Do You Hunt For New Sales Opportunities . . .
Or Are You Just Milling Around In The Jungle?

To be successful in today's economy, you need both Hunters and Farmers on your sales team, or your firm will ultimately fail.

The Hunter sales force pursues and breaks new business on a continuing basis. They do not wait. The Farmer sales force maintains the relationship and grows the opportunity.

Companies with Farmers cannot survive without Hunters.  To survive and grow your top line revenue, you must continually seek new prospects.

Yet, many firms still do not use the Hunter sales approach to increase corporate revenue. Because of the ebb and flow of past economic conditions, many firms created a false sense of security and believe what was, will someday be again.

To succeed in this market space, you can no longer expect your existing client base to grow your business at a 10% to 20% clip each year.

Because of this fallacy, some firms continue to overlook the need for the Hunter sales model and instead have a team of Farmers who are held accountable for all corporate revenue. Operating as a silo sales group, they are usually paid and/or trained incorrectly and are frustrated for lack of success.

Yet, the relationship between Hunter and Farmer salespeople is symbiotic.

They need each other.

Without new accounts being broken by Hunters, the same old accounts are continually turned over by Farmers and rolled in the sales forecast, leaving minimal opportunities for the sales team to hit their quota. The end result is frustration for salespeople.

So, if you are a CEO sitting in your office wondering why your sales team is not hitting their numbers, maybe it is because your sales team consists only of Farmers and your expectations are unrealistic.

Or maybe you have taken Farmer salespeople who you believe to be "senior salespeople" and put them in Hunter roles, without having invested in their training to help them become outbound, quota eating Hunters.

To grow your firm, you need to invest in your sales team - teach them how to hunt, and pay them more money to find targets of opportunities.

Take The Hunter Sales Model Test!

The following Hunter Sales Model Test will determine the status of your firm's current sales team:

1. Are your salespeople paid the same commissions for new business as business from existing accounts?
   
   __Yes __No
2. Does your sales team cold call at least fifteen new accounts every day ?
   
   __Yes __No
3. Does your marketing department supply ten new qualified leads each month to each sales rep?
   
   __Yes __No
4. Is your sales team having a difficult time increasing sales from your existing clients?
   
   __Yes __No
5. Are your sales quotas the same for revenue generated from new business as they are from existing business?
   
   __Yes __No

Answers:

1) No
2) Yes
3) Yes
4) No
5) No

Scoring: For each correct answer, give yourself 20 points. If your score is below 80%, more than likely, you have a Farmer sales model and your firm is currently not growing its top line revenue as much as it could.

Hunt now, or be eaten later!™

 By Paul R. DiModica - CEO, Value Forward Network

Editor: Suzie DeBusk
President
CxO Value Partners, Inc.
321-394-3377

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