Hunters, gatherers, or Farmers? Which is most effective?

Social Selling is not like hunting

I’ve heard it a thousand times, “if we only had 10 more sales people like him or her!”.
Funny thing, if you did your sales team would be totally dysfunctional and perhaps even outdated.

There’s a real balance to be struck within your organization for all personality types. This is absolutely true of your sales team. In fact, what worked just a few short years ago has radically changed and no longer works.
It used to be you want your aggressive hunters out in the field bringing in the big deals by whatever means necessary as long as they got it done. Then it was up to the team to support and develop the customer to their maximum potential. So, you truly had “Hunters” and “Farmers”, but you likely did not have gatherers yet, more on this later.

Traditional sales methods

Hunters relied on amazing cold calling & networking skills along with the ability to talk eskimos into new ice makers. This, while farmers were able to develop close knit relationships with the key contact within the customers organization.
Problem is that most of the methods that hunters traditionally used are simply no longer effective. Activities like trade shows, networking events, cold calling, even a friendly game of golf, just don’t get the results they used to. In fact, it’s too the point that the cost of these activities now outweigh the results, leaving many organizations wondering what to do now?
This is where more modern social selling and social branding become options for every company wanting to develop new customers.

Digital Transformation creates new paths for sales

The most common answer we hear is they should hire more hunters! This is the wrong approach as adding more of something that is already losing it's effectiveness only amplifies the problem.
The days of outside hunter who only shows up with a carcass strapped over the hood of the car, are over. Good riddance. He or she was a problem at the Christmas party anyway…
Buyers have changed, customers have changed, but sales people have not.
Now to be successful it’s not a rolodex you need it’s 5000+ contacts on LinkedIn with another 5000 on twitter and likewise per Facebook and Instagram.
All our key contacts and customers are now online, either directly or indirectly through “changemakers”.

Modern buying process

Today’s hunters are likely in the office 80% of the time and closing most deals as such. This does not mean they don’t go out and meet customers, it simply means they can be much more efficient and cost effective about it.
Today’s hunters are also gatherers, only instead of gathering nuts, they are gathering connections to make their networks bigger and more powerful.
Farmers are also needed, and they can work much the same way but now using social channels to keep in touch with customers. This in "real time" while they penetrate their accounts much further than they ever could before. Many contacts can now be developed instead of just one or two…
Your sales team needs to be balanced. What is the best balance for your company, that’s where having a social sales strategy and plan comes in.
Today’s hunters don’t look anything like yesterdays and that’s a good thing!
What’s more important, hunters or farmers?
Is it the person who opens the account or is it the team that expands and keeps it?
Your call, but either way they will all get extraordinary results by working as a team on the online world leveraging brand advocacy and social selling

Social Sales Training provided by Social Sales Experts will allow your organization to boldly move forward. 
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