Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In my experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept of ‘Hunters and Farmers’, which has been adopted by some sales managers and many business leaders, was the American sometime radio talk show host and psychoanalyst, Thom Hartmann. He initially proposed the farmer / hunter metaphor to explain the origins of what we now know, as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD*) to help his own son (who suffered from ADHD) adjust to the condition.

Some of the characteristics that have been defined for people who have ADHD include:

Find it hard to concentrate; makes careless mistakes; does not seem to listen; avoids difficult tasks; becomes easily distracted and are disorganised and forgetful; does not follow through on instructions and can’t finish work.

This (hunter / farmer) theory was extrapolated to those salespeople who are labelled Hunters implying that they have ADHD and anti-selling contradicting characteristics. However, there is no proof to assert that ADHD and Hunters are associated in anyway. This is how myths start. What we do know is that salespeople come in all shapes and sizes and many can be successful given the right conditions.

The term Hunter has become a default term for new business development. It is not uncommon to hear sales managers describe Hunters as hard selling, cold-callers who deal with buyers where benefits are limited to narrowly framed needs. Farmers on the other hand are often viewed as being more “customer-centric”, solutions oriented and able to develop trust. If one listened to the “experts” Hunters are brutish, self-centred and uncaring, and Farmers are gentle focused, sensitive and trustworthy. If that wasn’t bad enough, many recruitment consultants conduct personnel assessments to identify if a candidate is either a Farmer or Hunter.

A popular tool used to assess sales personalities and identify “the right kind of personality for a salesperson” is a ‘personality profile’ assessment known as DiSC**. This assessment comes up with these same conclusions, though it doesn’t make use of the descriptive titles Hunter or Farmer. Usually, these reports are delivered with a bullet-point summary about the characteristics of the person and the kind of work that should be assigned to the individual.

The reports include recommendations for hunters and those candidates who are farmers similar to this:

The candidate is mostly a Hunter and is best suited to:

• Bringing in new business
• Working in new sales territories
• Focusing on prospect conversion
• Sales that require minimal post-sales follow-up
• Tends to sell best when on his / her own
• Comfortable in pushing for a close

The candidate is mostly a Farmer and is best suited to:

• Optimising sales in existing accounts
• Comfortable in identifying additional buyers
• Proactive in building relationships
• Matches product benefits to diverse needs
• Good at solving customer problems Demonstrates attention to detail Meticulous in fulfilling administrative responsibilities

Here is the challenge. If one assumes that Hunters have specific characteristics that Farmers don’t, and vice versa, then:

• Hunters aren’t interested in solving customer problems and farmers aren’t interested in closing deals; yet, in today’s market place, salespeople unable to help buyers solve problems and then offer solutions with some degree of confidence, aren’t likely to succeed.

• Farmers have some unique ability that gives them exposure to senior executives and hunters can’t develop trust that is the foundation of a sound business relationship with C-Level decision makers and yet, if salespeople can’t get to build trust-based relationships with decision-makers they aren’t likely to get the business irrespective of whether they are hunters or farmers.

The costly consequences of maintaining the Hunter / Farmer Myth

These conclusions (made by various consultants) make no sense whatsoever. Employing hunter and farmer sales teams increases costs and often confuses buyers. In addition, the potential benefits of shared knowledge, experiences and synergies are lost. Worse, sales managers, already under pressure to manage complex sales teams, are now being asked to lead two diverse groups, often with conflicting objectives (hunters with a supposedly new business focus and farmers with a relationship focus).

Effective sales development has demonstrated that with the right training and coaching in a sales organisation that is strategically aligned, and where sales managers are doing their job in leading (rather than merely managing) the sales force, coaching and mentoring, then the right type of profile for professional salespeople is a more realistic blended characterisation of both hunter and farmer.

Those organisations who have a better understanding and develop their own benchmark for what ‘good salespeople’ should look like, and should be doing, are the ones that are gaining incremental share of spend and capturing more of the support of their target market, simply because buyers are working with people who are professionals rather than people who have only half the competence needed for the job.

*we acknowledge that the medical jury is out about the authenticity of ADHD as an actual disorder.

** DISC is simple quadrant profiling system and is similar to MBTI. They are most useful in helping people understand different communication and decision making styles of people. These tools were never designed as proper psychometric assessment tools and they do not provide an in-depth analysis of the intricacies of personality. However, many people still use them when recruiting

The post Cracking The Myth Of Sales Hunters & Farmers appeared first on Head Of Sales.

What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

This is a vexing question for many sales and business leaders.

And some of the answers we still hear aren’t very helpful either.

‘They must be hunters.’

‘They need to be hungry.’

‘They’ve got to be able to close deals.’

‘They must have a mortgage and family so they are ‘motivated’ to sell more.’

‘They must have industry experience.’

Notice anything familiar about most of these answers?

They are all stuck in the ‘aggressive, self-serving, desperate approach to selling’ paradigm which is not what good selling actually is – at least the selling practices and qualities we know to be suitable, good for business, salespeople and customers.

The industry experience one can be an issue, too. Often times when we recruit industry experience we can often get the same people, with the same old ideas and the same old results. So be aware about industry experience, as it’s not always the best path to follow.

These tired old tropes keep us from hiring the right sales talent our businesses really need.

So we encourage you to not fall into this simplistic mind trap because it won’t end well for you, your customers, your salespeople, or your business and its reputation.

So what should we really be looking for in a good sales recruit?

It all depends… What are you selling and to whom?

1. Are you selling B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to consumer)?
2. Are you selling unique solutions or specialised/customised products or services?
3. Are you selling simple off-the-shelf products or services?

The higher the complexity of what you are selling, the more skilful and knowledgeable your salespeople will need to be when it comes to customer engagement.

At the other end, if what you’re selling is simple and off-the-shelf, then you will more than likely need to have an online presence that is automated and underpinned by a human service component that helps sort out any issues as they arise.

Either way, you need to determine what type of salesperson and/or approach you need first before you answer the original question posed here.

However, if your business needs people in sales roles who need to sell in person to other people who need problems solved and opportunities realised, then here are some core qualities, capabilities and competencies you might want to assess for before you take anyone on board.

The information I’m sharing with you is based on over 20 years of research we have done into sales competency mapping combined with my many years in sales recruitment where I interviewed over 8,000 people in sales and sales leadership roles face-to-face for about an hour each. I trust this will help you make more informed decisions when it comes to recruiting good sales talent.

A fair exchange of value

Regardless of what you sell, at the heart of any good sales interaction and relationship is the realisation that there has been a fair exchange of value where both buyer and seller benefit. Authenticity, empathy, and logic are the foundations of trust. And trust has to be built by salespeople and their businesses in order for buyers to feel confident in the choices they have made.

So what would I be looking for in a good sales recruit first?

• What they see as a fair exchange of value and how they create the conditions for this to happen
• How they approach developing new business with new and existing clients;
• How they approach developing new business relationships and maintaining existing relationships so opportunity can continue to flourish for both parties
• What selling means to them – do they see it as a vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper together, or as a means to an end where the customers are merely objects to be exploited?
• How they arrive for an interview: Do they arrive on time? How do they treat people when they arrive and leave reception? How are they dressed? How prepared are they? and so on
• Do I trust them? Do I feel they have my best interests at heart?

Before I dive into the technical depth of their skills and capabilities, I am looking at their character, their values, their self-management, their manners and courtesy, and their perspective on building trust and fostering healthy relationships internally and externally now and for the long term.

If they cannot get that right then no amount of technical know-how and experience is going to make them a good fit.

If they pass muster here, then let’s go into more specific detail. While I cannot account for every nuance in every sales role here now, here are some of the core competencies we found most businesses in B2B and complex B2C want their sales recruits to be across and accomplished in to be effective salespeople:

B2B or Complex B2C Salesperson’s Role

• Knowledge
  • Business Acumen
  • Understanding customers’ needs
  • Understanding the market
  • Knowledge of resources (incl. product knowledge, CRM, sales tools/systems and social selling practices)
• Skills
  • Building relationships and networks
  • Prospecting and new business development
  • Account management and planning
  • Solution Selling
• Mindset
  • Consultative problem solving
  • Empathy and understanding
  • Ethics, integrity and professionalism
  • Self-reflection and development

Next time we’ll look into how to assess for these qualities.

The post What Qualities Do Good Sales Recruits Have? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Over a century ago, Russell Conwell was famous for his travelling lecture, delivered more than 6000 times. What’s interesting about the lecture, is that Conwell was preaching customer-centricity over a century ago!

Let me share the parable at the centre of this lecture and how it applies to the development of your sales growth plan.

There was once a wealthy man named Ali Hafed who lived not far from the River Indus. “He was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented.” One day a priest visited Ali Hafed and told him about diamonds.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor.

Ali Hafed sold his farm, left his family, and travelled to Palestine and then to Europe searching for diamonds. He did not find them. His health and his wealth failed him. Dejected, he cast himself into the sea.

One day, the man who had purchased Ali Hafed’s farm found a curious sparkling stone in a stream that cut through his land. It was a diamond. Digging produced more diamonds — acres of diamonds, in fact. This, according to the parable, was the discovery of the famed diamonds of Golconda.

The point of the story is that we often dream of fortunes to be made elsewhere. We ought instead to be open to the opportunities that are around us. And so often I talk to and coach dejected and worn out salespeople that have looked everywhere for new business except their own backyard!

Until you’re confident that you have genuinely mined for all the opportunity in partnering more effectively with your existing customers it just doesn’t make sense to be cold calling and spending hours on LinkedIn trying to build your brand and create inbound leads.

If you generate ongoing revenue as a result of the relationship and value, you deliver to existing customers you should first consider retention. There’s always a need to balance out the ongoing service delivered with the ongoing revenue. BUT in my experience, too many salespeople miss out on retention, referrals, re-pricing as delivery gets more expensive and taking care of more customer needs, because they’re not focused enough on delivering value once the sale is complete.

The point is, take a little bit of time out to consider what the opportunities are inside your existing customers.

If retention is important, consider ranking all your customers from highest retention risk to lowest.

Consider whether there are re-pricing opportunities across your portfolio of customers. So often when I coach salespeople, their portfolio of clients is full of people or businesses that promised growth in volume for lower pricing but never delivered on their side of the bargain. Even if you can’t achieve upward re-pricing, you may be able to negotiate referrals for maintaining the discounted pricing.

Consider whether there’s an opportunity to take care of more needs for your customers. This doesn’t have to be just about cross-selling other solutions you sell. You may be able to partner up with someone in an aligned business and do mutual referrals. As an example, if you’re a lawyer, you could introduce your clients to an Accountant, Real Estate Agent or Banker on the basis that they reciprocate.

And consider whether there’s an opportunity to grow within the client. This isn’t just about big enterprise customers with lots of divisions. If you take care of my personal mortgage, there’s an opportunity to grow within my extended family. If you take care of a property developer there’s an opportunity to grow within their network of suppliers and that includes builders, architects, plumbers and a host of other companies and people.

If you don’t have existing customers or you don’t earn ongoing revenue from existing customers—that’s ok.

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