How to Change From a Farmer to a Hunter Sales Culture
What do you do if your sales team is staffed with account managers but you need hunters to grow your business?
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How to Change From a Farmer to a Hunter Sales Culture
What do you do if your sales team is staffed with farmers or account managers and you need hunters or closers to grow your business?
We received this question from Eron, a VP of Sales from, Florida. He writes:
We have a culture of sales farmers and we need hunters. What are your thoughts on how to change this?
If you have a culture that rewards the behaviors associated with farming or account management that is exactly what you are going to get. Salespeople tend to repeat behaviors that you reward.
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So, if you want a culture that rewards the behaviors associated with hunting or account acquisition you will have to develop a system that rewards behaviors like prospecting, qualifying, closing and negotiating.
On paper it sounds easy, however, this will mean a top to bottom assessment of sales compensation, non-monetary compensation like awards and trips, activity expectations, quotas, sales process, management structure, training and even your marketing materials and CRM program. You will need to look at your customer base strategically and assess the consequences of shifting resources from account management to account acquisition to your revenue stream. After all, the reason to make the culture change in the first place is to accelerate growth. If you underestimate the value your customers see in your current account management team and experience attrition in your customer base you will sub-optimize revenue growth. With a closer look however, you may find that there are less expensive ways to manage your customer accounts than through a professional sales force.
Changing from a hunter to a farmer culture also requires you to take a close look at your current salespeople, staffing model and sales force structure. While it is tempting to think that current salespeople can just move into hunter positions, study after study has confirmed that the personality and behavior traits that make for good account managers don’t translate to hunters and vice versa. There is also something else that you must consider relative to staffing. The number one reason that organizations fail or stumble with this type of culture change is that they expect their sales professionals to perform both as hunters and farmers. It rarely works. Very few salespeople have the talent to do this.
With this in mind you will need to restructure your sales force to account for both functions. You will need to develop a new hiring profile and interview process for your hunter role. You will also need to recruit sales managers who understand how to lead and develop hunters. Since you are recruiting to a different hiring profile you may need to open up additional sourcing channels.
Unfortunately this cultural shift also means that some of your current salespeople will need to go. But the worst thing you can do is to let people go based on your gut or emotions. Instead, use an assessment tool to better understand the strengths and talents of each member of your current sales force. Then pair that data with actual performance numbers to help you make more informed decisions. You may find that you have talented people who can move right into the hunter role or into other positions in your organization. However, under no circumstance should you delay making moves. When it is time to act, do it swiftly. Nothing kills a cultural shift like indecision and fear.
Finally, you must take into account time, the willingness of the organization to change, and budget. Making a change of this magnitude will take time. However, when it comes to sales all companies are impatient. So it is critical that you establish an agreed upon time table and milestones with your leadership team upfront. Along with this you will need to ensure that your leadership team is on board and willing to support change throughout the entire organization. The demands and needs of a hunter based sales force are much different that of account managers. Your new hunter team will impact every department in your company from IT, to HR, to marketing. These demands will put stains on the entire organization which will cause pushback and discord. I highly recommend hiring a 3rd party consultancy to help you. It is just good business to have outside experts on your team who don’t bring internal biases to the table. (If you need suggestions or help in this area send me an email.) And don’t forget the budget. Making this change will require financial resources. Be sure your leadership team has allocated the funds you need BEFORE you execute your plan. Once you begin the change process you don’t want budgetary issues stalling your efforts. You must move swiftly and decisively towards your end goal.
This is Jeb Blount, the Sales Guy. If you have a sales question please send it to salesguy@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email.
Farmer image courtesy of Shutterstock