Hunter vs. Farmer: What Type of Salesperson Does Your Business Actually Need?
Not every salesperson is built to do the same job.
Some are at their best when they are opening doors, finding new customers, and creating opportunities from scratch.
Others excel when they are developing relationships, growing existing accounts, and becoming a trusted resource to long-term customers.
In sales, these profiles are often described as hunters and farmers.
Both can be highly valuable. The problem is hiring one when your business actually needs the other.
For employers in construction, industrial, energy, trades, and technical markets, understanding the difference between a hunter and a farmer can make a significant difference in the success of a sales hire.
Before you start reviewing resumes, the first question should be:
What does this salesperson actually need to accomplish?
What Is a Hunter in Sales?
A sales hunter is primarily focused on generating new business.
Hunters are typically comfortable entering unfamiliar territory, approaching companies they have never worked with before, creating new relationships, and moving prospects toward a first purchase.
Their role is often built around growth.
A strong hunter may spend much of their time:
Identifying target accounts
Cold calling or emailing prospects
Networking
Visiting potential customers
Asking for referrals
Breaking into competitor-held accounts
Building new pipeline
Qualifying opportunities
Negotiating new business
Closing first-time customers
Hunters are often found in roles such as Business Development Manager, Territory Sales Representative, Outside Sales Representative, Business Development Representative, or Account Executive.
The title matters less than the responsibility.
If the primary expectation is to create revenue that does not currently exist, you are likely looking for a hunter.
What Is a Farmer in Sales?
A sales farmer focuses primarily on developing existing customer relationships.
Rather than constantly looking for entirely new accounts, farmers create additional value from customers the company already has.
A strong farmer may be responsible for:
Managing existing accounts
Strengthening customer relationships
Increasing share of wallet
Identifying upsell opportunities
Cross-selling additional products or services
Protecting key accounts from competitors
Managing renewals
Improving retention
Expanding relationships across departments or locations
Becoming a trusted long-term resource
Farmer-oriented roles often include Account Manager, Key Account Manager, Strategic Account Manager, Territory Account Manager, or Customer Success Manager.
Again, job titles can be misleading.
An Account Manager at one company may be almost entirely relationship-focused, while another company may expect its Account Managers to generate significant amounts of new business.
That is why responsibilities matter more than titles.
Hunter vs. Farmer: What Is the Difference?
The simplest distinction is:
Hunters create new relationships. Farmers grow existing ones.
Hunters are generally more focused on prospecting, opening doors, generating pipeline, and winning new customers.
Farmers are generally more focused on maintaining relationships, increasing account value, protecting existing revenue, and identifying additional opportunities within established customers.
Hunters usually need to be comfortable with rejection and uncertainty. Much of their time may be spent pursuing opportunities that never become customers.
Farmers often need strong relationship-management skills, patience, commercial awareness, and the ability to uncover opportunities over a longer period of time.
Neither profile is inherently better.
The right one depends on what your business needs.
When Does Your Business Need a Hunter?
You probably need a hunter if your biggest sales challenge is creating new revenue.
For example, your company may have:
An undeveloped sales territory
A new product or service
A new geographic market
Too few new customers
Heavy reliance on a small number of existing accounts
A large list of prospects nobody is actively pursuing
Significant market share available to win
Salespeople who primarily service existing customers
Imagine an industrial supplier expanding into a new Alberta territory.
The company has strong products and operations but very few customer relationships in the area.
The salesperson needs to identify potential customers, find decision-makers, create introductions, deal with rejection, follow up consistently, and eventually win business from competitors.
That is a hunter role.
Hiring someone whose background has mainly involved managing established accounts may not solve the actual problem.
When Does Your Business Need a Farmer?
You probably need a farmer when you already have a strong customer base but are not getting enough value from it.
Your company may have:
Major accounts that need more attention
High-value customers with untapped opportunities
Weak customer retention
Customers using only part of your product or service offering
Strategic relationships that require dedicated management
Salespeople spending too much time servicing accounts instead of prospecting
Consider a company with millions of dollars in established customer revenue.
If many of those customers could purchase additional products, expand into additional locations, or use more of the company's services, the fastest growth opportunity may not come from cold prospecting.
It may come from better account development.
That is where a strong farmer can create significant value.
The Most Common Hiring Mistake: Asking for Both
Many sales job descriptions effectively ask one person to do everything.
The company wants someone who can cold prospect, generate new business, manage major accounts, handle customer service, prepare quotes, maintain CRM records, visit job sites, grow existing customers, and close new customers.
Ideally, they want that person to be exceptional at all of it.
Some salespeople can successfully balance hunting and farming.
Very few are equally strong at every part of the sales cycle.
That is why employers should identify the primary commercial objective of the role before starting the hiring process.
If 70% of the position involves managing and growing existing customers, you should not hire primarily based on prospecting ability.
If your business desperately needs new customers, do not allow a candidate's strong account-management experience to distract from limited evidence that they can actually develop new business.
Define the priority first.
Can a Salesperson Be Both a Hunter and a Farmer?
Yes.
Many successful salespeople operate somewhere between the two profiles.
A Territory Sales Representative, for example, may need to hunt for new customers and then farm those accounts after winning them.
This hybrid approach is common in construction, industrial, energy, and technical sales.
But even hybrid salespeople often lean in one direction.
One salesperson may naturally enjoy developing long-term relationships and expanding existing accounts.
Another may become restless managing established customers and prefer chasing the next opportunity.
Understanding that natural tendency matters.
You should not simply ask a candidate:
“Can you prospect?”
Almost every sales candidate will say yes.
Ask them to prove it through their experience.
How to Identify a Sales Hunter During an Interview
A true hunter should be able to explain exactly how they create opportunities.
Useful interview questions include:
Tell me about a territory you had to build from scratch.
How do you identify companies worth prospecting?
What percentage of your previous revenue came from accounts you personally opened?
Tell me about a customer that took multiple attempts to win.
How do you approach a prospect where you have no existing relationship?
What does a typical week of prospecting look like for you?
Then listen for specifics.
A strong hunter should be able to explain how they identify targets, reach decision-makers, create initial interest, follow up, manage rejection, and move opportunities through the pipeline.
Be cautious when answers remain vague.
Statements such as “I'm a people person,” “I'm good at networking,” or “I build great relationships” may all be true.
But they do not demonstrate an ability to consistently generate new business.
How to Identify a Strong Farmer During an Interview
A strong farmer should be able to demonstrate how they commercially develop existing relationships.
Ask questions such as:
Tell me about an account you significantly grew.
How did you identify additional opportunities within that customer?
How do you protect an important account from competitors?
Tell me about a customer relationship that was at risk and how you handled it.
How do you build relationships beyond your original contact?
What does your account-planning process look like?
The goal is to understand whether the candidate simply maintains relationships or actively develops them.
A strong farmer does more than keep customers happy.
They identify opportunities to create additional value for both the customer and the company.
Look at Where Their Previous Revenue Came From
This is one of the most useful ways to distinguish hunters from farmers.
Imagine two candidates who each managed $3 million in annual revenue.
At first glance, their resumes may appear very similar.
Then you dig deeper.
One candidate inherited approximately $2.8 million in established accounts and grew the territory to $3 million.
The other inherited $500,000 and developed the territory to $3 million.
Those candidates have very different sales histories.
That does not automatically make the second candidate better.
If you need someone to manage and protect your company's largest customer relationships, the first candidate may be exactly what you need.
But if you need someone to build a territory from scratch, the second candidate provides much stronger evidence of new-business development.
This is why revenue figures alone rarely tell the full story.
You need to understand how the revenue was created.
Industry Experience Does Not Automatically Mean Sales Ability
An employer may find a candidate with ten years of experience selling into exactly the right industry.
That can be extremely valuable.
But it is still important to understand what the candidate actually did during those ten years.
Did they build their customer base?
Or did they inherit it?
Were they responsible for opening accounts?
Or primarily servicing them?
Did they generate opportunities?
Or did the company provide most of their leads?
Industry knowledge and existing relationships can shorten the learning curve, particularly in technical sales.
But familiarity with a market is not the same as proven sales ability.
The candidate's experience still needs to match the actual requirements of the role.
Your Compensation Plan Can Attract the Wrong Salesperson
Compensation can also influence the type of salesperson you attract.
Hunters may be more attracted to opportunities where exceptional new-business performance creates significant earning upside.
That could mean compensation tied to new revenue, gross margin, or newly acquired accounts.
Farmer-oriented roles may place more emphasis on:
Account growth
Customer retention
Renewals
Margin improvement
Cross-selling
Strategic account development
The compensation structure should reinforce the behaviour the company wants.
If you tell someone their priority is new-business development but most of their compensation comes from maintaining inherited accounts, the incentives do not match the objective.
The Sales Environment Matters Too
Even the right salesperson can struggle in the wrong environment.
A hunter may need clear target markets, strong positioning, defined territories, appropriate prospecting tools, and enough freedom to create opportunities.
Management also needs to understand that developing a new territory can require time before significant revenue appears.
Farmers may need clear account ownership, good customer data, strong internal communication, operational support, and visibility into the company's broader products and services.
Hiring the right profile is only part of the equation.
The business also needs to create an environment where that person can succeed.
Questions to Ask Before You Start Recruiting
Before opening your next sales position, determine:
What percentage of the role should involve new business?
What percentage should involve existing account management?
Will the salesperson inherit meaningful revenue?
How developed is the territory?
What should success look like after one year?
Where should new opportunities come from?
How much prospecting will be required?
How important is direct industry experience?
How technical is the sale?
Does the compensation structure reward the behaviour you need?
Those answers can significantly improve the quality of your candidate search.
Hunter or Farmer: Which Should You Hire?
If your company is entering a new market, you probably need someone who leans toward hunter.
If you need to create new accounts, you probably need a hunter.
If you have an undeveloped territory, hunter skills should be a priority.
If you have major existing accounts that are not reaching their full potential, you may need someone who leans toward farmer.
If customer retention is a concern, farming ability becomes more important.
If your company needs someone to manage an existing territory while continuing to develop new customers, you may need a hybrid.
The important thing is not whether a candidate fits perfectly into one category.
It is whether their strongest abilities match the work your company actually needs done.
Hire for the Sales Problem You Need to Solve
Too many sales searches begin with a job title.
A better search begins with a business problem.
Maybe your company needs more new customers.
Maybe your largest accounts are not growing.
Maybe a territory has significant untapped potential.
Maybe you need someone capable of doing both.
Once the commercial objective is clear, the type of salesperson you need becomes much easier to define.
At SiFi Consulting, we specialize in recruiting sales professionals for construction, energy, trades, and industrial businesses across Alberta and Western Canada.
We help employers define the sales profile their business actually needs and identify candidates whose experience, strengths, and track record align with that objective.
Looking for your next salesperson?
Start with the right conversation.
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