The difference between Hunters and Farmers, and how to organize your sales force
It is the age old question. Is there a secret sauce that all great salespeople have, or are successful hunters different from successful farmers? Over the past couple of years it has become clear (at least in my head) that there are two distinct types of salespeople: hunters and farmers. I decided to write this article because I have had several discussions over the past two months with salespeople who want to know whether they are a hunter or a farmer, and with sales executives that want to know how to organize their sales force based on the two distinct types of salespeople. As always, I would love your opinions on hunters vs. farmers, and what your company’s sales force looks like!
Let me first articulate what I mean by hunters (Ex. “New Business Development Executive”) and farmers (Ex. “Account Manager”). Hunters largely work at the beginning of the sales funnel, both prospecting and qualifying sales opportunities. They generally will find a solution to a qualified prospect’s expressed need and work to take the opportunity to closure, but are not responsible for post-sales activities. Farmers largely work at the back end of the funnel, and are responsible for servicing existing customers and identifying/closing new sales opportunities with their assigned accounts.
Differences Between Hunters and Farmers:
One of the shocking things that I learned when getting to understand what makes great hunters/farmers was that many of the major competencies that make someone successful at one type of sales role actually work against them in another! If you have been engaged in this debate or are wondering if you are a better hunter/ farmer, here are some key differences between the two types of sales roles.
- Emotional Resilience vs. Emotional Intelligence: Hunters must be emotionally resilient to deal with the high levels of daily rejection that come with prospecting (ex cold calling); they have to bounce back in a matter of seconds from rejection and reach out to another potential prospect. Because hunters spend a lot of time prospecting, this is a key aspect to their success. On the other hand, farmers must be emotionally in-tune with their account team and the customer team. After all, customer satisfaction is an emotional feeling and farmers must be adept at sensing that.
- Hunt vs. Fulfillment: Hunters are driven by the rush of the hunt (go figure!), and the thrill of the “kill”. Given how exciting that rush is, everyday details can seem pretty boring. Because the primary duty of a hunter is to hunt, this works out well. In contrast, good farmers like to get their hands dirty with the details, and consider themselves solid and dependable. This caters well to fulfillment duties, which are vital to managing an account.
- Independence vs. Team: Hunters are self-motivators and work very well independently. They sometimes even have a disdain for marketing or sales operations folks that try to work with them, and often don’t like team work. This is a vital characteristic because hunters work primarily by themselves during the prospecting and qualifying phases and have to be highly self-motivated. They rarely get help in their jobs unless an opportunity has passed the qualification phase. By contract, farmers are team players and collaborators. They work closely with their account management team and the client, often framing business challenges and creating solutions alongside their client.
- Qualifying vs. Nurturing: The best business development people out there are superior qualifiers. Hunters can be given 100 accounts and very quickly tell which five are worth pursuing. In business development, it is essential that hunters spend their time on prospects that might close or else they are wasting their time. This is the biggest barrier to a hunter’s productivity, so the ability to qualify quickly and accurately is crucial. In contract, farmers are great nurturers. They look at relationships from a long term perspective and are interested in getting to know their clients on a multitude of dimensions. In account management, it is essential that salespeople develop thick long term bonds with their customers to promote trust and loyalty. If a farmer was given 100 prospects, they would naturally try to develop long term relationships with most of them.
Organizing Your Sales Force into Hunting and Farming
Growing revenue is always a priority in business, so hunters are always needed when the business is small and growing. As the business starts to grow and you see potential for profitable long term relationships with current customers, you will need to add farmers to your mix. The most common mistake I see business make is to under invest in their farmers. This is primarily because by the time you need farmers your sales force is filled with hunters that don’t value farming. Take great care to check your hunters and invest in a farming unit. The type of farming unit you need will depend on several factors: size of client (gross revenue), complexity of client’s business, importance of your products/services to client’s business, complexity of your product/service portfolio, and of course revenue potential. As those criteria grow, there is the opportunity for more investment in an elite farming group. Farming units vary from cheap inside sales reps, to expensive Strategic Account Managers.
The investment in splitting your sales force into hunters (New Business Development) and farmers (Account Management) is large. You will need additional management layers, dedicated sales operations and enablement personnel, and other support roles. You should always run the numbers to make sure that each NBD and AM unit is profitable and can support itself. Sales should always be a revenue center.
Weaknesses of Implementing the Hunter/Farmer Model
One of the things that I have come to believe in my time studying and working with businesses is that every management model has its weaknesses. Splitting up your sales department into hunter and farmer departments is no exception. Here are two problems that I have seen businesses encounter and how to overcome them:
- First, companies think Account Management (farming) is the same as customer service….IT IS NOT. Certainly customer service is a large component of account management, but the primary focus of Account Management is to grow long term revenue……which should be reflected in their incentive plans. I find too often that Account Managers do not work on any form of commission, and therefore don’t seek out new sales opportunities. If you don’t incentivize your farmers to grow the business, you will get a reactive group of folks who don’t grow your most fertile customers. Keep in mind that it costs 8-10 times as much to sell to a new customer than to an existing one, so your farming unit should have a great expense to revenue ratio.
- The strongest objection to the separation of a sales force into hunters (new business development) and farmers (Account Management) is that it makes for an awkward transition for the customer after they have signed on the dotted line. This is a VERY valid point. After all, the customer has purchased from you because they have had a great experience with your hunter and might perceive a transition as a bait and switch. It is important to get your Account Managers involved with sales opportunities as early as the proposal writing process and as late as the final presentations. You should also develop a value proposition for your customer’s transition to the Account Manager during the proposal/presentation process. You need to ask for your new client’s approval to transition to the new Account Manager, and you should only fully transition them when the clients feel comfortable. This part does require a lot of “managing”, but is well worth the price to put your employees in roles that align with their competencies and put your customers in good long term hands.
As always, I would love to hear what you think of the hunter/farmer model, and what your sales force looks like!
Interesting read, and I like the point that some traits that make you good at one thing end up making you bad at the other.
In my experience, hunters are a lot more aggressive and flashier than farmers. They have extreme confidence, and take control of every situation. Farmers are a little more laid back and like to blend in with the crowd. I’ve worked for big and small companies, and I have never seen a small company with good farmers. They are always young and more focused on just being customer service reps
Good analysis. I have found a third type of salespeople, that I call “Gatherers”. This group would be Farmers who don’t even take the time to “plant seeds”, but simple run around picking up the fruits of others’ labor. (If they chase a Hunter around, they could be called “Scavengers”, I guess) Mostly, these are the salespeople who drive margin, and value, out of deals, in order to win them.
Without the costs associated with chasing, or cultivating customers, these folks are able to lower their margins, while relying on the other sales organizations (their competitors) to drive demand, develop solutions, and drive a customer’s vision.
It is also important to note that the compensation model chosen by the employer has a large impact on determining the type of strategy a specific salesperson will adopt, regardless of their own skillset.
Eric,
This is an excellent article summarizing this important distinction and highlighting the fact that certain traits that work for role can work against the person is the other role.
I would phrase the concept of qualifying vs nurturing a little differently. Nurturing is a good description for farmers. However, any good sales person, hunter or farmer, needs to be able to properly qualify an opportunity to insure productive use of their time, so using that term implies that only hunters need to properly qualify. I believe qualification skills are at least as critical for farmers because if they waste their time nurturing an unqualified or un-closable deal they can’t quickly search for another account with a better opportunity.
I would suggest looking at this difference as a short vs long time horizon. With 100 accounts, a hunter needs to work with a short time horizon and quickly qualify which accounts will close soonest so that they can maximize productivity and avoid missing out on a opportunity. Just like a real hunter, they will starve if they don’t catch some game quickly.
By contrast a farmer has very few accounts and therefore must look at them with a much longer time horizon. They need to look for the biggest opportunity in their account even if that opportunity is very immature. Like a real farmer, if the harvest isn’t big, it won’t be worth all of the time and investment.
Bob
I love this article! I
If a company really cares and wishes to retain their good customers, they should build a team of good farmers and seek out more business opportunity from their customers. Good customers will be good reference and increase the credibility of the products or services the company is selling or providing.
However, farmers must also have a strong sense to also ” hunt” for business and to be rewarded appropriately too. They need to be extremly sensitive to the needs of their customers and not to be seen only as a person who is only hungry for new business.
As they already have built strong relationships with customers, they will be more succesful when hunting for new business opportunity. A farmer who is highly trusted by the customer is treated like an employee of the customer. A farmer will have first hand information about plans and developments of the customer , for example – help and involve in drafting an RFP or tender for the customer.
I have seen many job description of Account Managers whereby the role is Hunter.
For smaller companies may not be able to have a 2 teams of people – Business Development and Account Managers. Hence a sales person has to be both a good hunter and farmer.
Jenny
Jenny
My organization has evolved this model over the last several years, and I’ve seen many things work and not work. One important distinction to make as you look at this structure, is what is the type of business that you are in. For example in the world of software, is the business an enterprise software model or a SaaS model. In an enterprise software model the expectation of the farmer is maintenance. In a SaaS model you have to turn this completely over, where for the most part the hunter gets an initial deal that is probably smaller in terms of dollars, and the role of the farmer would be to aggressively drive more business into that new customer. I never did like the term farmer, as I do think of a farmer as more of support person, and in a SaaS model the account manager has to be much more strategic in nature, and be focused on selling, not supporting, which falls to the responsibility of the overall account team. In looking at your first concern in regards to incentives…. What we do is the following, the account managers are commissioned like the hunters, albeit at a lower commission rate, however, only commissioned on the additional dollars brought in. They also receive the bonus on retention rates. However, the bulk of their variable comp is around driving more sales from existing customers. In terms of the transition the customer, we incent the hunter that brought in the deal a small rate for any additional sales in the first 12 months of the initial deal. Therefore, although the account manager takes on responsibility of the account after the deal is sold there is some incentive to have the hunter to stay involved on a very limited basis to ensure a proper transition of the customer, and give the customer the feel that they are not being “abandoned” by the person they purchased from.
Brilliant,
This is a clear understanding of the client base , the sales process and how to maximize reveune.
At one time IBM was known for their sales prowess. They had multiple sales categories and job description/compensation plans. They had true Hunters who had a high percentage of their compensation pegged to commission. They had Account Mangers with their compensation tied to retention and growth, true Farmers. And they had special products sales execs who would Hunt on in the existing accounts, teaming with the Farmers.
Each type had a unique personality. The New Account sales execs had all the characteristics we see in the Hunter: risk takers, not afraid to make a call or knock on a door, laser focused on the deal and their commissions. The Farmers were more customer-focused and long -term thinkers. They planned, and executed their plans with one eye on this quarter and the other on next year. The special products sales execs were a hybrid. Most came from the sales support role, were more technical, and recognized that they were hunting on the farm that was owned by another sales exec, and needed that person’s complete cooperation and support.
I have seen Farmers fail at the New Account Hunting process and Hunters almost destroy an account when handed an account to manage as a Farmer. The lesson that I learned is that no matter how much training and determination, MOST sales execs have a DNA for either Hunting or Farming. Many will be able to cross over for a short time, but will quickly drift if they are not in the right mode.
I have done all three of these sales functions that IBM had; I know that I’m a really good Farmer who likes to hunt, but I am just not great out in the woods by myself hunting for business.
Eric,
Great job at defining hunter v. farmer roles and how the competencies of one type can hinder an individual in the other role.
I also appreciate your point on Account Managers being seen as non-revenue generating. Some of my largest deals over time have come from smaller deals that were nurtured.
All of that being said, many firms can’t afford to have separate hunter and farmer teams. In my career I have had to do both. I figured farming took care of the meat and potatoes. Hunting delivered the gravy every year.
Take Good Care,
John
In my experience the best sales organisations do organise into hunters and farmers and I definitely agree that a smooth transition between the two when a sale has been made is key to ensure that the new customer gtets a happy ‘launch ‘ experience. There is a case for re-engaging hunters in an existing account when trying to penetrate an entirely new part of the organisation but this, inevitably, can lead to compensation issues. I do agree that salespeople are pre-disposed to one of the roles although i have occasionally seen someone able to cover both roles and , of course, understanding both is a key requirement for sales management.
I agree with Paul; in very large accounts when trying to make a sale to a new division or of a totally different offering, it makes sense for the farmer to bring in the hunter who has the skills and time to dedicate to this sale. My advice to all is that you draw up an agreement between the hunter and farmer on what is expected from each, who will run specific parts of the campaign, and how the commission will be shared after the successful sale. Getting this up front will make the whole process run much smoother, and improve the probability for success.
Growing accounts is different that winning new logos in virtually all business models. I think it’s imperative you do this to create repeatable success. Great article too, thanks for sharing with the group!
–Matt
Some of the most succesful sales people I have ever met are the actual hybrid of these 2 roles. They are worth their weight in gold, as they are few and far between in my experience.
As for how to organise a sales force, I agree with Ted and the approach that IBM took to Sales. I worked in a very similar environment at BTGS, and never was it easier to position sales people within accounts, defining roles and responsibilities for the customer, to secure revenue growth whilst maintaining the relationship.
In my experience the best sales organisations do organise into hunters and farmers and I definitely agree that a smooth transition between the two when a sale has been made is key to ensure that the new customer gtets a happy ‘launch ‘ experience. There is a case for re-engaging hunters in an existing account when trying to penetrate an entirely new part of the organisation but this, inevitably, can lead to compensation issues. I do agree that salespeople are pre-disposed to one of the roles although i have occasionally seen someone able to cover both roles and , of course, understanding both is a key requirement for sales management.
great post as usual!