Find the Right Place to Hang Your Hat: Hunters and Farmers -- Part 2 of 2

By Lee Salz

The Hunter Role Seems Sexy, But Farmers Play an Important Part as Well
[Another key area for review in matching your skill set with the right job is the hunter/farmer relationship that. This analysis will help you to identify which side of the sales equation best matches you: hunter or farmer. Even within the hunter role, there are differences. The transaction-sale hunter, the one who sells something one time to a prospect, has a different reading than the complex-sale hunter.]

Where Are the Leads?
Hunters also come in different breeds. Some hunters have historically created their own leads. Maybe they went door to door. Some may have just used the phone book. Other salespeople have generated new business for their company through company-created leads. These salespeople may have been given lead lists or answered inbound calls from prospects. There is an important distinction between these two types of hunters. When you consider your historical success, did you typically generate leads from scratch or did the company provide you with leads? These are both hunter roles, but the skills needed to be successful for each one is different.

I've seen many salespeople describe themselves as hunters and use the term broad-brush. As a manager, a mistake I made early in my career was not asking enough questions to identify the type of hunter skills the candidate possessed. As a result, I hired people who did not have the lead-generation skills which were a job requirement. I heard "hunter," and did not dig deeper to see what type of hunter they truly were. Many of these salespeople failed as they could not jump-start their pipeline. They hadn't done it before and were not equipped to do it now. We both lost.

At the other end of the sales spectrum is the role of the farmer. For some reason, most salespeople think that the hunter is the sexy role. Quite frankly, many hiring managers do as well. They both miss the point. Farmers can play a key role in a sales organization. As a matter of fact, many salespeople are better suited to being farmers than hunters. Farmers have the core responsibility of selling additional products and services to existing clientele. This important function helps strengthen the relationship between the client and their respective company. Why is this role so important? The deeper the relationship is between two organizations, the more difficult it is to sever it. In the sales-trait analysis, farmers straddle the line between being likeable and being driven. Since they provide both a service and sales function, this spectrum balance is necessary.

From: Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager
© 2007 Lee B. Salz
CJW-040-014832