There are a million different ways to make a sale, but all of them fall into one of three categories: Sales you hunt, sales you farm, or sales you trap.
The key to success is to figure out which sales strategy fits your reps best; and then find ways to put them in positions to succeed. So that’s what we’re going to talk about in this article! Keep reading to learn about Hunter vs Farmer vs Trapper sales personas and how you can get the people who fall into these three categories to work together.
Sales Development Representative; Business Development Representative; Account Executive; etc.
Account Manager; Account Representative; Client Success Manager; etc.
Sales Associate; Director of Marketing; Marketing Manager; etc.
Potential weakness
Spending too much time with unqualified leads; high chance of turnover
May not do well in high-paced/small business environments; cannot perform outbound sales
Overly dependant on marketing team and assets; not as focused on sales
Motivation
Competition
Stability
Strategy
What is a hunter sales persona?
As their name suggests, hunters in sales go out and hunt for prospects, then work their magic to turn said prospects into sales. These salespeople are highly motivated (usually by commissions) and don’t mind working independently. In fact, most of them prefer it that way.
Hunters in sales have the ability to quickly earn prospects’ trust and close deals at a consistent clip. But they generally don’t excel at building long-term relationships with customers.
How to spot the hunter sales persona:
Tend to be more extraverted than the other types
In the interview, they’ll likely talk about their past sales performance in relation to acquiring new leads, closing deals, and quotas
Most likely among the types to proactively follow up after the job interview
Tends to handle rejection well
Motivated by commission/performance-based compensation
Hunters come in with high energy and motivation to succeed. As a manager to a sales hunter, it’s best to let them work independently to allow their natural talents to shine.
The best way to motivate hunters is to appeal to their ambition and drive to compete, earn, and succeed. Drivers such as sales quotas that stretch their abilities, healthy competition with other hunters, or performance-based compensation will keep this type on their toes.
Note that the sales hunter is constantly striving for more in their career. If they feel like they’ve hit a growth ceiling or their career is stagnating, they’re the most likely type to move to another company for better opportunities. To encourage retention, you need to keep the sales hunter challenged and motivated in their position.
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Hunter and farmer in sales are the complete opposites. Sales farmers don’t enjoy prospecting and negotiation duties like hunters do. They’d rather spend their time nurturing existing customer relationships. The goal? Increase customer loyalty and retention, while identifying potential upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
Professionals that fall into the sales farmer persona category really care about customer success and relish the opportunity to help customers realize the full value of their company’s products.
How to spot the farmer sales persona:
Tend to be more reserved than hunters
Focused on relationships over numbers
When interviewing, they’re more likely to highlight the relationships they’ve built in their career over sales quotas and other numbers
Motivated by stability
Typical duties:
Onboarding new customers
Convincing customers to renew their contracts
Teaching customers about product usage
Updating customers on new features
Potential job titles:
Account Manager
Account Representative
Customer Service Representative
Customer Success Associate
Client Success Manager, etc.
Managing the sales farmer
To motivate your farmer sales persona, let them be responsible for relationships that contribute to the company’s long-term success. They can work synergistically with the hunter sales type. When the hunter sales persona has acquired a new customer, let the farmer take over to help the new client maximize their investment.
The farmer sales persona is motivated by collaboration and teamwork. It’s important to allow them an open line of communication with your support team and access to vital support resources to help them in making the most of their relationship-building abilities.
What is a trapper sales persona?
Finally, we have trappers. These individuals have a deep understanding of their target audience and work to meet potential customers where they are.
In other words, trappers use inbound marketing techniques to bring buyers to them.
They may write blog posts using SEO best practices. They might shoot videos and upload them to YouTube. And they definitely participate in social selling, which means an understanding of LinkedIn, Facebook, and similar networks is a must.
Trappers also excel at gathering social proof, such as testimonials and case studies, so that they can use these pieces of content to close more deals.
How to spot the trapper sales persona:
Tend to have an above-average knowledge and interest in marketing, if not outright professional marketing experience
Focused on closing (similar to hunters) but with a focus on inbound over outbound
With their understanding of human psychology and the entire customer journey, it makes sense to encourage a close relationship between your trapper and your company’s marketing team.
It’s important to play to the trapper’s strengths by letting them focus on sales qualified leads over cold prospects (who you can let hunters deal with).
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How hunters, farmers, and trappers can work together
Now that we’ve covered what the trapper, hunter, and farmer sales personas each entail, let’s talk about how you can get these sales personas to work together to boost sales and propel your company forward:
1. Identify the sales personas of your reps
As a sales manager, you spend a lot of time thinking about your company’s customers. It’s only natural. If you don’t understand what makes them tick, you won’t be able to devise effective sales strategies. But you need to take time to think about your sales reps, too.
Who are they? What motivates them? What are they good at and what do they struggle with? These questions will help you learn their sales persona: Hunter, farmer, or trapper.
Which of your reps are independent? Which of them have thick skin? And which of them are excited to meet new people to sell to on a daily basis. These are your sales hunters. Assign them prospecting, cold calling, and negotiation tasks.
Now, which of your reps are more comfortable working with current customers? Do they have deep product knowledge? Are they experts at building relationships? These are your sales farmers.
They should spend a majority of their time onboarding new customers, building relationships, and looking for upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
2. Assign the right tasks to the right reps
Do you like football? Then you know that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers don’t ask Tom Brady to play on the defensive line. Why not? Because he’s the greatest quarterback of all time. Asking him to do anything but throw touchdowns would be a waste of his supreme talent.
You’re a sales manager, not a head football coach. But you have a similar job in this respect: it’s up to you to put your team in the best position to succeed.
Asking a hunter to perform farmer tasks, or vice versa, doesn’t accomplish this.
To build a successful sales team, you should assign your reps tasks that align with their strengths. This should be easy to do after identifying each of your reps’ sales personas.
3. Regularly evaluate your sales process
At this point, you’ve separated your team into three categories: Hunters, farmers, and trappers, and given each of them tasks that align with their strengths. Now what?
Now you need to keep a close eye on your sales process to see if it’s working. Are your sales reps effective in their roles? Are they meeting quota and increasing customer retention? Just as important, are they happy and comfortable? If not, their work will suffer.
Plus, studies show that it can cost as much as 200% of a departing employee’s annual salary to replace them, depending on their job description. In other words, turnover is expensive. If your employees don’t enjoy their jobs, they’ll go find new ones.
4. Hire new personnel when necessary
As you evaluate your sales process, you may find that you have holes to fill.
You might have a few high-quality hunters who generate a lot of new business for your company. But you’re short on farmers to help onboard new customers and keep them satisfied. Maybe the opposite is true and you need more hunters to increase your sales pipeline.
Whatever the case may be, there will be a time when you need to hire new personnel. When that time comes, keep the sales personas we’ve been talking about in mind. That way you don’t hire a farmer to do a hunter’s job, or a trapper to fill a hunter’s role, etc.
Final thoughts
The trapper, hunter and farmer sales persona discussion aren’t about which sales persona is better. All three are important. Your job as a sales manager is to identify which of your sales reps fall into each sales persona category; then put them in the best possible positions to succeed.
Once you design a sales strategy that utilizes each sales reps’ natural strengths, while minimizing their weaknesses, your department’s close rate and retention metrics will improve.
Nutshell is flexible enough to fit every sales model.
Choose the model that best fits your business and see how we help teams like yours close more deals.
