The Advantage of a Hunter Culture

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

I recently attended a conference where a consulting firm shared some of their research about some attending sales organizations. The information that they revealed made some people gasp (literally) in disbelief. It made others ask questions that made their skepticism known. The study was conducted for a group of clients, and the information was private. But here is what I can share.

Faster Growing Sales Organizations Cold Call

The research that was presented showed that faster growing sales organizations used cold calling as one of their primary methods of prospecting. Their performance was almost a standard deviation above the slower growing organizations that did not use cold calling as one of their primary prospecting methods.

If you are a regular here at TSB, then you aren’t surprised by these results. For all of the emphasis on Sales 2.0 and social selling (of which I am a huge proponent), cold calling is still a highly effective form of prospecting.

But wait; there’s more.

Faster Growing Sales Organizations Generate Their Own Leads

The second finding was equally important. The salespeople that worked for faster growing sales organizations were responsible for generating their own leads. In this case, it didn’t mean that other lead generation wasn’t used. It meant that the salespeople were responsible for building their own prospect list regardless of whether or not their lead generation efforts were being supplemented by other departments or outsourced solutions.

The real difference was that in the slower growing sales organizations, the salespeople were not accountable for generating their own leads.

Advantage: Opportunity Creation

It is important to note here that these results fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Cold calling has fallen out of fashion, and with it the accountability for the sales force to generate leads. But these two activities make up what is a hunter culture.

A sales organization that has a hunter culture produces more opportunities. Hunters produce more opportunities within their existing client base, and they produce more opportunities through new client acquisition. And growth is found through opportunity creation.

A Note to Midmarket Sales Organization: Small and medium size businesses benefit from building and maintaining a hunter culture. Growth is found through the continuous creation of opportunities, and the velocity of that growth is determined by the ability to create and capitalize on opportunities. As your company grows, there is a place for new tools and new processes. But that doesn’t require that you replace a hunter culture or the activities that build opportunities.

Questions

Does your organization cold call as part of it’s prospecting plan?

Are you responsible for some part of your own lead generation? How much?

Are you part of a hunter culture? A culture that creates and capitalizes on opportunities?

Do you always have enough opportunities to make you number, regardless of whether you lose some of your opportunities?

What would you have to change to have more of a hunter culture?