I’m always blown away by how Seth Godin manages to squeeze really interesting questions out of seemingly inocuous topics.
His latest is on the personality differences between hunters and farmers. Seth says:
Clearly, farming is a very different activity from hunting. Farmers spend time sweating the details, worrying about the weather, making smart choices about seeds and breeding and working hard to avoid a bad crop. Hunters, on the other hand, have long periods of distracted noticing interrupted by brief moments of frenzied panic.[...]
Marketers confuse the two groups. Are you selling a product that helps farmers… and hoping that hunters will buy it? How do you expect that people will discover your product, or believe that it will help them? The woman who reads each issue of Vogue, hurrying through the pages then clicking over to Zappos to overnight order the latest styles–she’s hunting. Contrast this to the CTO who spends six months issuing RFPs to buy a PBX that was last updated three years ago… she’s farming.
My Dad segments the world into two types of people: trees and birds.
Trees like to stay in one place and grow roots. They enjoy stability and continuity.
Birds, on the other hand, can’t sit still. They move constantly, often to other countries. They enjoy change and variety.
What cool and useful ways have you come up with to segment your prospects and clients?
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