
Whale sales are not merely large revenues. They are also a composite of the size of the sale, the frequency of purchase, and the duration of the relationship. They are ongoing, evergreen relationships with positive inertia: In this case, the tendency of a delighted, high-investing client to remain a delighted, high-investing client. (The opposite, of course, is the tendency of an object at rest to stay at rest.)
Early in my career, I focused on significant clients, such as Merck, Hewlett-Packard, Calgon, the LA Times Group, and others, which provided hugely diverse buyers in an atmosphere of investing in external resources so as not to breathe their own exhaust. With Merck, alone, I earned $2.5 million over 12 years, and an identical amount from their referrals and the credibility they provided me. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $12 million in today’s dollars, or a million a year from just one client source. (My 1992 best-seller, now in its sixth edition, is Million Dollar Consulting.)
Lisa T. Miller and I are collaborating on how to make the WhaleSale a realistic, natural undertaking for almost any type of organization. You don’t have to be a whale yourself to do this, but you do need to be comfortable prowling the oceans….
Alan Weiss, known as “the rock star of consulting,” has written 54 original books, with 16 additional editions, appearing in 15 languages.