By

Simon Hazeldine

For decades, sales teams have used a simple distinction.

Hunters find new business.

Farmers grow existing accounts.

Hunters prospect, pursue, disrupt, and close.

Farmers nurture, retain, develop, and expand.

It is a neat model.

It is easy to understand.

It gives sales leaders a simple way to organise roles, responsibilities, targets, and expectations.

But does it still work?

The answer is yes.

And no.

The core principle remains valid.

New customer acquisition and existing account growth are different commercial disciplines. They require different rhythms, different behaviours, different measures, and often different mindsets.

But the rigid traditional model is outdated.

Modern sales is no longer a clean split between “hunter” and “farmer”. It is a more integrated commercial ecosystem where new logo acquisition, account management, customer success, and value expansion need to work together.

The old model still contains truth.

But if you apply it too rigidly, it can damage growth.

Why the Hunter / Farmer Model Became Popular

The hunter / farmer model became popular because it reflected two important commercial realities.

New business development is hard.

It requires proactive prospecting, resilience, opportunity creation, commercial confidence, and the ability to engage buyers who may not yet be looking.

Account management is also hard.

It requires trust, relationship depth, delivery awareness, political sensitivity, customer understanding, and the ability to retain and grow existing revenue.

These are not identical disciplines.

So it made sense to separate them.

One team goes out and wins new logos.

Another team looks after those customers and grows them.

In theory, the model is logical.

In practice, it often creates problems.

The Problem with the Traditional Model

The traditional hunter / farmer model becomes dangerous when it turns into a personality label.

Hunters become seen as bold, assertive, proactive, energetic, and commercially aggressive.

Farmers become seen as relational, supportive, service-oriented, patient, and less commercially assertive.

Once those labels take hold, expectations narrow.

The hunter is excused from building deep relationships.

The farmer is excused from creating new commercial opportunities.

That is where the model breaks.

Modern selling requires hunters who can build trust and farmers who can create growth.

The future does not belong to the lone wolf hunter or the passive relationship farmer.

It belongs to commercially intelligent sellers who understand how value is created across the whole customer lifecycle.

Why the Traditional Model Is Evolving

There are three major reasons why the old model no longer works as cleanly as it once did.

1. Buying Journeys Are More Complex

Modern B2B buying is rarely simple.

Buyers are more informed.
Buying committees are larger.
Decision cycles are longer.
Risk sensitivity is higher.
Internal politics matter more.

This makes the traditional aggressive hunter less effective.

The lone wolf seller who pushes hard, pitches early, and relies on personal persuasion is increasingly out of step with how complex buyers make decisions.

Today’s buyers expect sellers to understand their industry, their commercial pressures, their internal constraints, and their desired outcomes.

They do not want a product pusher.

They want a business partner.

That means hunters need more than prospecting energy.

They need insight, patience, problem diagnosis, stakeholder mapping, and strategic thinking.

In other words, hunters now need some farmer capabilities.

2. The Leaking Bucket Problem

Acquiring new customers is expensive.

Every sales leader knows this.

But many organisations still behave as though new logo acquisition is the main engine of growth, while existing customers are treated as maintenance.

That is a mistake.

If you win new customers but fail to retain and expand them, you create a leaking bucket.

Revenue goes in at the top and leaks out of the bottom.

This puts enormous pressure on new business teams.

They are not just creating growth. They are also replacing lost or underdeveloped revenue.

In many businesses, the biggest growth opportunity already exists inside the customer base.

But it is often hidden because account managers are too passive, customer success is too operational, and sales leaders have not created a strong account expansion discipline.

This is why the farming role must evolve.

Modern farmers cannot simply “look after” customers.

They must create value, identify opportunity, expand relationships, and influence growth.

3. Poor Hand-Offs Damage Customer Experience

One of the biggest weaknesses of the rigid hunter / farmer model is the hand-off.

The hunter wins the deal.

The farmer inherits the account.

The customer feels passed from one relationship to another.

Important context gets lost.
Expectations are not fully transferred.
The commercial promise and delivery reality become disconnected.
Customer trust weakens.

This is especially damaging in complex B2B environments such as technology, pharma, construction, manufacturing, and professional services.

The buyer does not care about your internal sales structure.

They care about whether the experience feels joined up.

If the transition from new business to account management is clumsy, you may win the deal but weaken the relationship.

That is why modern revenue organisations need better integration between sales, account management, customer success, delivery, and leadership.

The Modern Model: From Split Roles to Revenue Ecosystem

The modern approach is not to abolish role specialisation.

It is to connect it.

A strong revenue ecosystem may include:

Business Development Representatives or Hunters
Focused on new logo acquisition, prospecting, opening opportunities, navigating early buying processes, and creating new pipeline.

Account Executives
Focused on developing opportunities, building business cases, managing complex buying groups, and closing new deals.

Account Managers or Farmers
Focused on retention, relationship expansion, cross-sell, upsell, renewal, and long-term account growth.

Customer Success Managers
Focused on adoption, value realisation, customer outcomes, usage, satisfaction, and expansion signals.

The issue is not whether these roles should exist.

The issue is whether they operate as silos or as a system.

In a modern commercial organisation, the hunter does not simply throw the customer over the wall.

The farmer does not passively wait for renewal.

Customer success does not only respond to issues.

Everyone contributes to revenue growth by managing different parts of the customer lifecycle.

When a Split Model Still Makes Sense

There are still situations where a split hunter / farmer model works well.

For example:

Enterprise software.
Complex technical sales.
High-volume transactional mid-market selling.
Large strategic accounts.
Businesses with high customer lifetime value.

In these environments, the skills required to acquire a new customer and manage a large existing account can be significantly different.

Specialisation can improve focus.

Hunters can focus on new pipeline.

Farmers can focus on account depth.

Customer success can focus on adoption and value realisation.

However, the split only works if the hand-offs are disciplined and the metrics are aligned.

If hunters are rewarded for closing deals that farmers later struggle to retain, the system is broken.

If farmers are rewarded only for retention and not expansion, growth is limited.

If customer success sees commercial conversations as “sales”, expansion opportunities are missed.

When a Hybrid Model Works Better

For startups, smaller sales teams, founder-led businesses, and specialist consultancies, a hybrid model may be more practical.

One person may need to hunt, farm, manage relationships, create opportunities, and support delivery.

This can work well if expectations are clear.

But it becomes dangerous when the role is too broad and the seller has no disciplined operating rhythm.

Hybrid sellers need structure.

They need time blocks for prospecting.
They need account growth plans.
They need clear opportunity criteria.
They need customer success signals.
They need pipeline discipline.

Without this, farming crowds out hunting.

The urgent work of looking after existing customers often pushes out the uncomfortable work of creating new opportunities.

What Sales Leaders Should Do

Sales leaders should stop asking:

“Do we need hunters or farmers?”

The better question is:

“What revenue motions do we need to execute brilliantly?”

Most businesses need a mix of:

New logo acquisition.
Customer retention.
Account expansion.
Customer success.
Referral generation.
Strategic account development.

Once those motions are clear, leaders can decide which roles should own which parts of the system.

The starting point is not personality.

It is strategy.

Final Thought

The hunter / farmer model is not dead.

But the old version is.

The idea that some people hunt and others simply farm is too limited for modern selling.

Hunters need to build trust.

Farmers need to create growth.

Customer success needs to surface value.

Sales leaders need to connect the whole system.

The future belongs to organisations that stop thinking in rigid labels and start thinking in revenue ecosystems.

Because growth does not come from hunting or farming alone.

It comes from creating, converting, retaining, and expanding value across the entire customer lifecycle.

Subscribe to Simon Hazeldine’s
“More Sales, More Often, More Margin” newsletter.
Simon’s regular newsletter contains powerful and practical sales and negotiation
strategies, tactics, and tips to help you to grow your revenue and bottom-line profits.

About the author

Simon Hazeldine is one of the leading sales psychology and sales performance experts, helping organisations improve sales results through neuroscience-based selling, sales leadership, negotiation and practical behaviour change.

He works internationally as a revenue growth and sales performance speaker, consultant, and coach. He empowers his clients to get more sales, more often with more margin.

Simon has spoken in over thirty countries and his client list includes some of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

He has a master’s degree in psychology, is the bestselling author of ten books that have been endorsed by a host of business leaders including multi-billionaire business legend Michael Dell and is co-founder of leading sales podcast “The Sales Chat Show”.

Simon is the creator of the neuroscience based “Brain Friendly Selling”® methodology.

Simon Hazeldine’s books:

• Neuro-Sell: How Neuroscience Can Power Your Sales Success
• Bare Knuckle Selling
• Bare Knuckle Negotiating
• Bare Knuckle Customer Service
• The Inner Winner
• How To Lead Your Sales Team – Virtually and in Person
• Virtual Selling Success
• How To Manage Your People’s Performance
• How To Create Effective Employee Development Plans
• Virtual Negotiation Success