Our goal at ContentMX is to support sales strategies for the three important pillars of any business: sellers, buyers, and marketers. Each pillar plays an integral role in achieving sales goals, and by understanding each pillar’s needs and tendencies, your business will thrive and grow. Our goal is to help your business, regardless of the size of your company, the different personas involved, or the way they function. We have created a product that caters not only to the three pillars, but also to the nuanced behaviors within each pillar.
In the first article of this series, we will explore how sellers behave.
Hunters and Farmers
The hum of conversation is music to a sales manager’s ears. Glancing at sales people’s desks, you will most likely see one of two types: those that are completely cluttered and disorganized, and others that are almost too perfectly neat. At first review, one might guess that the more successful salesperson would probably have the most organized desk. That’s not necessarily the case. The messy and neat desks are indicators not of success, but of two distinct personas: the hunters and the farmers.
The Hunter
The hunter is constantly looking for the next opportunity. They are amazing at networking, and love when a new deal opportunity strikes. It’s all about the next Big Win. The hunter is all about the action. They prefer a lot of activity and meetings, and they quickly sift through opportunities, making quick visual decisions on prospects that deserve their valuable attention. These are our messy desk keepers. They may have piles of paperwork, but they know exactly where to find the one sheet they are looking for amongst the clutter. Too busy to clean or organize, they manage to keep a lot in their heads – but what is lost in the shuffle?
In order to be successful, the hunter needs to focus on consistent outreach to their entire network, instead of hyperfocusing on the Big Win.
The Farmer
The farmer, on the other hand, is a well-oiled machine. They are always armed with the most current data, and they count on strong relationships to help nurture their deals. Farmers sustain long-lasting relationships. They typically have neat desks. Like the more chaotic hunters, they know where everything is, but it probably takes them much less time to locate it. Because they nurture relationships, farmers might see a slower pipeline, but they are meticulous in smoothly closing deals.
Farmers live by consistency and meeting expectations, and might need a small push when more urgent opportunities arise.
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Even though these two very different personas exist, hunters and farmers haven’t always been able to access different selling solutions that match their tendencies. In essence, we have asked them to shove a square peg into a round hole by failing to offer flexible solutions for their unique behaviors.
At ContentMX, we often think about the different seller personas and how we can enable each to successfully engage with our technology. We ask ourselves how we can help users of our platform build behaviors that will work with their personalities. Because we understand and value these personas, we created and designed a solution that can help scale sales activities for both groups.
The ContentMX Solution for Sellers can be used to accommodate several selling styles, including:
- Automatic publishing of content (for building consistency)
- Managed publishing of content by marketers (to allow greater focus on sales efforts)
- Self management of publishing of content (for those who wish to personalize their posts)
Of course, our solutions would be nothing without great content. We provide fresh and relevant weekly content that comes curated, organized, and ready to share. Our reporting features further enable a salesperson to take their selling to the next level by helping them understand how prospects and customers are engaging with content. We help them understand what solutions their clients need. By gaining insight into your customers patterns, sales people can meet them with solutions, head-on.
Our solution is designed to work within the innate behaviors of each type of seller: those seeking to cast a wide net and create new and exciting opportunities, and those seeking to nurture long-standing relationships with helpful information. The proof is in the results- the ContentMX Solution, PartnerOn, sees high usage rates, and increasingly higher sales results.
To learn more about our sales enablement program and how we can help satisfy the different needs of your sellers, reach out to us at sales@contentmx.com.
Stay tuned for the next article in the series to learn how we help buyers.