Why Hunt When You Can Farm

Many of you are familiar with the saying that, in sales, there are hunters and there are farmers. Hunters are considered the real salespeople. These are client acquisition specialists. They land new logos—new clients that aren’t already doing business with the firm. They win clients away from other providers. This is the hard work of studying the market and your competitors and knowing how buyers make decisions; what motivates their decisions. What kinds of pressures they are responding to. These salespeople wake up trying to get a bead on opportunities. Going where the firm has not gone before. So, hunters get all the glory.

But truth be told, farmers make all the money. Why is that? It’s because the easiest pickings are in your own backyard. You already have a relationship and reputation with the client. You have a seat at the table. There are a bunch of hunters on the outside trying to convince your client to let them in the room. But as the incumbent, you have a great deal of influence over whether these interlopers gain entry.

The Key to Farming

Farming is about studying and knowing your clients and delivering exceptional service to them. If you’re a great farmer, you know what your clients have done recently; you also know what they are considering. You have more interest in what your clients’ competitors are doing than you have in what your own competitors are doing because you realize that helping your clients fend off their competition also fends off your competition. That’s how you beat your competitors. The hunters can’t get your clients business because you’re so entrenched in everything your clients are doing. You’re considered a member of the team, a trusted advisor.

Why Hunting Is So Difficult

Be a proud farmer. Hunting is such hard work. Think about game hunting. You’re out chasing deer or wild boar. That prey is trying to get away, right. The hunter has to try to out-fox the prey. That’s why killing one is so exhilarating. You feel as if you’ve won some sort of chess match. When you think back to all that hard work that went into catching your prey, you may not even want to share any of that good meat with the team. You want to keep it all in your personal deep freezer. Let them go out there and hunt their own. I suspect that that is where the phrase “Eat what you kill” came from, or at least it explains the cliché.

Try not to get distracted by the potential thrill of the hunt. Doesn’t it make much more sense to farm? Crops aren’t a moving target. They are just sitting in the garden waiting to be picked. Your client base is low hanging fruit. They are your source of what I call the 3 Rs of Client Development: Renewals, Referrals, and References. In client development, your focus should be on how to get your clients to renew your contracts on a non-competitive basis, how to motivate your clients to refer other clients to you, how to get your clients to sell for you by serving as your references, and how to spot opportunities to do new work with existing clients.

Smart prospectors only hunt when they have to (e.g., when there’s no existing client base (such as for a startup) or when rolling out a new offering). The rest of the time, let Tarzan conquer the jungle while you casually walk into your backyard and reap a nice crop of healthy produce. Heck, all that meat is no good for you anyway.