5 Simple Steps to Master Sales Hunting Skills
by Ming
Why is mastering sales hunting skills critical to a salesperson’s success?
What is the difference between “hunting” and “farming” in sales context?
If you are wondering whether this article is about sales or wildlife or farming, fret not you are in the right zone. At RevUpZone we are here to help you to rev up your sales.
In sales there are many definition and acronyms. It is to your best interest to be familiar with the definition from the get go, so that you have clarity and gearing you up in the right frame of mindset to succeed. With the right mindset and can-do attitude you will be able to move fast in your sales activities, manage customers, partners, internal teams and lead the team to drive to deals to closure.
What
is sales hunting skills?
In order to understand what is “hunting” in sales, we need to understand what is “farming” in sales.
In sales context, a “farmer “is a salesperson who is given a list of existing customers the company already business dealings generating revenue. A Sales Farmer will focus on managing a list of existing customers’ accounts given to them. A Sales Farmer will manage the relationships and their main responsibility is to grow revenue of the list of customers’ accounts by “farming” the accounts. Typically a Sales Farmer is known generically as an Account Manager (designation differs depending on industry, company and seniority of role).
Sales Farmers focus on growing relationships, up-sell and cross-sell products and services into the existing accounts they are managing. The end-to-end sales engagement of strengthening relationship, up-selling, cross-selling products and services into existing customers and growing revenue is known in sales context as “farming”.
It is important to take note that Sales Farmers or Account Managers need to focus on mastering their sales hunting skills as sales hunting skills will allow them to “hunt” for new opportunities for up-sell and cross-sell products and services, keeping their sales pipeline healthy to continuously grow new revenue stream.
A Sales Hunter, on the other hand, like the name suggests – hunts for new customers. Sales Hunters will not be given any existing customers accounts. Sales Hunters have to hunt and find their customers and work towards winning and acquiring new customers to the company.
A Sales Hunter start from ground zero with zero revenue. The target customers have zero knowledge about the company, products and services, no prior relationships with the company. A Sales Hunter must work smart as they are have a short run way to win contracts to overachieve their target. The end-to-end sales engagement of converting suspects to prospects, to customers and finally becoming raving fans is a called “ sales hunting”. Typically a Sales Hunter is known generically as a Sales Manager or Business Development Manager (designation differs depending on industry, company and seniority of role).
The most common and biggest challenge of any salesperson or entrepreneur or start-up founder is the sales hunting and closing deals when you, the company you represent, your products and services are not known to anyone, yet.
Hunting in sales and closing new business with new customers is one of the most difficult and challenging job. Therefore most salespeople shunt away from sales hunting. However professional sales hunting is a skill that can be taught, learned, practiced, fine-tuned; and overtime become a habit for those who have mastered sales hunting skills.
Here’s 5 simple steps to guide you in your journey in mastering sales hunting skills.
Step 1: Target Customers
Generate a Target Account List (TAL) based on the companies that might be interested in your products, services or solutions. Understand their business drivers, future growth and the geographies they operate in.
Step 2: Your Network Is Your Net Worth
Build your network by making contact with people, prospects, partners. Build a solid professional network that you could share ideas, collaborate and tap on for support. From your network, you can get to know prospects personally. You need to understand the challenges faced and offer your support to help them solve their problems.
Step 3: Qualify Opportunities
Understand customers' specific needs, challenges faced, pain points, budget, timeline, decision makers, objectives, etc. Focus on prospects have real needs/pain points that you can help and support to solve their problems.
Step 4: Pitch Your Values Proposition
Pitch your value proposition by specifically addressing the customers' challenges and focus on how your product service help customers to solve their problems and overcome their challenges. Leverage and use previous successful deals closed as customers' case studies and testimonials to prove value.
Step 5: Negotiate & Close
Negotiate deal to achieve win-win for both parties. Handle objections with the aim to help customers to understand the "why" and work your way to achieve win-win. Close the deal and deliver what you have promised. Your objective is to delight customers to reaffirm customers that they have made the right decisions. Continue to engage customers to build on this positive experiences to up sell and cross sell services to customers.
In conclusion, sales hunting skills is the most valuable skills a professional sales person needs to master. It should come naturally to the salesperson and these skills are like habit ingrained in their day to day operations. Once you master sales hunting skills, you will find yourself working effectively and efficiently on your sales opportunities.
Like hunters who are highly skilled to hunt for their preys, you need to master the sales hunting skills to be successful in winning new incremental business with new customers or existing customers. The key here is to win new incremental business revenue and profitable, sustainable business for the company.
In any companies, sales is the bloodline of the organization. Without sales, without sales revenue numbers, companies will not be able to grow and expand sustainably. Successful salesperson who have mastered sales hunting skills earns millions of dollars. Successful salesperson is always in demand and always poached by other companies, especially competitors.
If you are a salesperson, sales leaders, sales management, entrepreneur, business owner, start-up founder, new to sales role or experienced and season salesperson and would like to improve skills, it will be beneficial for your company and business to train and coach your sales team to focus on sharpening their sales hunting skills.
Why salesperson with sales hunting skills are valuable? Simple, he or she helps the company they work for or for entrepreneur their own business to acquire and win new customers and create new revenue stream to grow their business exponentially and sustainably.
Contact coach@revupzone.com for more info on RevUpZone sales training programs for you and your sales team or 121 coaching sessions to master sales hunting skills to win big and win fast!