Maybe that title isn’t the best turn of phrase.\u00a0 One effect we see often is alleged hunters in sales positions loaded with daily rejection.\u00a0 I’m not talking about the long-term, relationship-based sale that ends up with a soft no.\u00a0 I’m talking along the lines of a cold call-driven, commoditized market.\u00a0 These types of markets have been known to break good hunters.<\/p>\n
The break occurs once the salesperson acquires a handful of decent accounts.\u00a0 The salesperson begins to morph into a farmer with the approach of gaining more business from those few accounts.<\/p>\n
My experience has been that these salespeople get worn down from the rejection of constantly churning through cold leads.\u00a0 The problem is exasperated when their value proposition is fairly commoditized.\u00a0 If this describes your current situation, I strongly encourage you to keep close watch on your hunters.<\/p>\n
There are some steps you can take to insulate your team from squatting:<\/p>\n
Compensation<\/strong> Customer Support<\/strong> Resources<\/strong> Listen<\/strong> One thing to be clear – farmers can make you a lot of money, nurture long-term customers and smooth out your revenue stream.\u00a0 However, their skill set is more prevalent in the market so they are not valued as highly.\u00a0 Sales managers need to keep hunters hunting.\u00a0 Stay involved in their activities and ensure that they do not settle down into a handful of large accounts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Maybe that title isn’t the best turn of phrase.\u00a0 One effect we see often is alleged hunters in sales positions loaded with daily rejection.\u00a0 I’m not talking about the long-term, relationship-based sale that ends up with a soft no.\u00a0 I’m talking along the lines of a cold call-driven, commoditized market.\u00a0 These types of markets have been known to break good hunters. The break occurs once the salesperson acquires a handful of decent accounts.\u00a0 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… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[665,666,1750],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-pp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOne 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.\u00a0 Salespeople will go to the quickest dollar in this instance and that likely isn’t from new customers.<\/p>\n
\nHunters are best used finding new customers.\u00a0 If you bog them down with support activities, you will put them in a conflicted state.\u00a0 They may leave, they may offer poor support or they may start squatting on these activities.\u00a0 Whatever the outcome, it typically isn’t positive.\u00a0 If they are properly compensated, these activities will make them irascible.<\/p>\n
\nHere’s a dirty, little secret – many sales managers cannot do what hunters do.\u00a0 That is fine since sales managers aren’t normally asked to cold call.\u00a0 But they can provide some support to the hunter.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
\nA majority of hunters are ego-driven so it is always a good approach to meet with them and ask for their opinion.\u00a0 What are they seeing in the market?\u00a0 What tools would help them close more deals?\u00a0 Are there any internal procedures that could be improved?\u00a0 Efficiency is a hallmark of strong hunters and they are sensitive to time-wasting activities.\u00a0 Granted, some activities are needed in spite of the hunter’s complaints.\u00a0 But have an open mind to other areas that could be streamlined.<\/p>\n