Type of Salespeople

Salespeople are the driving force and revenue generators of many organizations.¹
They interact extensively with clients, building trust and understanding their needs. They play a crucial role in the company’s success.
In this post, we’ll explore the different types of salespeople, helping you identify their strengths and find the ideal role for each in your organization.

The best approach to a sales opportunity varies from person to person

Over the past decade, managing dozens of salespeople, I’ve observed a significant gap between how they’re perceived externally and how they operate within the team. Not all salespeople arrive at the sales opportunity from the same place and not all manage the opportunity in the same way. In a rough division I was able to characterize 3 types of salespeople, where each type differs from the other in an absolute way. Every sales rep or manager should know the three types in order to know how to approach each salesperson and set challenges in his own way. But beyond that - in order to manage a successful sales team, every manager must know how to make the right combinations in his team.

Service-Oriented Salespeople

Salespeople who are first and foremost service people tend to approach the sales opportunity from a place of solving an existing problem, meeting a need, and pleasing their customer.

They will often be more passive in the aspect of initiating a sale or independently contacting the customer, but from the moment they get an opportunity, they know how to make the best of it. They are often gifted as good service people and will give their customers their whole heart.

Salespeople who are service-oriented also know how to manage long-term relationships with the customer and will less measure themselves on a single transaction. For them, they are long-term players.
Service-oriented salespeople can be identified by their frequent use of directed questions such as:

• What problem are you facing today?
• What is your need for the product?

They often focus on understanding the customer’s needs and pain points rather than simply promoting a product. If you are looking for salespeople who know how to manage long-term relationships and make your customers come back and buy from you again, service-oriented salespeople are what you need.

In terms of salary components, service-oriented salespeople will always prefer a high base salary and lower commissions. This model gives them the confidence to do what they believe is right (providing service) rather than chasing a specific target.

Hunters

Hunters are a group of individuals who come to work solely to sell. They chase opportunities and try to sell ice to Eskimos.
For them, every person is an opportunity. They will fight for every deal and use every trick in the book. They will look for the answer to the question: “What’s in it for me?” and measure everything in terms of personal gain.

Hunters are what every new business needs because they know how to turn the world upside down to earn their commissions.
Speaking of salary components, hunters will prefer as much bonus as possible over base salary.

Additional characteristics:

• They are often not technical people and will not go into too much technical detail in their sales pitch.
• They prioritize efficient deal closure, often utilizing discounts, promotions, and competitive pricing to deliver customer value quickly.
• They chase success and tend to forget or ignore failed sales.
• Customer service isn’t their strong suit. They struggle when a customer needs something beyond a quick sale.
• They love goals, benefits, bonuses, and fight to achieve them.

The advantage of managing hunters is clear - they fight to achieve results quickly.
However, it is important to note that their employment is limited to specific sectors and areas: In any place where long, complex (in terms of contracts, many documents, and headaches) and professional sales are required, it will be very difficult to integrate salespeople who working like hunter.

Technicians

In technology companies or those related to the technological world, we find salespeople who are passionate about the products they sell.
These Technicians pride themselves on being first and foremost technical people who know the products they sell inside and out and love to talk about the technology they sell.

What matters to them in every meeting with a customer is to find the best technical solution for their needs. They don’t look at the bottom line if he bought or not - and even if they do, they won’t make a big deal out of it. They have a lot of technical knowledge and are passionate about sharing it with the world.

It is important for them to give the best and most comprehensive solution (in their opinion) to the customer and they measure themselves by this. They will always focus on technical questions and will manage their sales from this point of view. Sometimes they will not waste time getting to know the customer at all, from their point of view they are only providing an answer to his technical needs.

From the customer point of view, they will always be perceived as professionals and people will feel comfortable sharing a variety of significant business problems and technical needs with them.

In terms of salary components, they are also very similar to service people - they will always prefer a high base salary and low bonuses.

What is the Winning-Team?

It is commonly believed that in order to create a winning team, we need to recruit salespeople from all three of the above types.

However, a reality check reveals that in order to create a winning sales team, we must first characterize the company’s needs:

• What is the product we are selling? How technical is this product and does it require understanding and attention to detail?
• Who are our target customers? What are the challenges they face?What are their needs?
• What are our goals as a company?
• What do we plan to offer these salespeople?

Once we have all the answers to these questions, we can understand whether we are building a team that consists of one type of salesperson? Are we building a heterogeneous team? Or maybe we are making a different division?

Need help building sales teams? Just drop me a line to Dolev [at] Ravid.email and I’ll get back to you.