Hunter Job Description

A hunter job description is built around one core mission: finding and winning new business. Hunters prospect, qualify, pitch, and close new customers, while colleagues in farming or account management roles look after the clients they bring in. This guide walks through the full hunter job description — daily duties, required skills, how performance is measured, pay structure, and the realistic path into the role.

What Is a Hunter Job?

A hunter is a professional whose main job is to bring in new customers or new accounts. The title shows up most often in sales, business development, and recruitment, but the underlying logic applies anywhere an organization needs someone to open doors rather than maintain them.

In sales teams, “hunter” is shorthand for a new-business focus. Hunters prospect cold, run discovery calls, handle objections, and negotiate first deals. Once an account is signed, it is usually handed to an account manager or “farmer” who grows the relationship over time.

• Also called: new business development representative, account executive (new logo), sales hunter, business development manager, territory manager.
• Main goal: win new customers, logos, or contracts.
• Common industries: software, staffing and recruiting, logistics, financial services, advertising, manufacturing, healthcare services.
• Reporting line: usually a sales manager, head of revenue, or business development director.
• Work setting: a mix of remote prospecting, video calls, office time, and occasional travel to meetings or trade events.

Hunter vs Farmer: The Key Difference

Many job postings mention both terms in the same paragraph, so it helps to know exactly where one role ends and the other begins.

Some companies blend both sets of duties into a single role. That is common in smaller businesses, where one person closes a deal and then keeps the client. Blended roles offer variety, but the workload is heavier and the targets can pull in two directions at once.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

Details differ by industry, but most hunter job descriptions contain a similar set of responsibilities.

• Prospecting: building target lists, researching companies and decision-makers, and finding contact details.
• Outbound outreach: cold calls, personalised email sequences, LinkedIn messages, and follow-ups.
• Inbound lead handling: responding quickly to demo requests, event leads, and website enquiries.
• Discovery: asking questions to understand goals, pain points, budget, timeline, and who signs off.
• Qualification: deciding which opportunities are worth pursuing and which should be disqualified early.
• Pitching and demos: presenting the product, service, or solution in terms of the buyer’s problem.
• Negotiation and closing: handling pricing discussions, terms, and final approvals.
• Pipeline management: keeping the CRM accurate and forecasts realistic.
• Handover: briefing account managers or delivery teams so the client onboarding runs smoothly.
• Reporting: sharing activity numbers, conversion rates, and market feedback with leadership.

In industries such as staffing or recruitment, the same duties shift slightly. A recruitment hunter sources clients who need hires, negotiates fee agreements, and then works with delivery teams to fill the roles. In logistics or manufacturing, the hunter often sells capacity, contracts, or long-term supply deals.

Skills and Qualifications Employers Look For

Hiring managers usually screen for a mix of provable experience and the temperament to keep going after a rejection. A degree is often preferred but rarely mandatory if the track record is strong.

Hard Skills and Experience

• Two or more years in a quota-carrying sales or business development role in a similar market.
• Comfort with outbound tools such as CRM platforms, diallers, email sequencing software, and lead databases.
• Ability to build a territory plan and prioritise accounts by potential value.
• Solid understanding of sales stages, forecasting, and pipeline hygiene.
• Negotiation experience, including handling procurement and legal review.
• Industry or product knowledge relevant to the employer’s market.

Soft Skills That Decide Who Lasts

• Resilience: most outreach gets ignored, and the job continues anyway.
• Curiosity: strong hunters genuinely want to understand how a buyer’s business works.
• Self-management: no one assigns daily tasks in most hunter roles, so structure has to come from within.
• Clear communication: short, specific messages beat long, polished ones.
• Coaching mindset: accepting feedback on call recordings and adjusting quickly.

The best hunters do not enjoy rejection. They simply stop taking it personally and treat each “no” as information.

A Day in the Life of a Hunter

No two days look identical, but a typical schedule follows a recognisable pattern.

• Early morning: reviewing the pipeline, checking replies from overnight, and confirming the day’s meetings.
• Mid-morning: a focused prospecting block — calls, emails, and social outreach to new contacts.
• Midday: discovery calls or product demos with qualified buyers.
• Afternoon: follow-ups, proposal writing, and internal calls with solution engineers or delivery teams.
• End of day: updating the CRM, logging next steps, and preparing the following day’s target list.

Hunters often protect blocks of uninterrupted time for outreach. A calendar full of internal meetings is one of the fastest ways for new-business numbers to drop.

How Hunters Are Measured

Performance in a hunter role is usually judged on a small number of hard numbers rather than effort alone.

• New revenue closed: the headline figure and the one most targets are set against.
• New accounts won: useful when deal sizes vary widely.
• Qualified pipeline created: measures whether future targets are realistic.
• Activity volume: calls, emails, and meetings booked, tracked as leading indicators.
• Conversion rates: outreach-to-meeting, meeting-to-opportunity, and opportunity-to-close.
• Sales cycle length: how quickly deals move from first contact to signature.
• Forecast accuracy: whether predicted deals actually land.

A hunter’s calendar is measured by conversations started, not tasks completed.

Compensation and Career Path

Hunter roles almost always pay through a base salary plus variable commission, and sometimes an additional bonus tied to annual targets. The split leans more heavily toward commission than in account management roles, which is what makes the job high-reward but also less predictable month to month.

• Base salary: a fixed amount paid regardless of results, usually covering living costs.
• Commission: a percentage of revenue closed, sometimes with accelerators once targets are exceeded.
• Bonuses: quarterly or annual payouts for hitting strategic goals such as new-market wins.
• Ramps: a guaranteed minimum commission for the first few months while the pipeline builds.
• Typical progression: business development representative, account executive, senior or enterprise hunter, team lead, sales manager, head of revenue.
• Lateral moves: many hunters shift into sales engineering, partnerships, customer success leadership, or founding their own business.

Exact figures vary widely by country, industry, and company size, so it is worth checking local market data and asking about the commission plan in detail before accepting an offer.

Common Challenges and How to Handle Them

The hunter job description looks simple on paper and feels demanding in practice. Knowing the common obstacles in advance makes them easier to manage.

• Long dry spells: build a consistent prospecting routine instead of relying on bursts of effort.
• Inconsistent pipeline: track weekly leading indicators so problems appear before the quarter ends.
• Territory or market changes: re-qualify your target list regularly and test new segments.
• Rejection fatigue: separate the outcome from your self-worth and celebrate small wins.
• Unclear targets: ask for written definitions of a qualified opportunity and a closed deal.
• Handoff friction: agree with account managers on exactly what information gets passed over and when.

Final Thoughts

A hunter job description ultimately describes a role for people who enjoy starting things. The work is repetitive by design — prospect, qualify, pitch, close, repeat — and the rewards are tied directly to how consistently that loop runs. If you like autonomy, measurable progress, and conversations with new people every week, the hunter path offers a clear route into senior sales and revenue leadership. If you prefer depth and long relationships, a farming or account management role is likely a better fit.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Hunter Job Description

What does a hunter actually do all day?

A hunter spends most of the day finding and speaking with potential new customers. That means researching target companies, sending outreach, making calls, running discovery meetings, and following up on proposals. The rest of the time goes into CRM updates, internal coordination, and planning the next day’s list of prospects.

Is a hunter role the same as an account executive?

Often, yes. Many companies use “account executive” for a hunter who owns new business in a defined territory. The distinction matters when a company also has account managers or farmers, because then the account executive title usually means new logos only, while account managers handle existing clients.

Do hunter roles require a degree?

Many employers prefer a degree, but proven results frequently matter more. A candidate with two or three years of quota-carrying experience and strong references can often compete successfully against a graduate with no sales record, especially in industries where product knowledge can be taught.

What is the difference between a hunter and a farmer in sales?

A hunter wins new accounts, while a farmer grows and retains accounts that already exist. Hunters are measured on new revenue and new logos, and farmers are measured on retention, renewals, and expansion. The skills overlap, but the daily rhythm and the metrics are quite different.

How is hunter performance measured?

Usually by new revenue closed, new accounts won, and pipeline generated, supported by activity metrics such as meetings booked and calls made. Conversion rates and forecast accuracy are also common, because they show whether the process behind the results is reliable.

How is a hunter paid?

Most hunter roles combine a base salary with commission on closed deals, and sometimes a bonus for hitting annual targets. The commission portion tends to be larger than in account management roles, which means income can rise sharply in a good quarter and dip in a slow one.

Is hunter work stressful?

It can be. Targets are visible, results are public within the team, and rejection is a daily part of the job. Stress is manageable when the prospecting routine is consistent and when managers coach on process rather than only on numbers.

Can someone move from farmer to hunter?

Yes, and it happens regularly. Account managers usually already understand the product and the customer, so the main gap is prospecting discipline. Practising cold outreach and building comfort with early-stage conversations is the fastest way to make the switch.

What industries hire the most hunters?

Software and technology, staffing and recruitment, logistics, financial services, advertising and marketing agencies, manufacturing, and business services are among the most active. Any industry where new customers must be found rather than waited for will have hunter roles.

What should I ask in a hunter job interview?

Ask how the territory is defined, what percentage of reps hit target last period, how the commission plan works including accelerators and clawbacks, how long the average sales cycle is, and who owns the account after the deal closes. The answers reveal whether the role is set up for realistic success.