OPUSBOB: Hunter vs Farmer definitively defined
June 6, 2010 – 1:27 pmProbably the most typical vernacular that I hear when discussing the personality profile of a salesperson is using the phrase hunter versus farmer. And more often than not, a vice president of sales or even a CEO will say, “What we really need around here are some hunters. We’ve got farmers but we really need hunters.” Help us find some hunters and in fact, it’s one of the critical reasons why people work with us and utilize our candidate assessment and personality profiling services is to be able to determine whether or not the candidate is a hunter or if that person is a farmer.
Now we can talk about whether or not a company really does need hunters versus farmers because we’ve definitely found situations when companies are looking for hunters yet, in fact, their top performers are farmers. But that’s a topic for a different video blog. We’re talking today about understanding the personality profile difference between a hunter and a farmer. And it’s very simple and it’s very clear. There are four behavioral traits that get measured in a personality profiling tool. Dominance, which is the level of aggressiveness, extroversion, which is for sociability, haste, which is rate of motion, be it fast pace, go – go or slower moving, slower going, and then structuring detail. Detail oriented or not detail oriented. What’s very clear to define a hunter versus a farmer. Hunters are aggressive personalities – so their dominance will be high. Hunters are impatient personalities, so they will be fast-paced and they will be action oriented. And hunters are traditionally big picture oriented people, so their conformity will be low.
Farmers on the other hand, are consensus oriented people. They are collaborative and consensus oriented, therefore their dominance is low. They are typically good listeners and they pay attention to what is important to the client’s needs and they take their time to understand. Therefore, their patience is high. More often than not, they are process oriented and procedural and they will follow the steps necessary to do what needs to be done. Therefore, their conformity is high. We didn’t talk about the extroversion trait because in both cases hunters and farmers, more often than, not the extroversion trait is high. That’s not the measurement that makes the difference between a hunter and a farmer. What we look at in candidate assessment, personality profiling is the positioning of the dominance trait, high is hunter, low is farmer. The pace trait – high is farmer, low is hunter and the conformity trait – high is farmer, low is hunter. It’s very easy to define and it’s also very easy to be able to see the grey areas as to when somebody combines certain traits of both hunters and farmers.
Thanks for listening.
Tags: aggressiveness, behavioral traits, candidate assessment, conformity, dominance, extroversion, Hunter vs Farmer, personality profiling, sociability, top performers
3 Responses to “OPUSBOB: Hunter vs Farmer definitively defined”
Very intersting. Is it possible that someone have a combination of Hunter and Farmer?
By Staci Overstreet on Jun 9, 2010
Absolutely, and you can see it by the combination of their traits. A combination hunter/farmer would have a more moderate level of dominance, and higher patience than a traditional hunter. And in some markets, this is a more advantageous profile. It depends on how well established the product is, the company is, the reputation of the company. The more advanced, the better the fit for hunter/farmer. In the earlier stages, a pure hunter is a better fit.
By Bob Kreisberg on Jul 25, 2010
Hi Bob,
As always, you’ve provoked thought with your blog.
Here is some counterpoint on your conclusion that for early-stage enterprises a “pure hunter” is a better fit. (Your comment on 7/25/2010.)
In my experience, many entrepreneurs and promoters — pure hunters — who are focused on getting their business going, and not paying much attention to the “process” of their organization (including corporate paperwork and infrastructural pieces like professional accounting services, etc.) find themselves in big trouble down the road. Too often their own vision and self-assessment is too optimistic and they make promises that cannot be met. They overstate their abilities and make rosy (or outright foolish) projections. They underestimate the true cost of doing business and quickly find themselves insufficiently capitalized and spending too much time searching for loans and investments, rather than sales and profits to sustain the business. To these people, corporate or partnership paperwork, monthly accounting reports, paying quarterly taxes, etc., are deemed a tedious, time-consuming and sometimes expensive process that can be deferred because they’re not so urgent and don’t hurt anyone. Yet, those easily-identifiable errors are the reasons the vast majority of new start-ups and one-man (or woman) businesses fail, usually within the first year or two. Thus, in your context, if a business survives three years of operations, the creative and aggressive hunter is secretly both a hunter and a farmer, or is wise enough to engage the farmers needed to deal with the most egregious shortcomings of the “pure” hunter personality.
That said, as a man named HUNTER, and descended from 1,000+ years of HUNTERS, I would agree that a hunter is ALWAYS the BEST fit! But heaven forbid that I be a “pure” hunter! Under the definitions you’ve provided, I believe it’s always best to have a hunter/farmer combination in every enterprise, early-stage or otherwise. But that might be made up of a complementary team of diverse personalities, insiders and outsiders, etc., not just a single individual.
See, for great analysis of these traits in some of the most successful American businesses, BLUEPRINT TO A BILLION, by David G. Thomson, John Wiley & Sons (2006). I especially like Chapters 7-9.
Keep up the good work, Bob. Excellent points always.
Edward O. HUNTER (not Farmer)
Attorney and Corporate Governance Expert
Irvine, California 92612
By Ed Hunter on Jul 30, 2010