It really is one for the ages, isn’t it?  This old chestnut that has been around along as the notion of “sales” itself.  But, even today, we still too often use arbitrary, subjective, and / or pragmatic criteria to make the judgement call.  In my <not so> humble opinion, too many Australian B2B sales organisations tend to sway to the argument for separation and therefore specialist hunters and farmers as a hallmark feature of the B2B sales process.  Leading <certainly not pretending to be a comprehensive list> criteria “culprits” include …

• Personality type, that mystical, “untrainable X factor” that separates hunters  from farmers … the notion that the “chemistry” of the individual is such that one cannot effectively be good at both
• The case for focus of effort, attention, manageable bandwidth … the notion that it is simply too wide a spectrum of activity and accountability to expect Sales Execs to both farm and hunt effectively
• The perception of seniority and career / succession planning … the notion that for particular B2B sales organisations the perception around skillset, experience, qualifications is such that one or the other – hunters vs farmers – are considered more senior than the other, and remunerated and rewarded accordingly

But in a world where these sorts of sales organisations, especially those in mature and commoditising industries, are finding their sales teams coming under progressive pressure to justify relevance and RoI, these older , traditional type criteria are similarly coming under pressure to justify relevance.  In the next instalment of this weekly post,  I will opine a better decision making process for this critical B2B sales process element.

Something more to read? Continue with: How to develop your B2B sales process with PV (customer potential value) proxy models – and why you MUST! (part 2)