Maybe that title isn’t the best turn of phrase.  One effect we see often is alleged hunters in sales positions loaded with daily rejection.  I’m not talking about the long-term, relationship-based sale that ends up with a soft no.  I’m talking along the lines of a cold call-driven, commoditized market.  These types of markets have been known to break good hunters.

The break occurs once the salesperson acquires a handful of decent accounts.  The salesperson begins to morph into a farmer with the approach of gaining more business from those few accounts.

My experience has been that these salespeople get worn down from the rejection of constantly churning through cold leads.  The problem is exasperated when their value proposition is fairly commoditized.  If this describes your current situation, I strongly encourage you to keep close watch on your hunters.

There are some steps you can take to insulate your team from squatting:

Compensation
One dollar of new business from a new customer should not be compensated at the same rate as one dollar of new business from an existing customer.  Salespeople will go to the quickest dollar in this instance and that likely isn’t from new customers.

Customer Support
Hunters are best used finding new customers.  If you bog them down with support activities, you will put them in a conflicted state.  They may leave, they may offer poor support or they may start squatting on these activities.  Whatever the outcome, it typically isn’t positive.  If they are properly compensated, these activities will make them irascible.

Resources
Here’s a dirty, little secret – many sales managers cannot do what hunters do.  That is fine since sales managers aren’t normally asked to cold call.  But they can provide some support to the hunter.  Updated productivity tools, new marketing campaigns, short-term monetary bonuses…these are all ways a manager can relieve some of the stress of new business development.

Listen
A majority of hunters are ego-driven so it is always a good approach to meet with them and ask for their opinion.  What are they seeing in the market?  What tools would help them close more deals?  Are there any internal procedures that could be improved?  Efficiency is a hallmark of strong hunters and they are sensitive to time-wasting activities.  Granted, some activities are needed in spite of the hunter’s complaints.  But have an open mind to other areas that could be streamlined.

One thing to be clear – farmers can make you a lot of money, nurture long-term customers and smooth out your revenue stream.  However, their skill set is more prevalent in the market so they are not valued as highly.  Sales managers need to keep hunters hunting.  Stay involved in their activities and ensure that they do not settle down into a handful of large accounts.

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Sometimes the best advice is simply stated which is true of this Inc.com post titled The Fallacy of an Open-Door Policy.  This topic catches my attention in that some of the worst managers I worked for claimed profusely that they had an open-door policy.  They stated it, but we sales reps all knew it was a ruse.

I think the author strikes a perfect chord with this:

You need to create an environment where people can speak up in any venue. I’ve had some of my most important communications with employees driving in the car, standing in the lunchroom, or walking through the shop floor.

How true…and difficult to put in practice for some managers.

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