Where Have All The Sales Hunters Gone?
By Mark Roberts
As I work with sales leaders and CEO’s common questions and comments we hear are: “Where have all the hunters gone? We need more sales hunters. We need hunters to find and close new business at current and new accounts. We need more organic sales growth…” When we review an entire sales team’s skills, effectiveness and opportunities for growth there is often an obvious shortfall in the ratio of sales hunters to farmers in most sales teams’ todays. Many teams today are relying on an outdated strategy of relying on relationships alone to grow sales. However, without identifying and strategically recruiting sales hunters these sales teams often fail to hit their team sales KPI’s year after year. Why should you add more hunters to your sales team? How do you identify current salespeople who can become hunters? That is what we will discuss in this article.
In a Harvard article: Selling is not about relationships the author shared salespeople fall into one of five categories and defined the relationship builder role:
“Relationship builders focus on developing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization. They are generous with their time, strive to meet customers’ every need, and work hard to resolve tensions in the commercial relationship.”
When I refer to relationship selling, I mean the main sales behavior focus placed on building a relationship with your buyer and others in their organization over time. Could the relationship selling model that has served as a foundation of most sales training be failing us today?
Here are some alarming statistics:
● From Biznology, 82 percent of decision-makers think that sales reps are unprepared for their engagement.
● Furthermore－according to Gallop－68 percent of customers are lost because of indifference or perceived apathy, not because of mistakes.
● Only 46 percent of customers said vendors deliver on what was promised.
● In 2019 more salespeople failed to achieve quota that hit it. – Salesforce
Additionally, relationship selling alone just plain doesn’t work for many businesses.
A salesperson’s time is valuable, so unless it is a long-term sale or a huge complex opportunity, relationship selling is expensive to maintain. It also doesn’t work with every business model, so if you sell a product that is only purchased once, relationship selling isn’t an excellent strategy to use.
For years we were taught: “People buy from people they like.”
We have taught relationship building skills and we should not be surprised that many sales organizations rely on relationship builders alone to grow their sales.
Relationship building skills are still very valuable, but they must not be the only skills your salespeople have today to strategically drive sales growth.
What I am discussing is the belief that all salespeople have to do is build a relationship, a friendship with their buyer so over time and they will win more business. This is a flawed strategy today, and we need more sales hunters.
For decades, most companies have placed their time, effort, and energy on recruiting and developing farmers. That’s right, you’ve “bet the farm” on the sales profile which is least likely to prospect and close new business. Farmers have their place on your team and can add great value if they are in the right role. They are very likeable and build relationships through service but statistically most do not drive the organic sales growth organizations need today like a sales hunter profile.
The most important question: Who will close the sale?
According to the Harvard Business Review, the biggest driver of customer loyalty (53 percent) is the sales experience if we define it as a function of “how you sell rather than what you sell.” Prospects and clients reward suppliers who “offer unique and valuable perspectives and educate them on new trends, issues, and outcomes.”
So, let’s change what we were taught years ago to: “People buy from people they…trust to drive the most value.”
Therefor we need to clearly define, find and develop more sales hunters to achieve our sales growth objectives today.
In my opinion, the critical skill to providing an excellent sales experience is the salesperson’s ability to ask a lot of good, tough, timely questions along with the ability to push back and challenge prospects’ assumptions and decisions. Hunters not only know your product and applications but also clearly understand their market and the business financial outcomes of your products and solutions. They have meaningful business conversations based on financial outcomes- not the need to be liked.
A sales hunter is constantly looking for problems to solve for customers and are not afraid to have uncomfortable conversations new accounts. To researchers, this ability may have simply appeared to be industry intel and perspective but make no mistake exceptional hunter salespeople know exactly what they are doing with their questions. The skill sales hunters have mastered is asking the tough questions to drive the maximum impact for their customers. Top hunter salespeople need to be respected as trusted advisors and do not have a high need to be liked by their accounts. They do not fear rejection. They hope being liked and building a relationship is an outcome of providing value for their customers, but it is not a deep need inside the DNA of a sales hunter.
Most sales organizations need more sales hunters!
From my observations assessing sales teams globally we have enough farmers. Farmers add great value managing key accounts and giving the key customers value. They manage product portfolios and lead cross functional business unit projects to give the customer the best overall experience. They identify ways to add value to the key accounts’ bottom line and have a strong relationship matrix they have strategically built over time in their accounts across many job functions and many management levels.
Sales hunters are constantly looking for new business opportunities in current as well as targeted strategic new accounts and markets. They are hunting as the name implies for profitable new opportunities.
These hunter salespeople have common sales skills and competencies like:
· They are comfortable talking about money
· They don’t need to be liked but seek to be respected through adding value in each interaction
· They have strong business acumen
· They ask great discovery questions that help them, and the buyer discover the root of their problems to be solved
· They take a data driven approach to driving value for their customers
· They have Grit
· They are rejection proof
· They sell based on value to the customers’ bottom line
· They prospect continuously
· They have a strong sales process and use the sales process strategically
· High time management skills
· Continuous learners seeking the best way to drive the maximum results in the shortest period of time
· They think and behave like entrepreneurs focused strategically on driving the maximum ROI for each of the sales behaviors they execute
If you need more hunters, how do you identify current sales team members who have these traits?
How do we recruit hunter salespeople from outside your organization?
The answer to both of these questions is: through predictive sales effectiveness assessments and pre-hire assessments. Leveraging the power of these instruments you will identify salespeople with sales hunter DNA characteristics and with pre-hire sales assessments you can target hunters in your recruiting efforts.
By evaluating salespeople based on their sales DNA, a combination of sales-specific skills, strengths – their beliefs and motivations you can identify the very best hunter salespeople.
Because prospects are more knowledgeable (due to the internet), increasingly skeptical, and empirically proven to contact salespeople much later in their buying process, hiring managers must identify a salesperson’s DNA and skill gaps very early in the recruiting process.
Sales DNA, competencies, and grit are not easy to spot during an interview; long-established sales organizations and startups new to building sales teams struggle to find talent. Utilizing an assessment tool allows hiring managers to measure the specific skills and behaviors required by your unique sales roles. Competencies tied directly to each sales role can be measured using a predictive assessment that can anticipate sales success related directly to these situations.
If you are looking for proof that assessments work-here it is:
“75 percent of the candidates that aren’t recommended via our assessment but hired regardless, fail in less than six months. However, 92 percent of the candidates that are recommended and hired rise to the top 50 percent of the sales force within 12 months.”
The key is knowing what kind of salespeople you need by role. You can look internally and recruit externally based on the sales role and competencies required to perform that role effectively. If you want to hire sales hunters, then use a sales assessment tool that assesses sales hunting competencies.
The good news is if your sales team is like most, you have salespeople on your team today that could become the hunters you need today and tomorrow to achieve your strategic sales growth objectives. If you assess your current team and find you lack the bench strength in hunting skills, there is still hope. Working with your HR partners you can develop pre-hire sales assessments that identifies and measures hunting characteristics your top sales hunting performers. Once you find these candidates with the right sales DNA for the sales hunting role you can train and equip them with the right sales process and tools to hunt and close the new business your team desires.
As our markets evolve, we need to ensure we leverage technology and make sure sales roles are populated with team members who have the right sales skills, beliefs and motivations to be successful in their roles. A strong predictive sales assessment tool is critical to finding and recruiting more hunters in the years to come to drive organic sales growth.
How about your sales team?
Do you have more famers than hunters?
Do you need more sales hunters to achieve your strategic sales growth objectives?
Does your organization use a sales skills assessment tool to align the right candidates for the right roles?
If you do not use sales effectiveness assessments what tools do you use to find and develop sales hunters?
How does your organization develop sales hunters?
Can a farmer become a hunter?
We keep hearing: “where have all the hunters gone?” The good news is they are probably on your team today waiting to be identified and trained and they are available in the marketplace if you have an assessment tool to identify them based on hunting skills beliefs and motivations. Build a sales hunting capability in your sales organization to meet and exceed your sales team’s objectives.
Would you like to find your hunters or those who could be hunters?
Let’s chat
