The hire looked right. Strong CV, good interviews, credible references. Six months in, the numbers aren't moving. Twelve months in, you're having a conversation nobody wanted to have.
This isn't a performance problem. It's a brief problem.
I've spent years placing commercial leaders into medical device companies, mostly at the post-clearance stage when every hire carries disproportionate weight. The pattern I see most often isn't bad candidates. It's good candidates in the wrong role architecture. And the reason that keeps happening is almost always the same: the brief didn't distinguish between two fundamentally different types of sales leader before the search began.
The hunter/farmer distinction has been in sales theory for decades, but it's applied poorly in practice. Particularly in medtech, where a VP Sales hire frequently needs to do both, and the brief doesn't specify which one matters more right now.
Hunters prospect. They build pipeline from nothing, close fast, move on. They thrive in early-stage commercial environments: new market entry, competitive displacement, post-510(k) launch. Put a hunter into a territory with an existing installed base and a long relationship cycle, and you'll get restlessness followed by resignation.
Farmers are different. They nurture, they retain, they grow accounts over time through trust and patience. Put a farmer in front of a blank page and a new geography, and you'll get anxiety followed by underperformance. Not because they're weak. Because the role was built for someone else.
The problem isn't that companies hire the wrong person. It's that the brief doesn't distinguish between the two. "Strong hunter mentality with the ability to grow accounts" is asking for a unicorn that doesn't exist. Or exists so rarely that building a hiring strategy around finding one is wishful thinking.
Regulatory focus theory supports the distinction: hunters operate from a promotion focus, chasing gains, while farmers operate from a prevention focus, protecting what exists. Mismatching the two doesn't just reduce effectiveness. It accelerates attrition.
The fix starts before the search. What does this role actually require in the first 12 months? New logo acquisition or account penetration? Greenfield territory or established relationships? Those answers determine the behavioural profile of the right hire. And no amount of interview technique substitutes for measuring it directly.
At Innotech, we use McQuaig behavioural psychometrics, delivered through our SIGNAL™ assessment process, to map exactly this: the hunter/farmer orientation of each candidate against the specific demands of the role as briefed. Not as a guarantee. As a data point that changes the quality of the conversation before a decision is made.
The 96% first-year retention figure we see across placements isn't luck. It's what happens when the brief is precise, the behavioural data is accurate, and the match is made on evidence rather than instinct.
If you're about to brief a VP Sales search and the role description says "hunter mentality plus relationship skills," call me before you send it out. That brief will get you the wrong shortlist.