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Hunter vs. Farmer

Dec 2nd, 2009
by mark.
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Many years ago a colleague of mine told me that he thought I was more of a farmer than a hunter, which he said was fine. At the time I didn’t agree because being a hunter sounded a lot more macho, active and plain fun.
With the benefit of hindsight I think he was probably right. The company I was repping for had the first product of its type running on low-cost PCs instead of expensive engineering workstations, so the sales team has spent most of their time in what I spent most of their time in what I would call “rape and pillage mode”. Sales people took orders and then moved on to the next prospect, like a fox in henhouse they had so many targets they didn’t know which way to turn.
When I joined I visited some major accounts who had bought the product a year or two previously and never seen anyone again. Nobody had made sure that the tools were being used properly, nobody had asked if they needed more seats, worst of all no one had even collected any maintenance (then 15% of list price). So I did some pretty good business just fixing up the existing customers, selling them more seats, new tools and making sure the 15% was collected. Of course, I did my fair share of “hunting” as well… but not maximising your business out of existing customers is just plain dumb.
Many sales trainers stress the need to always ask satisfied customers for leads and referrals, but before you do that make sure you are maximising your sales into those existing customers. As a species we moved on from being hunter-gatherers to farmers about 10,000 years ago… there were good reasons for that!
Better to be a farmer or a hunter?

A happy farmer?

Many years ago a colleague of mine told me that he thought I was more of a farmer than a hunter, which he said was fine. At the time I didn’t agree because being a hunter sounded a lot more macho, active and plain fun.

With the benefit of hindsight I think he was probably right. The company I was repping for had the first product of its type running on low-cost PCs instead of expensive engineering workstations, so the sales team had spent most of their time in what I would call “rape and pillage mode”. Sales people took orders and then moved on to the next prospect, like foxes in a henhouse they had so many targets they didn’t know which way to turn.

When I joined I visited some major accounts who had bought the product a year or two previously and had never seen anyone again. Nobody had made sure that the tools were being used properly, nobody had asked if they needed more seats, worst of all no one had even collected any maintenance (then 15% of list price). So I did some pretty good business just fixing up the existing customers, selling them more seats, new tools and making sure the 15% was collected. Of course, I did my fair share of “hunting” as well… but not maximising your business out of existing customers is just plain dumb.

Many sales trainers stress the need to always ask satisfied customers for leads and referrals, but before you do that make sure you are maximising your sales into those existing customers. As a species we moved on from being hunter-gatherers to farmers about 10,000 years ago… there were good reasons for that!

Posted in: sales tips.

What’s in a title?

Dec 2nd, 2009
by mark.
No comments yet
What’s in a title?
For those who may not have noticed my peculiar spelling, I happen to be English and live in England (and yes it is raining). A number of my bosses over the years have been American and when one of them joined the company he asked me what was going on with all of the Business Development Managers in the org chart. What were they and what did they do? To which I replied… “they’re sales guys”. To which he replied (not unreasonably), “well why the hell are they called Business Development Managers?” Good question.
What we have here is a cultural dissonance. In the US with it’s immigrant, enterprise-led culture sales people are seen to represent all that is good about the American Dream. They are self-reliant, entrepreneurial and pretty much get rewarded in direct proportion to how hard they work. Historically in Europe (and particularly the UK) we have things such as the class system and the old-boy network with sales being pretty low in the hierarchy of professions. In fact probably the only lower status professions are journalism and politics. So over here we go out of our way to hide the fact that someone is a sales person. This is done by giving them titles such as business development manager, account executive and commercial manager… anything that doesn’t mention the “s” word.
On a more serious note what does your title matter? I would say that we have to separate out two things here – What your position is within your company and what title do you present to the outside world (particularly customers). Your internal position may be “sales engineer” with a job grade, clear reporting lines in the org chart and relevant pay scale. However, if you are dealing with CxO level contacts at customers it might make sense that your business card says “VP Northern Region”… whatever gives you the credibility to get the job done.
What shall we call him?

What shall we call him?

For those who may not have noticed my peculiar spelling, I happen to be English and live in England (and yes it is raining). A number of my bosses over the years have been American and when one of them joined the company he asked me what was going on with all of the Business Development Managers in the org chart. What were they and what did they do? To which I replied… “they’re sales guys”. To which he replied (not unreasonably), “well why the hell are they called Business Development Managers?” Good question.

What we have here is a cultural dissonance. In the USA with its immigrant, enterprise-led culture sales people are seen to represent all that is good about the American Dream. They are self-reliant, entrepreneurial and pretty much get rewarded in direct proportion to how hard they work. Historically in Europe (and particularly the UK) we have things such as the class system and the old-boy network with sales being pretty low in the hierarchy of professions. In fact probably the only lower status professions are journalism and politics. So over here we go out of our way to hide the fact that someone is a sales person. This is done by giving them titles such as business development manager, account executive and commercial manager… anything that doesn’t mention the “s” word.

On a more serious note what does your title matter? I would say that we have to separate out two things here – What your position is within your company and what title you present to the outside world (particularly customers). Your internal position may be “sales engineer” with a job grade, clear reporting lines in the org chart and relevant pay scale. However, if you are dealing with CxO level contacts at customers it might make sense that your business card says “VP – Northern Region”… whatever gives you the credibility to get the job done.

Posted in: sales culture.

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