How ‘hunters’ and ‘farmers’ gather for the sales team
Ken Cook
(First in a three-part series on building a successful sales team.)
Here's a question for you: What are some words that describe the types of salespeople organizations look to hire? What comes to mind? Frequent answers include hunters, farmers, finders, minders and rainmakers.
The hunters, finders and rainmakers are perceived to be skilled in connecting with new opportunities and closing new business. Meanwhile, the farmers and minders are perceived to be skilled in keeping existing customers happy, and sometimes uncovering new revenue opportunities within the existing customer base. In other words, the sales force includes those who can find new revenue, and those who can protect — and maybe grow — existing revenue.
When you're building a sales team, here's the challenge: Many business leaders seem able to find people who can take care of the existing customer base, but it's difficult to find the salesperson who can find the new opportunity. What's behind this apparent dilemma is the belief that hunters are a small subset within the salesperson universe. The belief is that a hunter's skills are advanced; they're not afraid to reach out, and rejection does not slow them down.
This was true in “old school” sales prospecting. However, in today's ultra-connected world, the ability to find and connect is unlimited. What's most important today is the ability to make the connection a personal one. And in this case, many hunters could probably learn some lessons from the farmers.
Great “farmers” are successful because they nurture relationships; they connect with the clients' people and build relationships with them. Long-term clients become long term because of that trust. Great farmers listen and generously provide help and solutions.
Many hunters operate differently. They look to sow their presence as far and wide as possible. Their philosophy can be summed up like this: “The more people with whom I connect, the better the chance an opportunity will come my way.” The connections are usually surface level at best, so the hunter tries to assess opportunity as quickly as possible, and if there appears to be none, moves on.
However, the great hunters, those who excel in new business development, don't operate this way. They're not prospectors; they're relationship builders. Think of them as “super farmers.” Great hunters have a web of relationships that are strategically built. The relationships span the marketplace, and include current clients, past clients, desired clients and industry influencers. They also include peers within their own companies and across complementary firms. Each relationship has some depth and is at least “business personal.”
When great hunters go prospecting, they make connections through people. They know who they want to reach, and they find a way to get with that person through a warm introduction. Instead of overtly selling, they pick up the phone, call someone they know, and arrange an independent validation of who they are. This independent validation or warm introduction pre-establishes at least a minimal level of trust. “Jerry recommended him, so I'll at least take the call.”
If you're looking to hire great salespeople, hire candidates who are pre-disposed to comfortably connecting and building trust. Use DISC personality profiles to identify the individuals with the skills and personality traits that enable connections with people. Build the sales team around this core characteristic.
With this group of salespeople you don't need to designate between hunters and farmers. Rather, you can build the team around such factors as industry expertise or product or service expertise. This way, each member of the team leverages their unique knowledge by focusing on relationships where that knowledge would be most valued.
The bottom line: A sales team built with individuals inclined to connecting and building relationships has the greatest probability of widespread success. You can teach product knowledge, and people can develop industry expertise. These have so much more power when the person who is learning focuses first on relationships in order to succeed.
Ken Cook is co-founder of How to Who and co-author of How to WHO: Selling Personified, a book and program on building business through relationships. Learn more at www.howtowho.com.
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