Building A Balanced Sales Portfolio

A strong sales pipeline is not simply a long list of opportunities. It is a balanced portfolio of opportunities that serve different purposes.

We describe those opportunities as Rabbits, Deer, and Elephants.

• Rabbits pay the bills today.

• Deer develop the territory.

• Elephants change the year.

The value of this model is not just in labeling opportunities. Each animal requires a different approach. They care about different things, move at different speeds, involve different people, and require the salesperson to behave differently.

Rabbits (Pay the Bills Today):

Rabbit opportunities are usually immediate and transactional.

These customers are often asking:

• Do you have it?

• Can I get it today?

• Will you answer the phone?

• Are you easy to deal with?

• Are you fair on price?

  
  

The salesperson’s approach should emphasize speed, availability, and trust.

The best actions are to respond quickly, solve the immediate problem, make ordering easy, learn the customer’s repeat needs, and ask for the next job.

The goal with Rabbits is repeat business and loyalty, not a long sales cycle.

Rabbits are important. They create activity, generate revenue, and often open the door to stronger customer relationships.

The problem begins when a salesperson becomes almost exclusively a Rabbit hunter.

A Rabbit-heavy portfolio creates limited growth opportunities. It also keeps the salesperson and the entire company in a highly reactive posture.

Orders arrive with short timelines. Customers need immediate answers.

Quotes, sourcing, purchasing, scheduling, delivery, and problem-solving all become urgent.

Before long, everyone is operating in what I call firefighting mode.

This creates stress and places strain on the entire team. Sales, operations, estimating, purchasing, warehouse teams, delivery drivers, and leadership are constantly reacting to the next urgent request instead of planning ahead.

Rabbit sales may sometimes produce higher margins, but those margins can come at a cost.

The organization absorbs the hidden expense through disruption, rushed decisions, expedited deliveries, schedule changes, overtime, rework, and competing priorities.

Rabbits are not bad business. They pay the bills today. They simply cannot be the entire strategy.

Deer (Develop the Territory):

Deer opportunities require a different approach.

The focus shifts from completing a single transaction to developing the account over time through stronger relationships, consistent performance, and intentional account development.

These customers care about:

• Reliability

• Jobsite support

• Pricing consistency

• Product knowledge

• Credit terms

• Fewer headaches

• Working with someone who understands their business

  
  

The salesperson’s approach should emphasize relationships, consistency, and account development.

That means scheduling regular check-ins, understanding the customer’s project calendar, tracking what they buy, introducing better products, helping prevent delays, and building relationships beyond a single contact.

The salesperson may need to develop relationships with the owner, project manager, superintendent, foreman, purchaser, and other influencers within the same company.

A useful question might be:

“What material, scheduling, or supply issues cost you the most time across your jobs?”

The goal with Deer is to become the customer’s default supplier or preferred partner, not just another vendor.

Deer develop the territory because they create dependable relationships, recurring opportunities, and a stronger position inside the customer’s business.

They also allow the salesperson and the company to plan more effectively. Instead of responding only to what is urgent today, the team gains visibility into upcoming work, future needs, and potential problems.

Elephants (Change the Year):

Elephants are strategic opportunities that can significantly affect annual performance.

They require a strategic, patient, multi-contact, and team-based approach.

Elephants almost always requires a team approach.

Winning and supporting the opportunity may involve sales leadership, operations, purchasing, estimating, project management, logistics, finance, safety, and senior executives.

The customer is not simply evaluating the salesperson. They are evaluating whether the entire organization can deliver.

These customers may care about:

• Risk reduction

• Standardization

• Vendor reliability

• Safety

• Compliance

• Logistics

• Reporting

• Pricing structure

• The ability to support multiple jobs or locations

• The company’s capacity to scale

  
  

Elephants cannot be pursued with Rabbit-hunting behavior.

Responsiveness still matters, but responsiveness alone will not win the opportunity.

The salesperson must map the account, identify decision-makers and influencers, understand the procurement process, build more than one relationship, and align the right people from their own company to support the opportunity.

It is often better to begin with a smaller win, prove reliability, and expand over time.

Most importantly, the salesperson must bring solutions, not just products—and a team capable of delivering them.

A useful question might be:

“Where do supply, scheduling, or project problems create the most friction between purchasing, project management, and the field?”

The goal with Elephants is not to close them quickly.

The goal is to earn entry, prove value, align the team, and expand.

Company Size Does Not Define the Animal:

One of the most important things I learned while exploring this idea is that the type of animal being pursued has less to do with the size of the company than we might assume.

It has more to do with:

• Who you are dealing with

• The strength of the relationship

• The problem you are solving

• The stage of the opportunity

• The number of people involved

• The potential impact of the decision

  
  

• A large company can present a Rabbit opportunity.

• A small or midsized company can present an Elephant.

• The same customer may even have Rabbit, Deer, and Elephant opportunities happening at the same time.

  
  

A salesperson may be filling an urgent order for one person, developing a broader account relationship with another, and working with leadership on a strategic solution that could affect several projects or locations.

The key is understanding how the opportunity behaves.

• What does the customer care about?

• Who is involved?

• What problem are they trying to solve?

• How much trust has been established?

• What must happen before the opportunity can move forward?

What Does a Balanced Portfolio Look Like?

There is no single portfolio mix that works for every organization.

The right balance depends on the market, the company’s operating model, and its ability to surge and scale as demand changes.

For a construction-focused organization, a healthy target—measured by revenue, gross profit, or sales effort—might look like:

• 40–50% Rabbits 

• 35–45% Deer 

• 10–20% Elephants 

  
  

This mix recognizes that Rabbit business will remain an important part of the organization. It produces near-term revenue, often carries strong margins, and helps maintain customer relationships.

But Rabbits should not consume so much time and capacity that the team never develops Deer or pursues Elephants.

Deer provide recurring business, stronger account relationships, better visibility, and greater predictability.

Elephants create significant growth opportunities, but they also require patience, coordination, organizational capacity, and almost always a team approach.

In reality, many sales teams are much more heavily weighted toward Rabbits. Their portfolios may look closer to:

• 70–80% Rabbits 

• 15–25% Deer 

• 0–5% Elephants 

  
  

This imbalance matters.

When most of the portfolio is made up of Rabbits, the team may stay busy and produce revenue, but it often remains reactive. Urgent requests dominate the calendar. Lead times shrink. Priorities shift constantly. Sales and operations spend more time firefighting than planning.

At the same time, too little attention is being given to developing Deer and pursuing Elephants. That limits account growth, reduces predictability, and makes the organization overly dependent on short-cycle opportunities.

Identifying the imbalance is the first step.

Once a team understands the current mix of its portfolio, it can adjust the focus of the hunt.

That may mean protecting more time for account development, building relationships with additional decision-makers, pursuing larger problems, strengthening coordination between sales and operations, or involving the broader team earlier in strategic opportunities.

The target percentages are not a rigid formula. They are a planning guide.

The real question is not only:

How much can we sell?

It is also:

What mix of business can our team serve well, predictably, and profitably?

A balanced portfolio creates the time and space to properly service existing accounts. It allows sales and operations to plan ahead, establish realistic lead times, coordinate resources, and match customer commitments to the team’s actual capacity.

Rabbits may dominate the transaction count, but they should not dominate the entire calendar.

Balance the Portfolio—and the Calendar

A balanced portfolio gives the company immediate revenue, dependable account development, and meaningful long-term growth.

• Rabbits create movement and cash flow.

• Deer build stronger territories and more dependable customer relationships.

• Elephants create the possibility of changing the year.

  
  

Balance does not happen accidentally.

Salespeople must deliberately allocate time to serving today’s customers, developing existing accounts, prospecting for new opportunities, maintaining jobsite and field visibility, following up on quotes, and coordinating with internal partners.

A salesperson who spends the entire week responding to Rabbits may feel busy, but activity alone does not create a balanced portfolio.

• The portfolio tells us where to hunt.

• The calendar sequences the work required to succeed.

  
  

Predictable growth does not come from chasing every opportunity in the same way. It comes from recognizing what you are pursuing, understanding what matters to the customer, and adjusting your approach accordingly.

Rabbits pay the bills today. Deer develop the territory. Elephants change the year.

The strongest salespeople—and the strongest companies—know how to pursue all three.