“Hunters will immediately eatwhat they kill; farmers will eat what they
grow over many months”
Edward Golod
For decades, selling was typified by having Reps cold call to open an account. They were typically individuals with a direct demeanor, and many times more aggressive than need be. The definition of their behavior was not as a “hunter”, more so, just a successful sales rep. They were selling an array of products and services, spread across many industries, as in industrial, manufacturing, engineering, agriculture, automotive, wholesaling, and countless more. But, with the introduction of Enterprise software into our business mainstream, especially with SaaS in the Cloud, all things changed.
Today, practically every small, mid to large Enterprise vendor requires that they hire hunters for their sales teams. They often refer to them as “elephant hunters” as they are given large Enterprises as their accounts or named accounts. They sell in “patches”, another connotation to an open field, where one would be able to hunt game.
Conversely, the folks that care for existing customers, commonly called CSM’s or Account Managers, are in essence “farming” the relationships, going deeper, to induce the typical cross sell or upsell. This is a highly valuable function, and farmers are typically skilled in this endeavor. I think it is also common thought that farming is less stressful and somewhat easier as the customer is already receptive to your ideas and proposals. Hunters however are built to kill, and will operate at a higher frequency(free “gifts of Knowledge”)so they typically cannot become farmers, and vice versa.
So far, these items are typical in the worlds of SaaS sales. What is not typical is “how you hunt”? It’s a false singular term that is a cloak for an array of critical sales skills. These are:
- Excellent cold calling (a primary function).
- Social media expertise.
- Superb research attributes to learn how complex companies solve their critical problems.
- Discovery proficiency.
- Financial acumen.
- High-powered communication skills designed to engage with illusive CXO conversations.
There are many more, but for the purposes of this blog was to illuminate what it takes to be a hunter. Are you one? Can you demonstrate it? Do you have higher earnings than your colleagues? Do you love what you do? Hunters are in the most successful group among Salespeople. It is a learned skill (free “gifts of Knowledge”) and can be developed by just about any salesperson with hard work, toughness and a desire to deeply help your clients,
What do you do next? Send us an email and we’ll arrange for you to speak with Ed to chat about how these learnings can help build more sales just for your business.