{"id":2308,"date":"2012-11-09T00:03:17","date_gmt":"2012-11-09T05:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/?p=2308"},"modified":"2012-11-09T10:59:10","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T15:59:10","slug":"three-trends-are-driving-sales-hunters-to-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/three-trends-are-driving-sales-hunters-to-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Trends Driving Sales Hunters To Extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sales<\/a>Three trends are driving sales hunters to extinction. Sales Leadership is changing, just like every other role. Transparency in today\u2019s social media world changes the sales process. Social transparency uncovers the organizational damage left behind by sales hunters<\/em>. You may know them as heavy hitter<\/em>, sales hotshot<\/em>, sales guru<\/em>, or lone wolf. Yes, Human Resources people are probably watching.<\/em><\/p>\n

The negative fallout does not leave CEOs and COOs unaccountable. C-level executives that tolerate this type of negative sales culture are discovered and revealed through social transparency.<\/p>\n

Economic factors are forcing change in business culture and management style in companies across many industries. The trends parallel shifts in management practices recently outlines in Inc. Magazine<\/a>. The first trend is a change in the sales tool set and increase in complexity of the sales process. The second trend is a change in customer engagement style. And, the third trend is a change toward collaborative team leadership.<\/p>\n

Sales Hunters and Farmers Merging<\/h3>\n

Everyone knows the \u201chunter\u201d and \u201cfarmer\u201d analogy. Go-To-Market Strategies<\/a> of Seattle offers these definitions:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hunter [\u2026] gets their sales energy off of the \u201chunt\u201d for the new opportunity. [\u2026] They are networkers. They are independent. They generate buzz and excitement. And, they are not always good at follow-through and focus.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe Farmer [\u2026] builds and cultivates relationships and opportunities [\u2026]. Farmers [\u2026] turn a customer from good to great by the nature of their relationship and the loyalty they gain from their efforts. They nurture. They collaborate. They are team players. [\u2026].\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Under pressure, Farmers typically rely on the collaborative strength created by working with others. Hunters, when under pressure, become the kind of people neither customers nor coworkers want to be around. The poor economy of late has driven many Hunters to be toxic and destructive within organizations as they struggle to win big deals that are more scarce.<\/p>\n

Sales Tools And Process<\/h3>\n

Social Media and technology has changed the entire sales tool set. The entire lead generation, prospecting and qualification capability provided by social media platforms like LinkedIn have complicated and ignited the process. Never before have customers known so much about the people and companies selling to them, and sales people about their customers.<\/p>\n

Marketing materials have become digital. Formerly, the \u201csales bag,<\/em>\u201d would have a collection of brochures, technical specifications, a logo pen or other branded gift and many such \u201cleave behinds<\/em>.\u201d Field marketing teams (and promotions budgets) were whiplashed by demands to have new things to leave behind for every customer visit. The web now provides everything, up to date and fast. Tim Handorf writes \u201cSales professionals are using the iPad while in front of their customers to have a conversation\u201d\u201cThe New iPad is the New Sales Bag<\/a>\u201d on the BigMachines blog. Marketers have introduced interactive online pre-sales experiences to initiate the sales process exceeding the effectiveness of any leave-behind <\/em>item.<\/p>\n

Companies today cannot survive without a customer relationship management system, or CRM, to support sales processes. The transition from prospect-to-customer involves so many people that it must have a CRM to measure success and learn from lost sales. The days of a sales person \u201cowning a rolodex of customers\u201d are over. Companies consider their CRM, sales process, and customer database a critical asset owned by the corporation.<\/p>\n

Customer Engagement<\/h3>\n

Customers do not make a single transaction, consume a product, and move on. Companies realize that customers are to be engaged, nurtured, and served for the long-run. Emmet C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy in their book \u201cLeading on the Edge of Chaos<\/a>\u201d noted that acquiring new customers costs as much as five times more than satisfying and retaining current customers. April Dunford in RocketWatcher<\/a>, says there are 5 customer retention tactics including:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Regular communication<\/strong>with customized content<\/li>\n
  2. Customer service<\/strong>that delights beyond expectation<\/li>\n
  3. Listen<\/strong>(and then talk) in order to have an interactive conversation<\/li>\n
  4. Loyalty programs<\/strong>that deliver rewards for participation<\/li>\n
  5. Community<\/strong> among and between customers in a market ecosystem<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We learned from the definition of Hunter and Farmer that Hunters often fail to deliver after the close, and also fail to maintain long-term relationships with a customer after the close. The five tactics above are impossible to deliver as an individual. Customer engagement requires the \u201chunter\u201d to evolve and learn to work together and serve the needs of a cross-functional team.<\/p>\n

    Collaborative Leadership<\/h3>\n

    The old Hunter model is one of a lone-wolf. Like a big game hunter, he stalked and landed his deal like an unsuspecting game animal, collected his trophy and reward. The hunter then moves on to the next prey only to let someone else perform the laborious task to satisfy the promises made to the customer. Operating in isolation, expectations often are missed.<\/p>\n

    Today, the Hunter and Farmer approaches are merging. Farmers have always been team players, and understood the bigger business ecosystem and the effort required to deliver. In the current environment, Hunters either become extinct, or evolve to collaboratively participate with Farmers. Together they collectively win larger and more valuable accounts. Together they set and meet customer expectations. This is the future. As products become more complex, in particular technology products, it takes a team. Working together and building customer confidence accelerates the approval process required expenditures.<\/p>\n

    Case Study<\/h3>\n

    Recently, I watched as one company\u2019s CEO put faith in a heavy-hitter sales guru. This person did not deliver a single sale over many quarters. This is failure by most measures and should have been corrected in the second or third quarter.<\/p>\n

    The recruiter referred to the guy as a \u201cwalking paycheck\u201d that he could place anywhere. Good looking, executive suite presence and a history of sales leadership positions easily garnered a quarter-million-dollar base salary from the unsuspecting CEO. The long-term failure can be traced back to three factors that should have been discovered before hiring. First, the CEO was enamored with the persona. Second, references were not checked. Finally, basic technical competency was not measured to ensure that this person could understand the complexity of the product he would be selling.<\/p>\n

    Many quarters after hiring the big game hunter, his team had quit, marketing had been decimated, and engineering had been demoralized. While the lone wolf complained that he needed a larger sales team, or blamed weakness in the product, the development team, the infrastructure, the marketing, the tradeshows, the economy, and so on, others were able to close sales by working with the customer.<\/p>\n

    The damage the Hunter inflicted affected many areas of the company. Productivity of others around him declined dramatically. Many good employees quit over conflicts that the CEO didn\u2019t address. Financially, revenues did not meet the expectations. Other sales people closing deals were demoralized as they saw a big gap in compensation-to-results ratios while the guru was for selling nothing. Competitors closed a two year innovation lead while the CEO refused to recognize the issue, and take action. This company won\u2019t be around long.<\/p>\n

    Expert\u2019s Indicators<\/h3>\n

    David K. Williams and Mary Michelle Scott on the HBR Blog Network wrote a piece called Four Secrets to Selling More<\/a>. Their number one secret is, \u201cPass on hiring hotshot sales gurus<\/strong>.\u201d They point out that these types of hunters resist bringing in others on the team to win a deal, and are focused on their own commission, instead of the good of the company. CEOs and COOs must be cautious about having lone wolves on the sales team resulting in detriment to the company \u2013 and their own leadership career. When management holds these gurus up as the example to other hard working sales executives, it is demotivating, demoralizing and ultimately sales productivity will decline overall. And, if they leave, the company is left with a potential revenue and customer service gap to deal with that a well tuned team otherwise could absorb.<\/p>\n

    Paul Speigelman in the Culture Gap column of Inc. Magazine wrote about 10 Leadership Practices to Stop Today<\/a>. He wrote that old-school practices have been replaced by new-school practices. After reading the list, it\u2019s clear that the implication is that Management and Executives are behind \u2013 the new school practices have been around a while. In his list, #5 points to the balance sheet performance being a function of people working together to drive the business and generate customer loyalty. And #10 indicates that old-school incentives are replaced by rewards based on being valued by the organization. These two alone further drives the high-paid (high cost and high maintenance) sales superstar to evolve as a team player, or become extinct.<\/p>\n

    To Ponder<\/h3>\n

    At a minimum, hunters are evolving into collaborative hunters working with Farmers in the mutual interests of both their company,and the customer. This is not unlike how prehistoric man worked together to hunt herds of roaming game. No longer can the Big Game Hunter successfully deliver everything the company needs with one rifle, alone in the field. The collaborative sales team of Farmers and evolved Hunters will always win and out-produce the lone wolf Hunter.The customer will feel the rich experience and support that comes from an engaging team.<\/p>\n

    In today\u2019s new business environment, the concept of providing exceptional service levels to\u00a0 customers throughout the customer experience lifecycle requires a team focused on Farming.<\/p>\n

    Image credit: Tambako the Jaguar<\/a> via photopin<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    <\/a>Three trends are driving sales hunters to extinction. Sales Leadership is changing, just like every other role. Transparency in today\u2019s social media world changes the sales process. Social transparency uncovers the organizational damage left behind by sales hunters. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"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":[98,63,59,7,39,8,100],"tags":[93,60,61,19],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collaboration","category-customer-user-experience","category-definitions","category-organization","category-social-media","category-strategy","category-transparency","tag-complexity-into-simplicity","tag-ethics-values","tag-responsibility-accountability","tag-revenue-pursuit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/LoneWolfFeaturedImage.png?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p25ukk-Be","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steinvox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}