Noteworthy marketeer Seth Godin wrote on his blog recently about people falling into one of two categories. According to Seth, there are two personas - hunters and farmers. If your marketing effort is having difficulty, it may be becuase you may be taking a "farming approach" to hunters or a "hunting approach" to farmers.

Here are some of Seth's fascinatinig bullet points:

- George Clooney (in Up in the Air) and James Bond are both fictional hunters. Give them a desk job and they freak out.

- Farmers don't dislike technology. They dislike failure. Technology that works is a boon.

- Hunters are in sync with Google, a hunting site, farmers like Facebook.

- When you promote a first-rate hunting salesperson to internal sales management, be prepared for failure.

- Farmers prefer productive meetings, hunters want to simply try stuff and see what happens.

- Warren Buffet is a farmer. So is Bill Gates. Mark Cuban is a hunter.

- Hunters want a high-stakes mission, farmers want to avoid epic failure.

- Trade shows are designed to entrance hunters, yet all too often, the booths are staffed with farmers.

The last hundred years of our economy favored smart farmers. It seems as though the next hundred are going to belong to the persistent hunters able to stick with it for the long haul.

A hunter will often buy something merely because it is difficult to acquire. One of the paradoxes of venture capital is that it takes a hunter to get the investment and a farmer to patiently make the business work. A farmer often relies on other farmers in her peer group to be sure a purchase is riskless.

Do you think in terms of hunters and farmers when you promote your business?

Lamar Morgan

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