Developing a Hunter Mentality in your Inside Sales Team
There are two predominant types of sales reps, hunters and farmers. Whether you have a lead qualification team, an inside sales team, or an outside field team, you need to foster a hunter mentality in your Reps. Though farmers are very important to nurturing customers and handling inbound inquiries, focusing your efforts on farming alone can be a road to failure. Fostering a team of hunters will fill your pipeline and expand your revenue attainment.
Hunters focus on:
- New opportunities, new accounts
- Outbound Prospecting
Farmers focus on:
- Existing customers, nurturing accounts
- Inbound Leads, follow up
Find out if your Reps are hunters or farmers by having them take the assessment at: http://chally.com/sp/hunter-farmer-test.html
Hunter traits can be developed through intense training, including:
- Role plays
- Live monitoring
- Strategy sessions
- Consistent outbound activities
What to look for in Hunters
- Reps that get their sales energy off of the “hunt” for the new opportunities
- Reps that are consultative, who find and assess opportunities and match them to solutions within your offering that meet the specific needs
- Reps that are independent
- Reps that can generate buzz and excitement around your offering – they are product evangelists
Written by: Kristina McMillan, Sr. Project Manager, SalesRamp
What a great summary – to position hunters with outbound and farmers with inbound – where both are needed.
Hunters need people to skin the kill and cook it.
Everyone needs to get a buzz and those who can generate it will be leaders in their tribe.