Nantucket Sleighride

The Nantucket Sleighride

I use the analogy of the “Nantucket Sleighride” to teach clients about the dangers of not focusing on their target customer. A scenario that can pull you in a direction you never intended to take, and even sink your business if you are not careful.

As a young boy, I was enthralled with Herman Melville’s book “Moby Dick”. The daring tale of Captain Ahab and his crew hunting the giant albino sperm whale captivated my boyhood imagination.

The island of Nantucket was the home base of the whalers in the novel. My wife Bianca and I had the good fortune to visit this beautiful island when I was asked to facilitate a strategic planning workshop there for a client a few years back.

The port on the island is like a time capsule of the 1800s. We imagined how lively the village must have been at the height of the whaling economy, before the invention of the electric light bulb, when people used whale oil for lighting and heating.

The local whaling museum depicted a scene of terrified sailors on a whaling longboat hanging on for dear life while being dragged on a “Nantucket Sleighride”. This term refers to a harpooned whale dragging the whalers’ boat along behind it. The speed of the sleigh ride could reach up to 23 mph (37 km/h) and some powerful species of whale could dive and drag the longboat and its occupants beneath the surface.

As I stated in the article, “How to identify your target market customer”, you need to carefully (and narrowly) define your “bullseye” target customer, and then deliver a superior offering that is designed specifically to delight that type of customer.

Your target customer is the center of the bullseye. It’s who you have in mind when you develop your product/service, and who you think of when you create your marketing communications. You create and deliver something remarkable for customers exactly like them.

Beware the great whale.

Imagine you are a SaaS (software as a service) company. You identified your ideal target customer as a small-medium-size business (SMB) in a certain industry vertical. This bullseye customer has clearly defined needs that your software offering and support services are designed to solve in a unique way.

You designed your business model to serve these tuna-size clients (SMB), but occasionally a giant sperm whale (large global enterprise) enters your sales funnel. Your sales team salivate over the size of this potential catch. The sales commission dollar signs flash before their eyes as they frantically row the longboat after the whale and throw a harpoon. Sometimes the harpoon sticks.

Whoosh! Now your company is being dragged on a Nantucket Sleighride.

Here’s how it played out for a company in the USA that I was involved in:

  • The whale is far bigger and more powerful than your company
  • The whale pulls you in the direction it wants to go
  • The whale is more demanding than the target customer your business model was designed to serve
  • The whale expects you to add features and services to cater to its unique needs (features and services that may not apply to your target customer)
  • The whale soaks up a disproportionate amount of your product development and customer service resources
  • The whale frequently expresses dissatisfaction with your offering (not surprising as it was not designed for whales in the first place)
  • The whale’s complaints and bullying attitude upset your frontline staff
  • The whale starts dictating your company’s strategic direction
  • You find yourself reacting to the whale’s needs, vs proactively choosing the best way to allocate your precious time, money, and resources

After being dragged on a wild Nantucket Sleighride way over the horizon, you realize that you can’t hold on any longer. You argue whether the whale broke the rope, or whether you cut the rope to save yourselves.

You find yourself adrift, tired, and exhausted, miles away from the course you were originally on.

As you nurse your wounds, you kick yourself for not adhering to the most important strategic decision of all – which is to narrowly define your target customer, and focus your resources on building something remarkable for that target customer. It’s a harsh lesson that you just learned the hard way.

Note: I’m not saying you should not go after big whales. It’s perfectly fine to do so if big whales are your bullseye target customer and you have designed your product and service offerings to provide superior value to them. 

And yes, you can still sell to people who are not your target customer, if they want what you make, and are willing to give you money. But only where it doesn’t distract you from your bullseye focus. And only where it doesn’t force you to dilute or change your offering in any way.

Strategy requires trade-offs. This means saying yes to some things and no to other things. It also means saying no to some customers, because not every customer is a good customer for your business. The essence of strategy is choosing what you are NOT going to do.

Thar she blows!

You promise yourself that you will never again let a whale tempt you and drag your boat off course.

Six months later another huge whale ends up in your sales funnel. Once again the dollar signs flash before your eyes. Someone in the sales team throws a harpoon.

Whoosh! Here we go again…

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Until next time …
Stephen