The Critical Role of Sales Farmer
As sales organizations continue to adapt to new challenges what we often see is common sales roles emerge.
We have the Hunter who as the name implies is focused on new business, acquiring new clients to serve and increase your market share position.
We experienced a new role emerge, the fisherman, as we shared in a recent issue of Soar to Success. The fisherman is in direct responses to organizations investing heavily in digital marketing and customer engagement. Their primary role is to help “reel in” opportunities that nibble on marketing content and help guide them through the sales process and ultimately land them as a customer.
A role that seldom receives the praise deserved, given its critical role, is the famer.
In this article we will discuss the sales farmer role, the skills required to be a successful farmer and why sales organizations need hunters, fishermen and farmers today.
Farmers as the role implies are not out actively hunting for net new clients but they are constantly planting new seeds of opportunity at existing customers. They nurture and grow their current customers and continuously explore opportunities to win a greater share of wallet in existing accounts.
What skills are required today to be a successful sales farmer?
Data Analytics – Farmers today are data driven and leverage customer data to drive actionable insights for their clients. What products and services have seen a sales increase? What products and services have seen a decrease…and why? What products do other customers similar to this account buy that this customer has not bought?
Consultative Selling Skills – Farmers need to have the ability to ask great discovery questions that create commercial conversations that lead to new revenue. In addition to asking great questions they must be skilled in active listening. The difficulty most salespeople have is they listen to reply and not to learn. Farmers listen to learn and this gives them the ability to make suggestions their customers want to apply.
Business Acumen – Farmers must have the ability to speak with their customers in the language of business. They must have a clear understanding of their customers business and how their customer makes money. When farmers present new opportunities they must connect the dots between what they are selling and how it impacts their customers net income.
Strong Relationship Building Skills – Farmers have the ability to build strategic business relationships with their buyers and also all the sale influencers in their clients
Comfort Discussing Money – Farmers must have a comfort discussing money and as the opportunity size increases not have the drive to discount. Strong farmers create win-win business proposals based on value and not price.
If your sales team wants to make sure you have your hunters, farmers and fishermen in the right roles with the right skills let’s schedule a call.
