Episode 431: Thinking Time - Sales Recruiting DNA: Hunters & Farmers

The majority of the time, what they are doing is they are going in to the current customers and they're reaching out to those current customers. They're having conversations with them. They're meeting with them in person. They're doing reviews of their account, maybe meeting them virtually. It doesn't always have to be in person. And they're able to run a process where they're reviewing the current products that they have. And then they're recommending new products, they're doing upsells and cross-sells and deepening that relationship. And by doing so, of course, what does that do? That also helps to retain the customers longer as well.

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. Get ready to build your business by design. Are you an agency owner looking to better understand your financials and take charge of your tax bill? Well, Club Capital's here to help. As the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, they are way more than your everyday run-of-the-mill CPA. Club Capital provides financial, CFO, and tax advisory services to help you plan and forecast your financial success. You'll meet every month to review your agency's financial performance, the difference between your profit and actual cash flow. Along with helping you better understand your bottom line. Visit club.capital to book a solution overview with one of our business consultants. Club Capital, way more than a CPA firm.

Hey everyone. In this episode, we're going to talk about the sales recruiting DNA. I know so many of you either have a sales team or building a sales team, want to expand your sales team so that you can grow and scale your business. I want to give full credit that the idea of this came from a gentleman named Mike Weinberg. You may not know Mike, but you probably have read or seen one of his books, New Sales Simplified or Sales Management Simplified. I'm really excited to announce that in February, I'm actually interviewing Mike. I've tried to get him on the podcast many times, and we're going to be able to talk about all of his books. And I think we're going to drop that episode at the end of February, first part of March. So be there. Definitely look out for that. But in one of his books, he talks about hunters and farmers. Before we get into kind of the DNA difference between those, I want to share with you how I relate that back to a model that I fundamentally believe in. And that is, I believe that every business follows this model: acquisition, ascension, and retention. Now, that model is a slight adaptation from Alex Hormozi, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, that I originally picked up from his book, Gem Launch. And you may say, Bradley, why are you reading a book about Gem Launch? Well, it's actually a fantastic business book. I personally believe it's one of his better books that he's written, maybe even my favorite. And that's where the idea of acquisition, ascension, retention, so AAR, comes from. And so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to tie back acquisition, ascension, retention to the different DNA profiles or attributes that you may be looking for when it comes to getting a sales team member for your organization. So what is acquisition? It is getting new customers. Every business needs to be able to get new customers. Ascension, getting those customers to be worth more. And that comes really in the form of cross-sells. So pivoting over to other lines or other products that they don't currently carry, or through upsells, them paying more or buying more of whatever it is that they have. You can see this everywhere. Oh, last one is retention. It's keeping the customers as long as possible. So regardless of the business that you're in, is number one, can you profitably acquire new customers? Number two, how do you get those customers to be worth more? And number three, how do you keep them longer? Now, I've done podcasts about this topic in the past, but in this episode, what I want to do more of a deep dive on is how does that relate to then the people that you're going to be looking for? In his book Sales Management Simplified, he talks about this idea of the DNA difference between hunters and farmers. And so I got this question from one of my Blueprint members. They asked, hey, we're reading this book. We know you're gonna interview Mike. How do we apply this idea to the different aspects? Now, this person in particular happened to be an insurance agency owner that was asking me this question. And I said, oh, very simple. Hunters are your acquisition people and farmers are your ascension people. And as soon as I said that, I said, hey, as soon as I say this, you're gonna relay back and go, oh, that makes so much.

Sense.

Typically, what I see is people trying to have someone to have the DNA where they can do all of the things, right? There's some sort of a hybrid role. They can acquire new customers. They can meet with current customers and get them to be able to pay more, and they can do some customer service stuff to retain them. That is very, very difficult to be able to do and to find really a unicorn, honestly, to do it. Some of you may have some of those people, but they probably have been with you for a really long time and they've learned and developed those skills versus it being inherently in their DNA. So when you're looking for a hunter, this person can handle rejection. They want to go out into the hunt. They want to find the deer, kill the deer, bring it back to the village, and then rest and go back and do it again. People may sit down and actually run appointments with some of your current customers. They act more like farmers. They want to plant the seeds and they're gonna work that person. They're gonna follow up with them and they're gonna have maybe even multiple meetings to be able to close the deal, and they have the patience to be able to cultivate and work that person and then to be able to farm or harvest that sale over a longer period of time. Hunters typically will have the DNA of, I'm ready to go after, I'm gonna close the business, and then I'm gonna go out and do it again. And I love that he drew a distinction between that. So what I hopefully I've been able to do there is if you're building your business off having people that are in acquisition roles, you want to go find hunters. Sometimes I've, I've said it is stone cold killer salespeople. They want to go for the jugular. They're gonna close the deal. They don't have to be harsh in closing, but that's what they want to do. They want to go out and get new customers. And your farmer personalities are perfect for an ascension role in your organization. When I introduced this to some people, they actually ended up adopting and putting together Ascension roles in their organization, something they had really never done before in the past. And so this is a position that really does not do any new business. Maybe if it comes from a referral, they may do that, but really the majority of the time what they are doing is they are going in to to the current customers. And you're reaching out to those current customers. They're having conversations with them. They're meeting with them in person. They're doing reviews of their account, maybe meeting them virtually. It doesn't always have to be in person. And they're able to run a process where they're reviewing the current products that they have, and then they're recommending new products. They're doing upsells and cross-sells and deepening that relationship. And by doing so, of course, what does that do? That also helps to retain the customers longer as well. So when you are recruiting, think about, am I recruiting someone in sales? And both of them are sales positions, by the way, just different personality types. And so am I recruiting someone that's just going to go out and we need to get new customers? If so, I'm going to make sure that I'm recruiting a hunter. And so if you go and pick up his book, he'll go more into detail on the DNA of what a hunter is. But if I'm really looking forward, like, I really want to go to my current customers, I feel like I've got a really good acquisition team, looking for someone to be able to sell maybe even bigger, right? Because the bigger the sale, it can take longer to nurture that relationship. And so a farmer can be great with that because they're going to have the patience to continue to follow up and follow up, whereas hunters typically want to— sure, they'll do the follow-up and arguably they probably should follow up even more, but they're going to do the follow-up and they want to close the business and they want to move on. And I think that's great. And oftentimes, if you want somebody who can relate to the customer on a deep level and even maybe even sell deeper and bigger, and that takes a farming personality. It doesn't mean that farmers are passive by no stretch of imagination. It's going to be difficult if you put a farmer personality, a farmer DNA type into the role of an acquisition sales role. All right, everyone, hope this served you well. Lead well and go be great. And stay tuned for the Mike Weinberg Podcast, end of February, first part of March 2025. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.

You know how important it is to develop yourself and to develop your team. Well, if you're going to do that, you want to do it with the best. Work with Coach P Consulting to learn and implement the same strategies that he used to sell over 700 life policies in 2021 alone. You'll get personalized coaching 2 times a week and an in-depth look at how his office is run, and Coach P will train your team alongside his own. Get your first month free when you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast during signup. Visit coachpconsulting.com to get started.