SeedSeller Academy: Recent Episodes
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Online training designed to help you overcome sales objections, stay out of price fights, and close more sales with farmers.
What Are You Telling Yourself?
Have you ever been out in public and saw someone talking to themselves, out loud. Most often people doing this are labeled mentally disturbed and are often committed to a facility for treatment.
But few people realize we all talk to ourselves all the time, just not out loud, unless you also want to find yourself in a strait jacket. But the person we have conversations with most often is ourselves. Our internal dialogue goes on almost nonstop. It can range from singing a song in our head, rehearsing a speech or repeating a phone number. We may go through our plans for the day, internally critique someone we see for the way they look or talk to ourselves about a project we should have finished long ago.
We may work through problems in our mind or hype ourselves up to meet a challenge. Very often we use internal dialogue to talk ourselves into doing something we’re afraid of doing.
I’m always talking to myself, not out loud of course. Well sometimes I call myself a dumbass out loud when I do a mindless thing like knock over a lamp with my gorilla length arms or trip over a step with my clown size feet. But those things won’t get me committed. Most of my internal talk is about how I can be a better person, a better father, a better grandfather and a better mentor to my clients.
I’m constantly in conversation with myself, critiquing my last workout, my last training session or my last speech. I’m constantly discussing in my mind what I need to do each day as well as the rest of the week. I’m always thinking about the last conversation I had with a seed seller and how I could have done a better job explaining.
It’s important to have internal dialogue when you’re in sales, especially seed sales. Since seed is a living breathing organism subject to more than a thousand variables and responsible for a farmer’s entire livelihood, there are plenty of things for reps to think about, or should I say, talk about in their minds.
When I was selling seed I never stopped thinking about every customer who bought seed from me. I was constantly discussing with myself whether or not I had prepared the grower well enough to raise my varieties properly. I was discussing with myself how I was going to explain a price raise to growers who challenged it, or why I couldn’t get a favorite variety they had on order.
But one of the most common internal conversations salespeople have centers on making prospecting calls. Most of the dialogue seed sellers have going on in their minds is planning how to make prospecting as successful as possible. We’re all usually thinking about how to plan our approach. We go over in our minds what to talk about, including the size of the order we’re going to ask for and what we’re going to do if they don’t want to buy that much. But when we dialogue the concept of prospecting in our minds it usually creates guilty feelings for not having done enough of it. I used to beat myself up all year long for that one. Why didn’t I just make more prospecting calls and settle the argument in my mind?
What kind of dialogue do you have going on in your mind every day concerning seed selling? Are you telling yourself what a great job you do or are you feeling guilty for not getting more selling done prior to harvest?
Research shows that positive self-talk can improve self-esteem, stress management and wellbeing. It can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety and reduce risk of self-harm and suicide. As we communicate more with ourselves, we’re more able to locate the sources of our feelings and experience them more fully. It also helps us work through problems by making them the forefront of our thoughts.
But regardless of the messages stirring around in your mind, the best way to enhance feelings of positivity and progress is to get your ass out on the road and call on prospects and customers. I found after more than 45 years in sales, virtually every problem and every negative thought went away once I was out doing my job, calling on prospects and customers. Everything was suddenly right in the world.
Make sure you spend enough time doing what you are supposed to be doing as a seller, selling seed. You’ll find that it will not only make you happy but it will also keep you from being put into a strait jacket for standing outside your seed warehouse talking out loud to yourself.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Why Do Salespeople Hate Scripts?
The great Bill Walsh, Super Bowl winning coach of the San Francisco 49er’s said, “People without plans are like a line of infantrymen without a strong leader, they’re much more likely to get overwhelmed and fall apart. He said, to avoid those risks I scripted the first 25 plays of the beginning of each game. That way I could sleep at night and know exactly what was going to happen before the game even started because I had a plan. He said you can’t just shoot in the dark and respond to what’s thrown at you. You need to have the plan and make your opponent respond to you. Don’t try to make it up on the fly.”
In my training sales sessions, I lay the groundwork for a step-by-step process on how to make sales calls that will lead the prospect to liking you, trusting you and wanting to buy from you. Later in my program I pull together everything we’ve talked about during the training and put it into a complete sale story that I then highlight and put in the form of a storybook. The storybook is intended to guide the conversation during the sales call from start to finish.
It’s not a presentation but a conversation.
At that point in my training I pick a student at random to come up and role play a sales call with me and play the part of the farmer. Once the call is over and everyone sees how smoothly it can go using this process and almost everyone is impressed.
But there is always someone in the room who will yell out as my partner walks back to his seat, “You were way too easy on him.”
At that point the partner will respond, “You try to stump him or throw him off, you can’t do it, I tried. He’s in total control, leading the conversation where I don’t even know where I’m going and when I tried to object he handled it smoothly and got right back on track.”
All of the partners I’ve had over the years will say, “YOU CAN’T DO IT, YOU TRY IT.
The reason my sales calls, whether in the classroom or in the field with sales reps calling on farmers go so smoothly is because I write my story out word for word, then practice it word for word ahead of time. I role play it with a partner at least 10 times to make sure it sounds good and I know what to say when the prospect objects or asks questions. It’s all about role play practicing around a sales script.
But when I give my word for word script to students, most of them say, well, that’s not what I would say, or what if it doesn’t work like you want it to?
They have no script, no plan and no sales story of their own, but they’re quick to critique mine even after they see it work.
I tell every sales rep who wants to know how to be successful making sales calls and become great at handling objections that it’s all having a prepared, well- practiced story, a plan. They need to write their story word for word then practice it that way. As they practice they will modify it for better fit.
The sales story and the story book do several very important things for every seed sellers who want to make selling seed easier and more productive.
- They force the seller to think about what to say, how to say it and when to say it. That’s the definition of being in control and getting what you want.
- They serve as a guide when practicing and role playing the sales call. If you don’t have a play book to practice from, you can’t practice running plays to make sure everything is working the way you want it to.
- The sales storybook serves as a conversation piece for the prospect and customer and keeps it from becoming a sales pitch. It allows the call to be interactive which prospects love.
- A good sales story used with the guidance of a storybook more than doubles sales success.
But why do most salespeople resist doing one of the simplest things that will make them over the top successful if they do it? It’s because they’re lazy. It only takes a few hours to put together a word for word story but for many that seems too hard because they first have to think about what to say and how to say it. But that’s what my scripts are for. If they did nothing else but follow my script word for word, they increase their chances of getting orders ten-fold.
As all of you know, there are only two things you need to do to be successful in sales. 1. Make lots of calls and 2. Have a great story. The story is everything that happens once the contact is made. It’s how you look, how your vehicle looks, what your materials look like and how much preparation the prospect thinks you put into preparing for his or her particular sales calls.
If you haven’t been preparing a script prior to making sales calls, the idea of having a great story goes out the window.
Start writing your story word for word. It will tell you how good or bad your presentation actually is and wouldn’t it be a tragedy if your prospects thought you were really bad but you didn’t know it and they bought seed from you out of pity? It would be like having bad breath and no one telling you.
Your relationship is bound to be short lived.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Which Sales Line Are You Standing In?
I love the Seinfeld episode where George is in a big hurry to get somewhere, so he hales a taxicab in very heavy traffic and jumps into the back seat. The driver starts inching ahead in congested traffic but George is very impatient. He sees an opening in the lane next to them so he begs the driver to change lanes.
Just as they change lanes, the lane they were in speeds up and moves past them as they sit, stalled in the new lane. George sees that he made a mistake and again begs the cab driver to change back to the other lane so the driver does. At that point the driver stops at a yellow light and George gets upset and rants and raves for not running the yellow.
The driver gets mad and tells George to get out of his cab.
It is so funny.
How many times have you changed lanes in traffic or in the grocery story and when you did, discovered it was the wrong decision?
I’m sure we’ve all done it.
Seed sellers are also notorious for changing lanes, metaphorically speaking. It comes from the great influence environment can have on the performance of the living organisms we sell. Variety performance often changes every year based on the one thousand variables.
When the performance of certain varieties change from year to the next, seed sellers often believe they need to change to different varieties to compensate for disappointing results the previous year.
They try to outguess mother nature and introduce different varieties into a grower’s program because of what happened the previous season to a variety. But most often, those changes turn out to be bad decisions. First of all, pulling varieties out of a line-up based on one year’s performance tells the farmer you’ve just been guessing as what to put on his farm and that you’re still guessing. Second, it shows you’re not focused on raising the grower’s entire farm yield average which should be the ONLY focus and instead you’re looking at an individual variety.
And lastly, just as George Costanza in Seinfeld found himself in a worst position each time they changed lanes, the same is true when a seller jumps from one variety to the next based on a single year’s results. It hurts both the farmer and the seller.
I’m not saying a seed seller shouldn’t introduce new varieties into a portfolio. But you do it only when you believe you can improve the portfolio.
But changing varieties isn’t the only lane change we make. We often change lanes by offering new customers special deals like a first look at new varieties or extra discounts for being first time buyers, instead of staying in the lane that got us where we are by taking care of our most loyal customers.
Seed sellers often change lanes by jumping from program to program in efforts to get sales, instead of forging ahead in the lane of selling value where they belong. That’s a lane change you don’t want to make.
If you ever find yourself feeling that you need to change lanes, I mean play Russian Roulette with your varieties or your programs, think again. Look at your sales offering, your sales story and your sales approach. It may not be the varieties or programs at all, it just may be YOU.
Happy Selling, Rod Osthus
Most people are familiar with the game of Dominos. The objective of the game is for players to take a domino from the ones in their hand and attach it to one end of those already played so that the sum of the end tiles is divisible by five or three. If they don’t have a playable domino in their hand they need to draw one from what’s called the bone pile. The first player to get rid of all of their dominos wins.
But we’ve also seen dominos stood on end in a long line to show how pushing one domino over, into the one beside it, knocking it over, can create a chain reaction that knocks over every domino in that line. In fact, in his excellent book, “The One Thing”, Gary Keller talks about a company in the Netherlands that set the world record chain reaction domino fall by lining up nearly 4.5 million dominos then knocking them over with the push of just the first domino. Research has also shown that a single domino can knock over another domino next to it that is 50% larger that itself when pushed into that larger domino. Therefore, the smallest domino could in essence, topple one the size of a skyscraper if each domino in the line was 50% larger than the one before it, leading to the last one that is skyscraper in size.
Unfortunately, the domino effect has also been tried, unsuccessfully by seed sellers who have attempted to use it as a fast way to increase sales. It’s based on the strategy of writing a small trial size order with new customers. They sell the buyer just one variety or enter their test plot or give them free seed. Their hope is small actions like those will get the prospect to place a much larger order the next year. That’s equivalent to expecting the first small commitment to knock over a much larger commitment, what I call the domino effect.
That strategy never works for a number of reasons.
First, small trial size orders generate virtually no commitment from the new buyer. They don’t really care if that small amount of seed does well or not, it won’t in essence, knock over a larger order for the sales rep. Next, farmers don’t buy seed, they buy perceptions. How many times have you seen a customer who has been loyal to a competitor of yours leave his favorite company if you beat that competitor in a side by side the first time they compete?
The answer is never.
When have you seen a customer who is loyal to your competitor leave his favorite company and buy from you because his best product let him down?
That seldom happens either.
And third, until a new prospects like you, trust you and “perceive” that you are bringing value outside of products, they won’t buy from you. The prospect needs to truly believe you can help him in his farming operation.
Just so you know, when used properly, the domino effect CAN work for you and help you dramatically increase sales. Start by dressing up so farmers can perceive you as being smart, a leader and professional. Make sure your vehicle is spotless inside and out so they can perceive you as representing a company that cares about details and is quality driven. Practice your sales opening so you take the prospect Outside the Circle right away and keep them there.
Ask them where they want to take their yields the next year and what their plans are to get there. Take them to their fields to show them you don’t focus on yield or plant populations anymore, but on maximizing bushels per 1000 plants.
Can you see how the domino effect can be played out? Can you see how each step, starting with how you dress can continue to raise perceptions and increase interest in doing business with you while knocking down their level a doubt? Doubt is the biggest domino in the buying chain.
You can use the domino effect the way I just described it, but never use it in attempts to increase order size. Use it instead to raise perception and ultimately knockdown doubt, the largest domino in the sales chain.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Do You Have a Leak in Your Sales Boat?
Many seed sellers lose business from current customers every year that often go undetected.
When sellers don’t know they are losing customers they also don’t realized they’re starting the new sales season in the hole. That means every unit of new sales they get will go to bringing them BACK to where they ended up the previous year. Those new sales are used to compensate for losses they endured from customers who stopped buying.
Too often, field sellers don’t know they’ve lost customers because they weren’t with every one of them at harvest to solidify next year’s plan and seed order for the next year. In fact, it’s often late into the selling season before sales reps even realize some customers aren’t going to buy what they bought the previous year. Until they get back to the sales base they finished with the previous year, new sales are simply used to patch up a broken territory.
I call that having a “leak in your boat.”
Once a sales rep determines he or she has a leak in their boat, that is they have been losing sales from current customers, they can’t just go charging out there and start calling on new customers in an attempt to fill in for what was lost. There are certain protocols sellers need to follow so they know how many sales they need to replace and how to make sure the leak is completely plugged.
First of all, like having an actual leak in boat, the first thing the Captain needs to do is make sure all of the existing passengers are ok. Likewise, sales reps need to make sure all of their current customers are solid and are going to keep buying at the same level or higher than the previous year. If the sales boat continues to leak because additional customers plan to stop buying and the rep is not aware of it, it does little good to add more sales because the goal cannot be reached due to the continued leak, or loss of sales. The leak was not stopped.
Next, once every customer is deemed as being solid, it’s essential to find out the source of the leak. That is, why did customers stop buying in the first place? If the reason isn’t found and fixed, other customers may also stop buying in the future. Once the reason for customers leaving or deciding to buy less is discovered, it can be fixed, preventing any more losses of current sales.
The last step is to attack the problem of replacing lost sales. That means putting together an aggressive prospecting plan then practicing and role-playing it over and over. That plan also needs to include strategies that make every new customer want to become a permanent customer. That means showing them how you focus on helping them raise yields and not just on trying to sell them something.
There is so much opportunity in the marketplace to get new sales because about 30% of the seed market moves around every year looking for a new home. That’s how much farmers change their minds during and after harvest. That means many sales reps have a leak in their boat because their losses become increased sales for us. That also means sales from customers who buy less than the previous year will need to be replaced in the form of new business. To make sales gains count, you need to make sure there is no leak in your boat while taking the 30% free market from other companies who still have leaks in their boats and don’t even know it.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Did You Ever Wonder Why Salespeople Don’t Hit Their Sales Goals?
Robert Brault said, “We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.”
When I ask seed sellers what their primary goal is, they always say the same thing, “to reach my sales goal.” Then I ask them what that means and they always look at me funny and say, “It means to sell more seed”, as if I don’t get it. To them, that is their primary goal when in fact, as Robert Brault says, it’s actually the lesser goal.
How can achieving a sales goal be a lesser goal when that’s what your company needs to have you do? After all, it’s the reason seed sellers exist, to achieve their seed sales goal, isn’t it? But that kind of thinking is the reason seed sellers don’t make their goals. They don’t understand the difference between their real primary goal and what is really the lesser goal which they too often focused on.
What sales reps consider their primary goal of achieving their sales goal is not the end goal but their lesser goal. Instead, their primary goal is to fully execute the process that takes them to their sales goal. Without working the processes, the sales goal can never be achieved. That’s where most salespeople fail. They set a sales goal, then focus on that number instead of focusing on perfect execution of the steps to achieving that number.
For example, if your goal is to increase seed sales by 5000 units, that’s not your primary goal. Your primary goal is how many new prospects you will need to call on to get the number of new customers you need to sell at a given order size to get your increase and achieve your sales goal. Your primary goal is always the critical element that ends up determining whether or not you make your sales goal.
Do you see how your so-called primary goal of getting 5000 units of increase becomes your lesser goal because you can’t achieve it without your primary goal of contacting the number of prospects needed?
Are you focused on lesser goals that are keeping you from achieving your primary goal? For example, do you have a primary goal of getting customers to order their seed before harvest but it’s not happening? That’s because you’re avoiding your real primary goal of setting the date with each grower to do their cropping plan prior to harvest when you’re visiting their planter in the spring, or during the post planting report card visit or during a summer field visit. Getting them to order their seed before harvest is your lesser goal because it won’t happen unless your primary goal of setting the date for summer development of the seed plan is in place. That’s your primary goal.
There are so many examples of seed sellers who confuse primary goals and lesser goals. Discover which one you’re actually focusing on, then spend your time and effort in the right place. I bet you’re like 98% of all seed sellers. They don’t think about the difference between a primary goal and a lesser goal, therefore, they’re spinning their wheels, not making the progress they need and want.
My primary goal is not to do this podcast every week. That’s my lesser goal. My primary goal is to come up with a topic and write the podcast so I can achieve my lesser goal of recording it.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
How Much Do You Vary in Value?
I feel bad for sales reps who lose their ability to sell seed. I mourn the fact that if they once had that ability, can no longer do it. The tenure of these seed sellers often comes to an end because of their own actions, or should I say, inactions.
This year is no different from most years in agriculture. In fact, it’s getting so you can’t tell one year from the other when it comes to the problems and complaints farmers have. With depressed markets, high prices and the possibility of below average crop yields in many areas, there’s increasing pressure on sellers to justify their value and the value of their products because farmers are so focused on saving money to stay in business. Having pressure from down markets is one thing, but when competitors make it worse by giving farmers whatever they want, value sellers can easily feel ganged up on. That causes even the staunchest of value sellers, the ones who know THEY are the real value, to question the value they are actually bringing to a sale.
I see this every day in my training sessions. As soon as I remind everyone THEY are the only value a farmer gets when he buys seed, I can see the lack of belief in their eyes. I tell them farmers can buy anything they want from anyone they want, at any price they want, but they can’t get the sales rep. Many don’t believe they bring that kind of value to a grower.
But even those who KNOW THEY are the only value farmers get during a seed sale, often allow their own value to fluctuate with market prices, farmers’ attitudes and farmers’ search of ways to save money. Their belief in themselves and what they can bring to farmers wavers and that can’t happen because farmers always win that game.
A friend of mine who was a very successful seed seller for years always said, “When the markets are down and farmers are in a bad mood, and the going gets tough, the tough get the hell out of town.” Of course he said that in jest. But his point was that so many reps give up the fight when things get hard, stop selling value and make themselves into a commodity.
What good are you to customers if you don’t bring value outside of your products and services. A robot can deliver the products and services. Farmers need a knowledgeable rep who can apply production principles farmers can’t apply on their own because they don’t know how. Top seed sellers know how to take farmers to new levels of profitability, regardless of what the markets do.
If you give in and give up your own value, you become useless to your company, yourself and most of all your customers. They need the value you bring now more than ever. Don’t disappoint them. Don’t let your value vary with farmer attitudes. Instead, stay consistent and use your value to shore-up farmer attitudes and keep them on track to profitability. Use your talents to help them make more money. After all, you’re the only one who can do it.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Don’t Let Customers Waste Valuable Time?
You’ve all heard the quote by Abraham Lincoln, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
A sales rep was trying to get one of her good customers who was notorious for doing his cropping plan late, to stop putting it off. The farmer started telling her during the summer that he wanted to wait until after harvest to see what the crop was going to do before he put together his cropping plan and wrote his seed order.
But when harvest was over, his next comment was, “Input costs are too high so I want to wait for the deals to come out before I decide what I’m going to do.” And when the rep contacted him again, he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. My wife and I are going on a trip to Europe for two weeks. When we get back we can talk about the crop plan.
You will still have plenty of seed for me.
Soon, after they had returned from their trip the rep stopped to see him. It was only about 8 weeks from planting. The farmer and his wife were both very excited to share their vacation experience with the young rep so she listened intently. At just the right moment the rep said to the farmer and his wife, “It sounds like that was quite an amazing trip. It must have taken a lot of planning. How much time did you guys spend planning for that beautiful vacation?” The farmer proudly replied, “We planned for nearly six months and we kept updating the itinerary as the time got closer. All of the pre-trip planning really paid off because that’s what made the trip such a success. It was also less stressful once we knew the plan was in place and all we had to do was follow it.”
The rep realized this was a teaching moment and a great opportunity so she took advantage of it and said to them, “You and your wife spent six months planning your vacation, but you’ve yet to spend even one hour putting together a plan for your farming business that made that kind of vacation possible. At what point did you decide to leave the success of your farming operation to chance and instead, create a serious plan for a vacation?” The farmer turned to her with a sheepish look and said, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. I don’t have much time left do I.” The rep said no you don’t.” She had made an impact on this procrastinator but she wasn’t going to stop there. She said, “Let’s get started right now, but when we do, I want you to make me a promise.” He said, “Ok.” “I want you to promise you will take all of the benefits you experienced from planning your amazing trip and apply them to your farming operation so we can make it amazing too.
Early planning is the number one factor to raising top yields so promise me that you will help me raise your yields by following my lead and doing your cropping plan prior to harvest next year.” He said, “I promise.”
Farmers are among the biggest procrastinators in the world because for most things they do, there is no set deadline. Their entire schedule can be as flexible as they want it to be. But that philosophy often causes them to waste a lot of time doing things and thinking about things that don’t make them money. They need to be thinking of ways to increase profits, even when they’re sitting in a machine or hauling grain. The ONLY time a farmer is making money is when he is putting together he only source for making money and that is his cropping plan. That is when he is paid the most for his time but spends the least amount of time doing it.
It was a lesson this farmer learned and will never forget. He didn't have a goal for his business, therefore; he had no plan for his business which also means he had no profit plan for his business. Farmers waste a lot of hours doing nonproductive thinking and he is a master at pulling seed reps into those time-wasting conversations. Talking about the markets, the weather, products, technologies and other things that don’t generate profit wastes your time and his. Once again, the only time a farmer is increasing profit is when he is putting his profit plan(cropping plan) together for the next year.
All of the other hours, days, weeks, months and years are wasted with non-productive thinking. When you plan in advance, whether for a trip or how to increase sales, you will be successful beyond belief because you devoted your time to the only thing that generates the revenue in your business.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
You Are Your Own “Think Tank”?
Where do you get new ideas that help you lead customers and stay ahead of your competitors? It’s obvious that sales reps who have a constant flow of new ideas that not only match the rising IQ of the marketplace, but also enhance it, sell more. The smartest, most successful people have one thing in common.
They take time every day to think creatively. Thinking creatively means thinking about how to solve problems, enhance performance and reach goals, regardless of how big or small those goals are.
When do YOU choose to do nothing but think?
Do you do it in the shower, during your morning meditation like my son Tom who calls it his “power hour, or do you do it when you’re alone in the car? Maybe you use the time just prior to falling asleep at night to do your thinking? But with me, the thinking switch can be turned any time, whenever a stimulus charges my thinking circuit. I often get a stimulus to think of new ideas when I read a paragraph, a sentence or even a single word in an article. I seldom get my new thoughts from reading an entire book. Every book has a few key words that, at least for me, can spark a whole bunch of new ideas. The stimulus for a new idea can also come from something someone said or did during a conversation, or simply from something I happened to observe. Regardless of whether you turn the thinking switch on at a certain time every day, or your mind is constantly on the lookout for new ideas, thinking time is the most valuable time you will spend every day.
There are three very important things that happen when you set aside time to think.
One, every new idea created simultaneously gets rid of any number of old ideas and activities associated with the new idea.
That leads to benefit number two. New ideas keep you from getting into a rut, becoming bored, stale and falling behind everyone else. Just remember, a rut is simply a coffin with the ends kicked out. If you stay in a rut, you will die there. And last but not least, setting aside time to think puts YOU in charge of your life and your future. It tells you that YOU’RE responsible for your life, and no one else. That “thought” alone will allow you to do things that will make you over the top successful.
You are your best source for new ideas because you know your situation best and how those new ideas can be used. That allows you to use new ideas to improve your life and become more productive. But many salespeople don’t consider themselves their best source for new ideas. They either give up their ability to think on their own, or they don’t believe they have the ability to solve their own problems. They simply rely on their superiors, or people they view as authority figures. Don’t allow that to happen. You’re as capable as anyone in this endeavor. You have a very high powered, creative brain so use it. And if you’re in sales, the ability to think on your own about how to find new customers, increase sales to current customers, and maximize customer retention is the key to your success. Solving problems yourself is the fastest and most effective way to be successful. Every day you either get smarter or you get dumber.
That’s sounds harsh but it’s true. This marketplace waits for no one and has been “dumbed down” by people who don’t spend enough time “thinking” about how to improve themselves so they can help improve the rest of society. Decide which one of those is your goal, then set aside time to think, every single day. It will increase your self-confidence; help you become a better leader and make you more successful.
That leads me back to my favorite quote of all time by Albert Einstein. He said, “The thinking that has brought me to where I am, has caused some problems that thinking at this level can no longer solve.” Start thinking new thoughts. It will solve your problems and keep you from dying in a rut.
Greetings Everyone,
Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game, then you have to play the game better than anyone else.”
What are the rules salespeople must follow to be successful in today’s marketplace? Many seed reps are following rules made decades ago that started out as strategies developed through trial and error. But almost all of those strategies, I mean rules, are now obsolete and detrimental to anyone using them in attempts to get and keep sales.
A lot of damage is done when sellers try to play the game using those rules. Farmers have learned very quickly that it’s easy to get reps to stretch or even break rules to get what they want. These old rules put farmers in control leaving sellers to simply take what buyers wants to give them.
Here are 10 of the most common strategies that have turned into rules through universal adoption that virtually every sales rep blindly follows.
- The best time to call on farmers to get orders is after harvest because before that they’re too busy to talk. NO, being to busy is just an excuse not a reason for delayed ordering. The no.1 factor for getting top yields is early crop planning. That means prior to harvest.
- Look for closing signs so you know when to ask for the order. We never close a sale anymore; we lead prospects into WANTING to do it. He closes himself.
- Take any size order you can get, regardless how small because it means getting a foot in the door for a bigger sale next year. History has shown this strategy never works. Even if you beat his favorite company with the small amount of seed you sold him, he’ll think it was an accident and stay with his favorite company.
- Deliver your seed to the customer’s warehouse after your competitors seed is already in his shed so you can place it in front of your competitor’s, that way he will plant yours first. You’re in dreamland if you think the farmer won’t move your seed out of the way so he can plant his favorite seed first.
- Use early order programs to get growers to place orders earlier. These never change behavior. If you take the program away, he goes back to ordering late.
- If the grower wants to put your seed in his test plot against competitors you should agree to it and don’t be afraid of a challenge. There are so many things wrong with using test plots, I don’t have enough time to talk about all of them. I have won so many test plots and the farmers wouldn’t buy my seed. It’s last year’s information from last year’s environment creating invalid decisions for the next year.
- If the grower wants to do a side-by-side comparison with your seed against a competitor, agree to it. History has proven this strategy doesn’t work either. I’ve beat competitors side-by-side by 20 bushel and prospects with the side by sides still wouldn’t buy. That proves they don’t yield, they buy based on perceptions of the company they’ve been most loyal to.
- Dress like the farmer customer so he can better identify with you and feel you’re on equal ground. The easiest way to show you are bringing value to a conversation is by LOOKING LIKE you bring value. The better you dress, the smarter you look. Seed is the most serious purchase a farmer makes, he needs a serious professional to buy it from, not someone in blue jeans who looks like the farmer himself.
- It’s ok to discuss the markets and weather during the conversation to create rapport. These conversations only lower attitudes and don’t solve any problems. Stay totally away from them. When a farmer asks a question about either of those just say, “I don’t know” and move on.
- The key to getting a sale is reaching an agreement with the grower by negotiating on the price of your products and services. There is never negotiation when selling farmers their inputs. Were bringing values greatly exceeding the price the grower is paying and need to keep him focused on increasing production, not just saving money.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, NONE of those rules are relevant in today’s marketplace. So many companies still follow them yet can’t figure out why they’re struggling to grow. I hope you’re not one of them.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Facts Don’t Count!
This is the time of year when many sales reps are asking themselves what happened to what they originally hoped would be a great sales year.
A lot of sales goals that were set a year ago aren’t materializing into actual sales as harvest season fast approaches. Low commodity prices, rising costs and adverse weather conditions in many areas postponed planting or even prevented it entirely. Many growers have delayed making decisions which has caused reps to give up trying to get early orders.
Those are some of the facts about this year’s selling environment.
Here are a few more.
- Virtually every person in the world has an opinion on seed because it affects what they eat, the fuel they put in their car and the clothes they wear. So they feel they have a say in how it’s raised, which, believe it or not, impacts farmers’ attitudes.
- Both companies and farmers continue to consolidate giving us fewer potential buyers while increasing competition.
- The average age of farmers is getting younger. They’re more technical, more price driven and are always looking for something other than what their fathers did.
- Many banks now have a CRO (Chief Risk Officer) who determines much of a farm’s borrowing and buying power forcing limits on what some farmers can spend on inputs.
Those are some of the facts and you can’t change them, they’re facts. But when you let facts control you, you can’t achieve your goals. Everyone faces the same facts, the only difference between success and failure is how sellers deal with those facts. The key to success is to ignore the facts, because when you have a dream goal, facts cannot count.
When you ignore the facts, you put yourself in total control of your destiny, not the facts and let your inner-self control you. You don’t base your strategies on the outside world.
In 1977 I became the first employee of a newly formed seed company started by 6 owners. They didn’t have enough money to start this new company, that was a fact. They only had $72,000 between the 6 of them but needed more than a million. They convinced an experienced seedsman to produce the seed on a handshake and a promise to pay when we got paid for the sale of that seed. We didn’t have any unique products, offering only varieties that were available on the open market, the same pedigrees everyone else was selling, that was a fact. We had no customers or dealers who had ever planted a bag of our seed.
That was a fact. But none of those facts held us back. In a few short years our new company became one of the most dominant regional seed companies in our market area. The facts said we didn’t have what was needed to start and grow a seed company but we ignored the facts and did it anyway. We succeeded.
Top seed sellers know there’s only one solution to the challenges they face in today’s marketplace and that is to ignore the facts. They know that regardless of the so-called facts of the marketplace, those facts can’t hold them back from getting their share of the business if they simply ignore them and do the things they need to do to achieve their goals. They know that most of their competitors will be controlled by the facts, which leaves the marketplace wide open for them. Top sellers know the antidote for facts is innovative thinking.
When markets are down they show prospects and customers how to make up for it by focusing on increasing yields by following the Top 5 Factors. When input costs are up they focus on demonstrating the extra value they get from planning earlier and taking advantage of early discounts. To avoid inclement weather being a challenge they teach growers how to protect themselves from the 1000 variables.
Every selling season will have it’s “facts” that will serve as sales blockers for those who aren’t innovative thinkers. Just remember, that old saying, “When you have a dream, facts don’t count.” Decide how committed you are to achieving your goals and ignore “facts” that will keep everyone else from being successful except you.
Every day, “facts” keep salespeople from achieving their goals, don’t let it happen to you.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Are You Crowd Sourcing Your Ideas?
Over the years crowd sourcing has been an effective way of helping individuals or businesses raise money to help them meet financial needs. The strategy involves asking people all over the world for monetary donations so those in need can get back on their feet after a big loss.
But crowd sourcing isn’t new. It’s been a popular and effective strategy for the past 50 years in the seed business too, but not just for financial reasons. The crowd sourcing I’m talking about is centered around obtaining marketing ideas from the crowd of other companies in the industry, including competitors on how to sell more seed. Virtually every company would keep their eyes on competitors to see how they marketed their seed.
If a competitor’s strategy was successful, they would then plan to use that same marketing strategy the next year. These investigations went all the way from marketing programs to how much other companies were going to charge farmers for their seed.
Crowd sourcing to get new ideas helped a lot of seed companies stay in business over the years, and not just the ones that didn’t have their own marketing departments. As a seed company prepared for a new sales year, it would look at what other companies were doing and borrow their ideas. There were years, for example, when virtually every company was offering free trips to customers if they bought a certain amount of seed. In other years almost every company offered a unit of seed free for every unit they purchased.
Companies used tools, household appliances, pickup trucks, farm tractors, grain bins and more to get farmers to buy their seed. Borrowing ideas from competitors, which today would have been called, “pilfering” or stealing, was the primary way many companies came up with their marketing strategies. Very few had their own unique ways of going to market.
Unfortunately, crowd sourcing ideas has not stopped or even slowed within the seed industry. Companies continue to do it, in fact, they’re recycling old ideas, many of which no longer work. It’s as if they’ve run out of ideas so they reuse old ones. But farmers have caught on and decided to create their own incentives for buying. They’ve decided that since all companies look, act, and sound the same, they must all be the same. The only difference has to be the price their asking for their products. As a result farmers are turning seed buying into a commodity transaction based only on who has the cheapest price.
But my ideas for increasing seed sales over the past 30 years weren’t crowd sourced at all. I developed them myself through the school of hard knocks and from years of face-to-face contact with farmers. I quickly recognized what farmers needed and wanted and it wasn’t a program or a cheap price. They wanted someone to help them raise yields. If they raised more yield they could buy their own trips and their own tractors with the extra profit. My idea was simple, teach farmers how to follow new, innovative ways of raising a top crop so they can increase production and profit and will want to buy more seed from your company the next year.
Do you hear a lot of companies talking about the Top 5 Factors to Producing a Top crop, the 1000 Variables, the one variety per field concept or stop using test plots? Of course you don’t because they either don’t know about those concepts or don’t care to execute them because it would require changing how both their salesforce and their customers think and that would require effort.
The one idea farmers are searching for every year is how to increase yields so they can increase profit, but they’re having a hard time finding it? It should be available from a crowd of companies offering those kinds of values, but no one is using that strategy. So if you’re looking to get new ideas on how to sell more seed in the future, crowd sourcing won’t help you. The crowd is out of ideas.
But if you’re willing to try an old idea I developed 30 years ago that works year after year and never wears out, teach your growers how to achieve the highest yields. Show them it’s not about products, prices, or programs, but only about their own expertise in getting the most out of every variety they plant. They need to learn the only way to make more money is to produce more yield and to do that they need to change how they farm.
Just so you know, you may find one or two companies using my ideas on how to help farmers increase yields and profit. But don’t depend on them sharing those ideas with you. They’re having too much fun selling seed.
Happy Selling,
Rod
The No.2 Weakness of Salespeople
What do you expect from every person you take on as a customer? Notice I said expect, not want. There’s a big difference. We all want customers to be loyal, buy our products, follow our lead, do what we suggest and so on. But when it comes to expectations, what do you expect from people you sell to? The answer is commitment.
I expect every one of my customers to be 100% committed to me, and my company the day they become a customer. Truth be known, 90% of all new prospects are not committed at all. They have no expectations of themselves of being loyal as a new customer because they weren’t given any expectations when they signed their first order.
They’re just in the “trial” stage, waiting to see if the company they just bought from is going to deliver what THEY EXPECT.
There’s only one way to get real commitment from new prospects that will quickly lead them to becoming true customers and that’s by doing what most salespeople are not good at and afraid to do, set expectations to be a customer the first day they meet them. Remember true customers are buying more than 51% of their needs from you. They’re on your side, buying more from you than they are from your competition. True customers are your sales force, they defend you against competitors and are 100% committed to supporting you and your company. They developed expectations for themselves to do everything they can to help make your company successful.
Salespeople are afraid to set expectations and ask for commitment in fear of scaring prospects away. But clearly verbalizing expectations before selling new prospects helps you figure out where prospects stand and how committed they are to becoming one of your customers. If they aren’t committed on day one of signing, they’re unlikely to be more committed later on or become great customers.
I’ve never met a prospect who knew what my expectations were to become a customer. They may think they know based on their experience with other companies, but I guarantee expectations to be a customer for our company are a lot greater than the expectations of any of my competitors.
Laying out expectations that require customers to commit is asking them to make you a priority. It creates an understanding of the obligation between you and your customers that provides purpose and a pledge they need to uphold. In addition, setting expectations and verbalizing them will eliminate surprises and keep things from going wrong later on. It allows you to control the outcome and the success of both you and your customer.
People who are committed to a cause cooperate at a higher level, try harder, look for innovative solutions when faced with obstacles, don't consider quitting to be an option, are persistent and always extremely resilient.
Taking commitment seriously and following through sets a positive example for others who come on board with you.
To learn how to get prospects and customers truly committed, watch the screen cast titled, “How to Overcome the No.2 Weakness of Salespeople.”
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Dress For the Part You Want to Play!
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” —Aristotle
What role do you intend to play in the eyes of farmer customers?
Do you want to be their go to person, their problem-solver, their answer person, the professional who leads them to new places, the bringer of real value to their operations or just their input supplier?
Do you want to be the one they put the most trust in and, as a result, does the most business with because you’re the leader they follow?
When I ask those questions to seed sellers, they all say “yes”, I want to be a lot more than their input supplier. But few of those reps are willing to take the important steps to making themselves leaders in the eyes of their customers. They don’t want to fully play role of being a leader. They think they can get by without executing every step that creates leaders the easiest and fastest way.
The number one pushback I get during my training sessions from reps who call on farmers is about how to dress. They don’t want to dress like leaders dress and is better than their customers and competitors. Their biggest objection is fear of what their customers will say when they show up dressed better than the farmers themselves.
So many salespeople have been told or have read books that say you’re supposed to dress like your customers. That may be true when call on executives but is sure isn’t true when calling on farmers. If you dress like your farmer customers you’ll look like his farm hand or at best an agronomist. Agronomists can’t sell, I know because I was one,
Most salespeople don’t understand or admit to the power appearance on how prospects and customers perceive sales reps who call on them. What they understand even less is how much power dressing up gives them over competitors and their sales reps.
If two people walk into a room together, one wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans and the other a sport coat, button down shirt and slacks, which do you perceive is the boss? The one that is better dressed of course. When you dress up, you’re perceived as being smart, a leader, someone different, and someone who cares about their appearance and shows respect for the meeting you’re about to have with the grower. You’re treated differently and, most of all, you act differently. When you dress up, the expectations you have for yourself go up—therefore, you come to the meeting in a better state of mind and better prepared.
Stop playing the role of the agronomist or seed advisor. Play the role of the leader.
The most important skill that made selling easier and got me larger orders was dressing up. It’s a skill that is learned. It’s the foundation for all other skills that allows you to reach your potential.
Go ahead and do it, you’ll find it much easier to sell because most of your competitors refuse to look and act like the leaders they claim to be. You want to set yourself apart from everyone else, it starts with what prospects see and feel the first time they meet you. For customers, the more you require of yourself the stronger the relationship becomes. They will notice. They may not tell you but they will convince themselves and that’s the number one goal, getting them to totally buy you. Because when they totally buy into your they also buy totally from you.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Repeat Yourself.
Someone once said, Repetition is the mother of learning and the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.
When I grew up, we had farms in two different locations, what we called the home farm and the other the north farm. The land was four miles apart. To get to the north farm and into some of the fields we needed to cross railroad tracks several times. A Rock Island Rode Train track ran alongside a Milwaukee Road Train track. That meant when you crossed one, in just a few feet you were going to cross the other. The Rock Island train ran only once a day but you never knew when or from which direction it was coming. The Milwaukee train ran several times a day and at high speeds. Ever since I can remember, my dad would tell me every time we crossed those tracks to look both ways, twice. By the time I was seven years old and driving tractors in the field I often crossed those tracks pulling equipment following my dad to that northern farm and back again. All I had in my brain during each trip was “look both ways twice.” He repeated it so many times, I find myself saying the same thing at every intersection and train crossing to my kids and grandkids today, l”ook both ways twice.”
Two of our fields on the north farm were separated only by the two railroad tracks running side by side between the fields. To get from one field to the other we had to cross both tracks with our equipment. In those days one of the implements I used a lot was a spike tooth harrow we called a drag. It was a 30-foot-wide piece of equipment used to smooth a field after planting. We didn’t have a drag cart to fold the drag and lift it off the ground so we just drug it out of the field and across the tracks. But crossing the Rock Island track was tricky because the rails set higher off the ground and part of the drag would sometimes get caught on the rails as I crossed. I would stop quickly, jump off the tractor and release it from the track, it often required me to do it several times before I got completely across.
It was a nervous time because I never knew when a train might come.
Studies show that repetition makes learning stick. To remember information over the long term the learner must be exposed to the information multiple times and repeatedly practice recalling or retrieving that information.
So to enable the retention of knowledge, repetition is still one of the most effective ways to attain greater permanency of learning.
What kinds of things have you been telling your customers over and over so they learn it and remember it? Have you been repeatedly telling them about the benefits of early planning, doing their field by variety cropping plans prior to harvest? How many times have you told them about the benefits yet some still don’t get it and want to delay planning and ordering.
Have you been telling customers about the Top 5 Factors so much that they can not only repeat them back to you, but also tell you the benefits of each one? Have they told you after numerous reminders that the Top 5 Factors are their job description, what their job is when raising a crop?
Have you been so repetitive in the values you bring to your customers that they can repeat them at will, especially when confronted by competitors trying to sell them something?
If none of those things are happening then you need to start repeating yourself. How many times have you told your kids the same thing but they didn’t hear it or do it? It takes repetition to sink in sometimes and change behaviors.
Studies have shown that the brain forms new pathways when a task is repeated often, thereby optimizing the performance of the skill.
Repeating the same message in both written and verbal form is an essential part of an effective communication strategy. When you repeat key points, you reinforce them in the minds of your customers, making it more likely they will remember and understand the message. Repeating simple words and phrases convinces them they’re true.
Repetition is key to achieving fluency and mastery in any field. By repeating tasks or exercises customers become more comfortable and efficient, leading to increased implementation of what you are teaching. Continuous repetition helps internalize knowledge or skills to the point where they become second nature.
Do you want to know if your customers are learning and remembering the values you’re bringing and telling them about?
Listen to what they say during conversations with you. Are they feeding your words and phrases back to you? If not, start repeating yourself and watch sales increases start to repeat themselves too.
Happy Selling,
Rod
It’s Time to Feel Abnormal Again
One of the biggest challenges progressive seed sellers face in this marketplace is changing fast enough. Few are willing to make even small changes, let alone change their entire way of selling to match what modern-day farmers are looking for. Today’s growers want changes in how they’re sold. They’re looking for applied selling, that is, being shown how to maximize yields when using the varieties they buy. It’s no longer about looking at data or listening to a sales rep talk about how great their performance is. It’s about showing them, in their fields, on their own farms how to increase yields and profit. That selling strategy may feel abnormal, but it needs to be the normal way seed selling takes place in the future.
Change is uncomfortable and disrupts the familiar that’s why sellers are afraid of it. And if no one else is changing except you, it makes everyone around you uncomfortable, causing you to feel abnormal. Everyone gets a little nervous wondering if the “new normal” is really going to work for you.
One of the first things I tell seed sellers in my classes is, I’m going to make you feel abnormal. I’m going to ask you to do things other seed sellers don’t do or are unwilling to do. I tell them most seed sellers aren’t ready to be abnormal and embrace the feelings that come with it. Those sellers haven’t yet realized their normal is no longer meeting their needs or the needs of the farmers they sell to.
Do you consider yourself normal and are you doing the things so-called normal seed sellers do? For example:
Is it normal to just drop in unexpectedly on 21st century farmers and expect them to buy?
Is it normal to expect that first time buyers are going to follow high yield building protocols when planting your seed?
Is it normal to try to have meaningful dialogue with a prospect or customer and get them to want to do business with you without first practicing and role playing such an important conversation.
Do you consider it normal to see customers only a couple of times a year and expect to have a meaningful relationship with them?
Is it normal to sell a farmer just one variety and hope it wins against the many other varieties he’s already planting?
Do you consider it normal to put your varieties in test plots against competitors where they’re all treated the same despite the fact each variety requires different management to perform to its potential?
Is it normal to sell a farmer your varieties then let him plant them whenever and wherever he wants?
Is normal to compare the yield of different varieties in a single year using a yield monitor or weigh wagon?
Is it normal to give a first-time buyer free seed or accept a token order from them and expect them to buy a lot more next year?
And is it normal to let farmers order their seed after harvest and negatively impact your company’s ability to manage time, inventories and profits?
I used to do all of those things but none of them are normal anymore. So stop doing them and be the odd man out. Be the abnormal one who has all of the success. After all, the top 2% and most successful seed sellers don’t do any of the things the other 98% less successful ones do. I guess that makes that 2% group of seed sellers abnormally good at selling seed. You need to be abnormal because that’s the only way you will meet farmers’ needs.
Happy Selling,
Rod
It’s Time to Re-Read the “Three Little Pigs”
Someone once said, You must have every sales rep living in a belief house made of brick so they can withstand the attacks that are to come.
If I were to assign a training manual for managers to use to help prepare their field sellers for the selling season it would be The Three Little Pigs. You know, the story where the first little pig built his house out of straw and the wolf blew it down with a gentle puff and ate the pig. The second little pig built his house out of sticks but the wolf gave a few extra strong puffs, blew the house down and ate the pig. But the third little pig built his house out of brick and no matter how hard the wolf blew, he couldn’t knock it down.
It was just too strong.
And because the third little pig’s house was so strong, he didn’t have to worry about it falling down so he had time to think about his next counter move because he knew the wolf wouldn’t give up.
This meant that when the wolf climbed onto the roof and down the chimney to get inside the house, the pig didn’t panic. He had already placed a pot of water in the fireplace, got it boiling and let the wolf fall into it. Because he was protected by his strong house, he was able to make decisions that took care of his competition.
The strength of the houses built by each pig is analogous to the strength of every salesperson’s belief system. The stronger one’s belief, the easier it is to withstand attacks on that belief. If a person has a weak belief system it doesn’t take much of an obstacle to collapse that person’s belief house. They end up abandoning their original belief and take on someone else’s.
Our beliefs and our commitments are always being tested.
All field sellers have their belief systems tested every year. Their belief in their company, their products and their pricing are tested to the max. Unfortunately some have beliefs that are as weak as the straw house and the stick house and it doesn’t take much for a competitor or an objecting customer to get those reps to abandon their principles and give in to customer demands. In fact, salespeople with belief houses built of straw or sticks always retreat when the selling gets tough, losing any opportunity of getting a sale.
Those who have beliefs as strong as brick houses don’t let big bad competitors get to them. They may not win every battle, but they stand fast and protect their company, their products and their margins at all cost. They survive relentless attacks. However, even those with brick house beliefs don’t remain totally unscathed. The foundations of many brick belief houses can be cracked during a difficult sales year.
Years ago I had a very good dealer who unknowingly had the foundation of his brick strong belief cracked by a competitor. This dealer farmed, raised hogs and had a growing seed business. The company was not only his largest competitor, but also had more market share than any other company in the business. The sales rep for the large competitor was on the bowling team with my dealer. One evening when the team was bowling the competitor told my dealer about the program they had for new customers. He said was giving 3 units of free seed to new prospects and they didn’t have to buy anything thing to get. It was a promotional effort to get to new customers. The very next day the competitive sales rep stopped by and gave my dealer three units of seed free.
A few days later I stopped to see my dealer and when I walked into his warehouse I saw three units of Brand X seed staked in the warehouse. I said to the dealer, “What’s that seed for? He said, “Oh my neighbor sells for Brand X. They have a free seed program to get new customers and he gave three units to me.” I said, why do you think he gave you that seed?” He said, “He wants me to start planting Brand X.” I said, “Are you going to plant it?” He said, “I might as well, it’s free.” I said, “The reason he gave you that seed was so he could say to all of your customers, “Sam doesn’t even plant the seed he sells, he plants Brand X. If you plant that seed he will crack your belief foundation and the belief foundation of all of your customers.” He sent the seed back and didn’t plant it.
When you’re repeatedly attacked by companies who have no values to sell (or don’t know how to sell them if they do have them) and you’re constantly battling the attitudes of companies who think the only way to sell is to lower price or give product away. When you’re under attack from so many directions at once it often seems you’re the only one trying to do the right thing. This is how belief systems are damaged. You begin to question whether or not your values are real.
The bottom line is you’d better check your belief system and the belief system of your sales reps. Find out which ones no longer have a belief house to live in because they’ve lost their belief during an attack. Find out which ones have cracks in their brick foundations so you can patch them up immediately. You need to make sure every field seller has a strong, sturdy “belief house” to live in so they can weather the storm that’s going to come again and again. Too many field sellers are running scared because they don’t believe their company is as good as it needs to be.
That thought process is total hogwash.
There’s no company that can’t compete successfully in this marketplace IF they are willing to do the things they need to do. But you must have a belief house made of brick that will withstand the attacks that come. The last thing you want to find out is that some of your field sales rep’s belief houses have been blown down and they are now living with the neighbors, your competitors.
Happy Selling, I’m, Rod Osthus
Get Rid of Bias, Immediately!
Successful selling is about believing in yourself, your company, and your products.
We’ve whipped that horse plenty in the past by touting belief as the No.1 factor to success in every business. However, instead of talking about the importance of belief itself, I’m going to address a very damaging, negative effect that comes from a customer’s lack of belief in your company and lack of belief in the varieties they buy from you that can prevent any possibility of keeping a customer long-term. It’s called bias. Total belief has to be in place when farmers buy from you otherwise your future with them is pre-determined and that usually means short-term.
Bias means lack of belief in you and your company.
It’s means customers believe other companies’ products and services are better than yours. They believe you’re missing something, flawed in some way, not up to par. Even though most biases are unfounded, until proven otherwise they can be a real sales stopper.
When you’re new to a grower’s farm, prejudice, also called bias, is automatically created in the buyer’s mind. They’re skeptical since they’ve already spent years learning to trust their current suppliers, so how could they be expected to trust you when you haven’t proven yourself. But every buyer, new or not, must begin the year with an open mind, free of prejudice against your company if they’re going to be successful using your products. If they don’t start with an open mind, you have no chance of winning even if your products perform well on their farm. They will want you to lose no matter how good you are.
Since seed supplies their entire livelihood, customers don’t separate performance of the products they plant from the perceptions of the company they bought them from. Both are based on total trust and belief. In customers’ minds they go hand in hand. They won’t buy a top performing product from a company they don’t like or trust. This is where the seller comes in. If you want your customers’ minds to be free of bias and have the correct thoughts, you have to place those thoughts in their minds yourself. That means showing and telling your customers what sets you apart from others. Then make that story even more effective by taking them to the field and showing them how you raise yields on farmers’ farms.
Next, import growers to your office, facility or show plot location to further demonstrate those differences. Explain how you ask growers where they want to take their yields and how you help them get there. The key is using sincere eye contact, having a positive attitude toward the company you work for and demonstrating your support for EVERYTHING your company does and represents.
Company and varietal bias are the most dangerous thoughts growers can place in their minds when doing business with you. But prejudice is not exclusive to first time buyers. Even your most loyal customers can end up with some level of bias against certain varieties, or they can create bias against you or your company if they feel ignored. If you don’t remove all bias, customers will carry it all year and may even find themselves discriminating against you by talking bad about you to others.
Make sure you replace any biases your customers may have against your company and your varieties as early as possible into the new growing season. Don’t allow them to go through the entire season with perceptions lower than your best competitors.
Remember, if you want to know what you’re not teaching, look at your students. They will tell you what you haven’t been putting into their minds. Be prepared because some of what they’ll tell you may not be to your liking. The key is to teach your customers to think like you, talk like you and act like you. You can tell if they have bias or not just by listening to what they say and watching what they do.
And once your growers are bias free and start thinking like you, geometric sales increases will follow. That’s because their bias has been shifted to your competitors where it belongs,
Happy Selling,
Rod
How many of your customers realize the importance of this year’s planting season?
Do they know it’s the most important planting season of their entire career? It’s the next, single, biggest opportunity they will ever have to counter all of the marketplace challenges they’re facing, especially rising input costs and variable market prices? They have one opportunity to conquer their challenges by producing as many bushels as possible. In fact, farmers need to focus on growing record yields if they’re going to make it easier to stay in the game.
But do they KNOW they need to do it?
Too many growers don’t have raising a top crop foremost in their minds as their way to make more money. Instead, they’ve been focusing on saving money, lowering input costs, and getting deals. That’s because many suppliers have led this line of backward thinking and have gotten growers to follow. But what kind of impact would an extra 35 bushels per acre have on profits? If a farmer took his average corn yield from 200 to 235 by increasing his bushels per 1000 plants in his 35,000 plant stand by just 1, he would gain that extra 35 bushels per acre without changing anything except how he planted his crop. At $4 per bushel on a 1000 acres of corn a grower would take in an extra $140 per acre and a total of $140,000 extra.
If your customers are planting right now, I hope you have them focused on following the Top 5 Factors to Produce a Top Crop. Especially numbers 1, 2 and 4. Soil conditions at planting, seed placement and planting the right variety in the right field. Getting them to focus on following the Top 5 Factors will remind them that 100% of their yield is determined when they plant. That means planting in perfect soil conditions, placing the seed perfectly and planting each variety in the right field are critical. That’s why planting in as perfect conditions as possible, in the right field are essential regardless of the date on the calendar. They need to know that early planting is NOT the secret to high yields but perfect planting in the right field IS the key.
If your customers are done planting and the crop is growing, have you been monitoring the progress of the varieties you sold them? Are you focusing them on factor number 5, post planting management, that is, what they are doing and are going to do to protect the crop throughout the season?
It’s essential to do the best job planting the crop as possible, but even with a perfect stand and highest bushels per 1000 established at planting, if the crop is not nurtured throughout the season and protected from the 1000 variables, perfect planting won’t have the kind of impact it could have.
Don’t let your customers get caught up on input costs and miss the most important opportunity they will have this year, to produce the best crop possible. They will get once chance to attack this market and take control of their expenses by taking control of their income and that is how many bushels they raise. And don’t let the weather interfere. You know it’s the really healthy crops that withstand all effects of weather the best. And if they do things right they will be able to pay down debt, expand their operations, bring a son into the business, become debt free and even retire early. This is one of the most important planting seasons farmers will ever have because it’s the NEXT ONE.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Years ago, it wasn’t unusual to hear about people getting hurt or even killed when they tried to replicate stunts at home they saw someone do on television. Then years later tv shows like Ridiculousness and movies like Jackass, made doing crazy stunts at home look fun, challenging, and romantic. It created a major acceleration in both dangerous activities and injuries when stunts on both of those shows were done by amateurs at someone’s home.
So to keep from getting sued, companies started adding disclaimers to their programs clearly stating, “Don’t Try This At Home” or in the case of car stunts they would show a statement that said, Professional Driver, or Professional Driver on Controlled Course. It’s only because so many people have no common sense, who are showing off or under the influence that kind they need that kind of advice.
But believe it or not, seed sellers sometimes need to be given disclaimers too and reminded of things they should not be doing at home so they don’t hurt themselves. You’re probably asking yourself, what could seed sales reps possibly do at home that could injure them and their ability to get sales?
It all starts with where their mind is located, not their body. That’s right, the exact location of their mind determines whether or not seed sellers will sustain injuries that affect their success . Did you know 75% of all seed sales reps are hurt or severely injured mentally before they ever leave their office to make sales calls? And in the case of prospecting, that injury rate is close to 100%.
Here’s the problem. Whether prospecting or calling on current customers, too much time is spent thinking about making sales calls when doing totally different, unrelated activities while still at home. If sales reps happen to farm for example, they’re often busy cleaning the machine shed, working on machinery, doing field work and other jobs around the farm. When doing things unrelated to making sales calls while thinking about selling may seem harmless, it actually lulls them into believing they’re prepared for those calls just by thinking about them. But by the time they force themselves to hit the road, their desire, and their ability to execute properly are injured to the point of being ineffective. That’s because they tried to prepare for sales calls in the sales territory while their brain was at home working on other things. When preparing to make sales calls you can physically be at home, but you can’t be doing other work when your mind is supposed to be focused on the road, practicing how to be in front of prospects and customers. You need to be practicing and role playing the call with a business associate, spouse, or partner and your mind needs to be present during that practice.
Top sellers must be prepared and know what to say when they’re out on the road if a prospect or customer brings up markets for example. But if they listen to the markets while at home prior to making sales calls, they’re badly injured mentally and more likely to get into price fights or lose their enthusiasm for making calls all together when markets are down. Seed sales reps can never listen to markets at home without being severely injured or handicapped when it’s time to make sales calls.
Another thing seed sellers should never do at home is think about test plots or study their products. They injure their ability to think about placing the right varieties in the right fields for customers. They also hurt themselves by thinking about last year’s results, regardless of whether they were good or bad. Instead, they should be using the information gathered on the combine rides they did with customers and be focused on the goals they set based on the bushels per 1000 plant goal for each of the field they visited when on the combine.
So many sales reps have their sales either injured or killed by doing things they should not be doing at home.
Do you want your sales to go up? Get your mind out of the house, off the farm and into the street where it can’t be hurt. Keep your mind focused on prospects and customers who will test your skills and keep you sharp. Force yourself to wake up and see what a dangerous thing training your mind at home can be when your physically involved doing something else. And stop watching Ridiculousness or Jackass, it will only get you in the mood to do something stupid that could injure your mind and body permanently. After all, there are already plenty of sales rep acting like the people in those shows. Lord knows farmers don’t need anymore.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Are You Doing Things Right, or Doing the Right Things?
Most people who want to be successful in business or in life focus on doing things right. Doing things right is about following certain rules and procedures that ensure things go smoothly so goals can be achieved without a lot of interference.
I grew up on a farm with a father who said there was only one way to do things and that was the right way. He would say anyone can do them wrong or hap hazardly, but when you do them right you achieve the outcome you’re looking for.
My dad was a tactical thinker, the kind of person who focused on doing things right all of the time.
He knew if he didn’t do a task right, it would negatively impact his entire tactical plan. But he was also a strategic thinker, concerned about doing the right things so he could achieve his long-term goal. Dad also said you can do something “right,” but if it’s the wrong thing to do, all of your hard work is wasted and the outcome will not be what you wanted.
He said, if you do the “right thing,” but do it wrong, you won’t get the results you want either. My dad seems smarter to me now than when I was growing up on the farm as a teenager, working alongside him.
Funny how that works.
As seed sellers, you need to be more concerned with doing the right things than just following certain rules and procedures so you can do things right. The ag marketplace changes so fast that if you’re focused only on doing things right you can quickly find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong things right.
For example, one day I had a sales rep tell me he had a customer who runs a very valid, replicated test plot system on his farm. He said the plot covers 40 acres, contains more than 30 varieties from a dozen different companies and goes the entire length of the field. He said each variety is planted twice in the plot and that the plot is so valid other farmers in the area look to it as a guide for what to plant and he uses it to select the varieties to plant on his farm the next year. The sales rep believes that customer has a valid test plot but it’s not. This is a prime example of not doing things right while not doing the right thing.
First of all, doing a test plot right would mean replicating the varieties in the plot at least three times, planting that exact same plot at three different locations on the farm, the same year and planting that same plot with the same varieties three years in a row. He is not doing it right, NOR is he doing the right thing by relying on a test plot to choose varieties to plant. That’s because every year is different, affecting every variety differently because the same environment will never to be repeated from year to year. Unless all of those rules and procedures are followed, there isn’t a researcher on the planet that would validate the data that farmer is getting each year. That grower is NOT doing the right thing and what he IS doing is not being done right.
Another example is writing orders. When you sell seed to a customer, what do you want to happen? You don’t just want the customer to plant the seed, you want the variety to perform at the top so the customer maximizes profit and wants to buy again. But it’s amazing how many seed sellers are more focused on getting and keeping an order than they are on making sure the farmer has the best performance possible from the varieties they sell. They focus on availability of their favorite variety, making sure the order will not be canceled, ensuring the seed will be delivered on time and that it will get planted and not hauled back. All of those things are done right. The problem is, that is not the right thing to do.
If the goal is to have your variety perform at the top so the customer makes the most profit and wants to buy again, the seller needs to focus the farmer on how to raise the best crop possible, and not on the varieties he’s buying. That focus starts by doing the right thing and that is writing a cropping plan instead of an order. Writing a cropping plan instead of an order ensures every variety will be assigned to a field eliminating the need to confirm orders or worry about possible cancellations. Focusing the grower on maximizing yield also puts the grower in charge of raising that top crop instead of relying only on the variety to do it.
Most seed sellers are focused on doing things right, not on doing the right things. To be a great leader you need to be more aware of doing the right things, rather than the procedures and processes dictated by doing things right.
There are so many things seed sellers have learned to do right. But there is one very important thing they have not yet mastered and that is the ability to know when they need to start doing the right things. So many are stuck in the old way of doing things like using test plots, making cold calls, and getting trial size orders from first time buyers. None of those are the right things to do so no matter how hard you try you can’t do them right.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Effort Trumps Intelligence
Dr. Lewis Terman, developer of the IQ test and SAT college entrance exam said and I quote, “The No.1 factor to success is not intelligence, it’s effort.”
In 1921, Dr. Terman began a program he called the "Genetic Studies of Genius, a study that set out to investigate whether very young students with higher IQ’s were eventually more successful later in life than students of the same age who had lower IQ’s. What he found was that his high IQ students (which he referred to as "Termites") tended to be healthier, taller, and more socially adapted than the lower IQ kids, but not always more successful as adults.
Terman found that while many of his high IQ subjects were very successful, not all of them did that well, in fact most of them turned out to be no more successful than the students who had average IQs. He found that some of the common traits the more successful students had regardless of their IQs were self-confidence, perseverance, and goal achievement both as young children and as adults. Therefore he concluded that the No.1 factor to success was not intelligence, it was effort.
The study is still going on today, carried out by other psychologists, and has become the longest-running study of this kind in history.
Dr. Terman’s conclusion applies to all of us who sell seed. Over the past 50 years in the seed business, I’ve worked with hundreds if not thousands of seed sellers. I’ve found no correlation between how intelligent sellers were and how successful they were selling seed. Though my study is not scientific, it comes from close observation and in many cases first-hand experience, witnessing sales results of certain reps over time. The conclusion I came to over and over was that those who put in the time and effort were the ones who sold the most seed. Not ground a ground breaking idea is it.
I found this true when interviewing and hiring dealers too. Some dealer candidates were very intelligent. You could tell from the looks of their farming operations, by what they read and how they talked they were smart people. Other prospects had sloppy operations, weren’t well spoken and much less impressive. So since I couldn’t tell who would become a successful seed dealer and who wouldn’t, I created a method of testing their willingness to put forth effort to make a dealership work. I created a few requirements that everyone had to meet if they wanted to sell seed for me. For example, if the prospective dealer was a farmer, the first requirement was he needed to plant 90% of my products on his farm the first year knowing he was already buying everything from my competition. But I knew he couldn’t be successful if he was still planting more seed from my competitor than he was from me while trying to sell my seed. After all, you can’t drive John Deere and sell Case I-H.
The second requirement was the prospective dealer needed to sell 20 new customers his first year and third, he needed to attend a full day of new dealer training within 2 weeks after being signed. What I found was that regardless of how smart or not so smart the candidates appeared, the ones who were most successful were the ones who worked hardest to meet the requirements. Again, not rocket science but I was always surprised which ones made the cut. I had really smart, sharp farmers with beautiful facilities become stars, and others with the same backgrounds fail. I had not so impressive farmers become star dealers and others who failed. The strategy worked. The ones who put forth the effort succeeded.
As a seed seller, you already know the primary reason you’re successful and the primary reason you aren’t having greater success. It’s lack of effort on your part. The more time and effort you put into selling, the more you sell.
Where do you need to apply more effort selling seed this year. Where have you been slacking off? How much more could you sell if you put forth more effort and how much effort would it really take to sell more?
Over the years I’ve shown salespeople that increasing sales effort by just 10%, increases sales 70-80%. That’s a pretty good return on investment. So let me take a guess. The one thing you want to invest more time and effort in is getting more new customers. In other words, you need to put more effort into prospecting, spending more time growing your customer base. I know that because almost every seed seller needs to spend more time prospecting. Unless every farmer in your territory is planting 100% of your seed, you never run out of prospects. That’s because there are two kinds of prospects, people who have never bought seed from you and those who are buying less than 50% of their needs from you, we call non-customers.
I know you are all intelligent because you can’t be in this marketplace today if you’re not. I also know, the only thing you lack is more effort. Put in extra effort this year and watch your sales soar. Remember, just 10% more effort which is only two days a month will return a 70-80% increase in sales. That’s a great return on your investment.
Happy Selling,
Rod
“What Do You Advertise On a Sales Call?”
The favorite topic most seed sellers talk about on sales calls is their varieties and how great they are. They carry with them an arsenal of data to show prospects and customers that they can not only hold their own against the competition, but they can also make them more money.
Since product parity between seed varieties has gotten so high, the real increases in yield have not come from genetics along, but more so from how farmers manage the genetics they plant. Farmers who produce the highest yields do things that allow the genetics of varieties to produce to their potential. They simply do a better job of protecting the genetic package they plant from the thousand variables that can interfere with genetic expression. So many producers don’t get half of the genetic potential out of the varieties they plant because they don’t protect that living breathing organism.
If the key is not the variety but how farmers manage genetics, why are salespeople and their companies advertising their varieties and trying to sell them using their brand name? What difference does it make to a farmer if he plants variety A from company ABC or variety X from company XYZ? What farmers really need to do to be successful is plant SEED and manage it properly. When you see or hear the advertising slogan, “Got Milk?” Do you think of a certain brand of milk like Fairlife, Shamrock, Land O’Lakes and so on? No, you think of milk and the benefits of drinking milk. When you see or hear the advertising slogan, “Where’s the Beef?” Do you think of a certain breed of animal like Herford, Angus and so on? No, you think of beef and how delicious it is. When you see or hear the add, “the other white meat”, you don’t think of Hampshire, Duroc, Chester White or Berkshire? You think of pork and how healthy and delicious it is. Industries are advertising milk, beef and pork, not any one brand. They want producers to do the best job of producing as much of milk, beef and pork as possible.
In the same say, farmers shouldn’t be thinking about a brand or particular variety when buying seed. They need be thinking seed and how they will make that seed produce to its full potential. Seed needs to be their brand just as milk is the brand, beef is the brand and pork is the brand.
21st century seed sellers should be focusing their customers on the Top 5 Factors to produce a top crop with the seed they plant, not the variety. They need to be excited about how to grow and manage the seed they plant so it produces to its highest potential, regardless of the variety. When farmers are sold on buying specific varieties they’re pulled away from thinking what THEY need to do to raise the best crop possible and into the thinking that the variety itself can do the job. This is the reason farmers are so focused on comparing different varieties to each other in plots and side by sides rather than analyzing what THEY are doing to make the seed they plant produce to its potential.
The other thing this strategy does, is pull the customer closer to the sales rep, enhancing the relationship and increasing the value of the rep in the eyes of the customer.
Varieties don’t get you on the farm and keep you there, YOU DO.
Stop trying to have your varieties be the winner. Stop talking about your products and instead, get customers focused on doing the best they can to allow the genetic potential of the seed they plant produce to its potential. It will make YOU the hero and give you the freedom to develop a plan for every grower on how maximize yields and profit. You will make all of the decisions when choosing the varieties you want customers to plant instead of growers trying to select the ones that did the beset last year. You success will skyrocket which means your sales will too.
Happy Selling, Rod Osthus
I find that many people, including salespeople don’t know how to think about sales and what it really means to sell something. We already know the distorted view many people have of sales in general based on their negative response when asked if they would ever be a salesperson.
Those same people are still hanging onto an outdated view that salespeople are fast talkers who pressure prospective buyers into purchasing something they really don’t want. If you don’t believe me, attend a trade show, and check out the percent of people who walk down the middle of the isles to avoid contact with the reps in booths on either side of them. They stay far enough away and walk fast enough so they can avoid being approached by those reps. So many people are afraid of being SOLD something, That’s because they have the wrong perception of what selling is.
If you look up the definition for selling it says sales is the process of persuading a person or organization to buy something. That definition is outdated. True selling has less to do with persuading and a lot more to do with being so attractive to potential buyers they WANT to buy what the rep is offering. If you don’t understand that successful selling is about trust in the seller and not the products or services, selling seed to farmers will be hard.
So what is sales, really?
Selling is creating trust between the seller and the potential buyer. It doesn’t matter if the offer is being done in person or on-line, a level of trust has to emerge within the buyer to risk making the investment.
When you’re calling on farmers to sell them something as important as seed, the last thing you want to do is persuade them into buying it. That important decision needs to be their own, based on their TRUST and belief in the salesperson.
Building trust starts with the potential buyer’s initial impression of the seller. A sales rep gets one opportunity to make a good first impression, but plenty of chances to screw that one up later. The first meeting between the seller and the prospect must impress the prospect. The first thing the farmer sees when a seller drives into his yard is imprinted on the prospect’s mind. Once that happens, it can takes a lot to change that impression, especially if it’s initially a bad one. But GOOD first impression can also change to a bad one very quickly if the seller is poorly dressed, disorganized or wastes the farmer’s time.
The first impression starts with the vehicle the seller is driving. The vehicle MUST be clean, inside, and out. It’s the salesperson’s office so it MUST be organized and well kept. Next, the sales rep MUST be better dressed than the farmer, not by a little, but by a lot. The rep needs to look successful, be clean, and professional. It goes without saying that what happens next makes or breaks the relationship that needs to be developed before a sales can take place. The sales story is everything. That’s why the rep needs to know HOW the call with start, WHAT will be talked about during the call and HOW the call will end before the call is made. That means role play practice and lots of it. This is the point, however, where the bad perceptions salespeople have are created.
So many sales reps skip the practice part and stumble during the actual call when the farmer takes control of the conversation. Every student I’ve ever had would tell me how much they needed new customers, but almost none of them put in the time to prepare for the call, especially the practice part.
How do YOU think about sales?
Do you know how new prospects perceive you when they meet you for the first time? I’ll bet your vehicle is clean and you’re dressed pretty well. Those are the easy things to do. But I’ll also bet your sales story is the weakest part of your entire sales approach. I’ll bet you’re not as confident in your sales story as you need to be and in your ability to impress farmers when you meet them for the first time. Think about that. You may want to change how you think about sales.
Happy Selling,
Rod
How Strong Are You?
In her excellent book, “Forever Strong”, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon says, “When you go to the doctor for almost any reason, one question the doctor should always ask is, How Strong Are You?”
I’ve never had any doctor ask me that question or heard of anyone else being asked that question either.
But Dr. Lyon says, the thing that matters most when it comes to our overall heath is how much muscle we have, and most people don’t have the amount of muscle they need to live a long, healthy life.
She says most people don’t have a weight problem; they have a “muscle” problem.
One of the first things the nurse does when I go to a doctor’s appointment, before I ever see the doctor is check my height and weight. With all of the latest technologies available today it would be easy to see how strong I am in different parts of my body to see how much muscle I’m gaining or losing. Most patients wouldn’t realize the strength of their brain is being tested at the same time their muscle strength is being tested. The muscle strength readings would tell the patient how much he or she understood and believed in what they needed to be doing with their body to be their healthiest best. She says the brain is the strongest muscle in the body and needs to be worked just like any other muscle and the more the brain focuses on building muscle, the healthier the person.
The same goes for anyone who sells seed. Not only does your body need to be strong, but your seed seller brain needs to be strong too so you can face the challenging marketplace like the one we’re in this year? Do you strengthen your brain before the start of each seed selling season so it’s strong enough to face farmers who have bad attitudes due to low market prices and uncertainty on how they’re going to be able to make a profit?
This year’s seed selling marketplace will be more challenging that ever.
With the combination of those low market prices and poor farmer attitudes every seed seller’s brain needs to be strong. Sellers need to be prepared to handle farmers’ brains that need help figuring out how they’re going to raise yields and make a profit this year. After all, increased production is the only way out of situations like this.
I think every farmer’s brain is weak right now and not capable of deciding how to make a profit without outside help from a strong seed seller brain. There’s a lot of pressure on farmers and they need someone like a strong-minded seed sales rep to lead them down the right path so they CAN MAKE A PROFIT this coming year.
How will you strengthen your brain so you can lead farmers where they need to go? How will you know what to say, when to say it and how to say it when farmers take you Inside the Circle and talk about why you’re so high priced and reasons why they can’t make a profit? There have been podcasts with groups of farmers who say they’re just going to tell their seed guy what they will pay for seed this year and no more. That kind of attitude exists but can only be overcome with a seed seller who has an even stronger brain. You need to be able to take farmers where they don’t know they need to go so you can take them where YOU KNOW they need to go. That will require plenty of brain muscle.
Make sure you’re prepared to handle all of the farmers who believe they’re stronger than you are. Farmers ARE stronger than 90% of your competitors who are just weaklings willing to sell their seed at any price. But when farmers are confronted by you, someone who has actual solutions to their problems of how to make a profit, price will no longer be an issue. They won’t realize until it’s all over that they met their match.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Confucius said, “Learn as if you were not reaching your goal and as though you were scared of missing it”.
I changed one word in that quote to fit what I want to talk about today. “Train as if you were not reaching your goal and as though you were scared of missing it.”
So what are the differences between learning and training? Learning is a broader, ongoing process that focuses on acquiring new knowledge and information that will allow you to be better prepared to do your job. Training is different. Training is actually putting that newly acquired knowledge and information to work, practicing using that knowledge on a simulated sales call, oriented toward a specific goal and designed to improve performance in a particular role or task.
But it's amazing to me how much learning is offered to most people in the seed business. Most companies “learn the hell” out of their people, especially when it comes to teaching them about their products technologies and programs. There is so much knowledge and information being given to seed sellers today that it’s hard to find a seed rep who doesn’t have the knowledge they need to be an expert in what they’re selling.
Unfortunately for farmers and for every seed company out there, there is a huge shortage of training. Too many companies call the learning sessions they hold with their seed sellers training sessions, but they aren’t training sessions at all, they’re learning sessions. Those learning sessions don’t help students APPLY what they learn. When that happens, more learning often just creates the wrong belief that since they KNOW MORE, they will be able to sell more. Yet the opposite is actually true.
So how do I know companies don’t do enough actually training, like role play and application training? I know that because there is no real training going on. Few if any sales reps are told top role play or even placed in sessions designed just for practice. They never have the opportunity to apply that new knowledge by practicing it, putting it into play before they ever make a sales call. Role play has a negative connotation in the minds of salespeople. They’ve come to believe it’s fake and a waste of time. Yet, those who do it, see the value and wouldn’t make a sales call without practicing first.
The single biggest shortage in the seed industry is not and has never been a shortage of product or good people. It’s a shortage of trained salespeople. Today’s seed sellers have more than enough information to lead modern day farmers where they need to go, but they don’t have the training to do it. Training is learning new behaviors then applying those behaviors to change the behavior of others. That means knowing HOW to get farmers to want to buy.
Are you learning or training?
I bet you already have more than enough knowledge and information needed on a sales call. But I will also bet you lack the training, the practice to utilize that knowledge and information to get a sale. 98% of all seed sellers aren’t achieving their seed sales goals because they have way to much learning and not nearly enough training. Which one do you need to more of?
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Greetings Everyone, Rod Here
One of the biggest challenges seed sellers face is setting valid sales goals that are commensurate with the potential sales that are available to them.
In fact, it would surprise most seed sellers if they knew how many units of seed are actually planted in their market area and what a small percentage of that business they currently have. Very few seed sellers know those numbers.
That’s why it’s so important to set valid sales goals.
It forces reps to know the only number that really matters and that is, the potential of the territory they’re selling in. A valid goal is not picked out of the air or based on what the rep sold the previous year. It’s based only on the actual sales potential of each product they’re selling in the territory.
But because true potentials aren’t known, most sales goals are simply a guess and everyone guesses too low. They base the number on the imagination of the seller and what they perceive is possible based on what they’ve sold in the past.
The seed business seems to be one of the few where sales goals are always set on the ultra-conservative side. They perceive that since farmers have gotten larger, more independent and harder to sell that sales goals and increases in average order size is harder to get.
When done right, that’s not true.
Seed sellers need to stop setting goals on what they THINK they can sell and start basing them on the sales potential of the product they’re selling in their territory. Then they need to put together plans on how to achieve those goals through new customers only. And once the sales increase is achieved from new customers only, any increase you get from current customers will be a bonus.
Stop thinking so small.
Every seed seller has more potential for growth than they can capture in a lifetime so go after it. Set “unachievable goals”, you know, the ones other sellers laugh at because they have no idea how they would achieve those kinds of goals or reach that kind of success. It’s all just a matter of not thinking so small.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Greetings Everyone,
Most seed sellers are always looking for ways to improve themselves so they can make their job easier and get more sales.
They attend training sessions which focus largely on how they could be doing, what they’re already doing. But too many of those reps make little or no progress even after training. And that’s because what they’re currently doing is getting in the way of what they should be doing and that is, to STOP doing what they’re currently doing.
The best advice I have for most seed sellers is that they first need to do is STOP doing things they should not be doing before looking for ways to do what they are currently doing, better.
So what kinds of things are most seed sellers doing that they need to stop doing? The first one that comes to mind is one of the biggest and most common and that is to stop making excuses. Salespeople, especially seed sellers are full of excuses for when they don’t reach their goals, get enough new customers or simply run out of time to do the most important tasks like visiting planters or riding combines. Be at customers’ planters in the spring and riding their harvesters in the fall are two of the most important customer contacts of the year because both involve getting in the customer’s head and making sure he is focused on making your products performance to their potential, yet few seed sellers make the time to do those things. So many don’t visit planters because they think the farmer doesn’t need any help. But it’s not just about helping the farmer get the seed planted properly, it’s about getting the farmer on your side, making sure he wants you to win. So most seed sellers give me a list of REASONS why they don’t visit planters and ride combines but none of those are reasons, they are just excuses. The first thing salespeople need to do is STOP MAKING EXCUSES before they can expect to improve on what they’re currently doing.
Another thing salespeople need to stop doing to be successful is to stop looking for the easy way out. There is no easy button when it comes to selling seed. But so many seed sellers look for short cuts so they don’t have to do the work that is essential to success. For example, instead of creating a storybook, they stand in front of a prospect or customer and just talk. That means they have no idea when the listener tunes them out because you can’t tell. The prospect could be looking you right in the eye and be thinking about something else, but that never happens when they’re following a storybook. And instead of taking time to practice and role-play the sales presentation prior to every sales call, they just wing it which means the rep isn’t prepared for certain questions or objections, the farmer takes control of the conversation and the seller never gets what he or she really wanted, a profitable sale.
When you stop making excuses and do the work to make sure everything is in place for success, you win every time. And those are just two of the many things salespeople need to stop doing if they intend to be successful selling seed. Remember, It Isn’t What You’re Doing, It’s What You Need to Stop Doing that’s going to make you successful.
Happy Selling,
Rod
In John Maxwell’s book, Developing the Leaders Around You, he tells the story of Charlie Grimm who managed the Chicago Cubs back in 1960. One day Charlie got a phone call from one of his scouts who said he just signed the best pitcher he had ever seen. The scout said this pitcher struck out every man who came to the plate, 27 in a row, nobody even hit a foul ball until the 9th inning, then one guy hit a foul ball. The scout said the pitcher is right here with me, what should I do?
Charlie Grimm said, sign up the guy who got hit the foul ball, we need hitters.
Too often we as seed sellers are so attracted to the obvious, the one variety that did really well on customers’ farmers in a given year and we forget about all of the other varieties that really are the foundation for our sales success. Right away we’re attracted to the winner and we start to focus on that winner as if it’s the key to our future.
How many times have you been distracted and even lost sales because both you and your customers became enamored by a certain variety one year and sold way to much of it to each customer, only to have that variety not at the top the next year? It happens all of the time.
Just like Charlie Grimm said, we don’t need a “lights out” pitcher, we need lots of hitters, people who can get on base. So when you have a variety that performs well enough to get all of your customers talking we believe that’s what we need to grow our business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the years too many seed companies have learned the hard way that relying on what we consider our one new hero will not grow our business. We need an entire line-up of varieties that will get “lots of men on base” hits for us every year regardless of the weather or how they’re managed.
And even if all of your varieties don’t score at the top like that foul ball hitter, at least they need to be in the line-up providing support and guess what, one of those less known, less popular players in your line-up often becomes the hero.
Set goals with customers based on where the grower wants to take his yield in each field. Sell one variety for each field and help the grower do everything needed to maximize yield in that field. Never put the same variety on more than one third of any grower’s acres but rely on your entire line-up to take your sales where you want them to go. Don’t rely on one or two big guns. Mother nature and grower’s themselves won’t allow you to do that when they suddenly surprise you with a bad report. Remember, you’re dealing with a living breathing organism that can do wonders for you and your customers when properly managed. And most of the management believe it or not starts with how well you sell your entire line-up across your market area.
Happy Selling, Rod
Do you know how to get farmers to order seed when YOU want them to order…
Stop Writing Orders.
When’s the last time prospects and customers in your area ordered seed from you on YOUR time schedule instead of theirs?
When’s the last time your customers called you right after planting or in early summer when the crop is growing to ask when you’re going to come and get their seed order?
When’s the last time current customers told you they needed to increase the size of their seed order for the next year, not because your varieties did so well, but because they took on more acres and needed seed for those new fields without you asking?
And when’s the last time customers told you they had the best yield in a certain field they ever had because you placed the right variety in that field based on what was on the order blank?
The answers to those questions was probably, NEVER.
Why is that?
It’s because 99% of all seed sellers are still writing orders with their customers instead of cropping plans. Orders are nothing but a dead-end street. They put not responsibility in the customer’s hands and get not results because of it.
Farmers aren’t waiting to order until after harvest because they want to see how the crop does first or how certain varieties perform like most salespeople think. It’s not because ordering prior to harvest is too early and they don’t know what they’re going to do yet. And it’s not because they don’t want to increase yields in every field. Those are the excuses most farmers give. The real reason farmers don’t order seed for next year before harvest is because the seed varieties they order are placed on an order blank and order blanks are really just, BLANK ORDERS. That’s right. They are BLANK ORDERS that give the grower no help in raising a better crop. They have absolutely no value to any farmer.
Listen to some of the things orders do not do.
- Orders don’t get any real commitment from the grower because little or no planning goes into creating an order by either the seller or the buyer.
- Because there is no real commitment, orders are easily changed or even replaced by competitors.
- The wrong seed varieties are on every single order blank because none of those went through a planning process for how they fit a specific field.
- There is no field visit when writing orders to attach the right variety to the right field.
- Even if certain varieties were placed on an order blank with an idea of where they will be planted, come spring, the chances of farmers remembering where they’re supposed to go by that time are slim and none.
- Varieties written on an order blank have little chance of performing at the top because there’s no plan on how the field the variety will be planted in will be managed.
- Many of the varieties written on order blanks won’t get planted but will be returned because the varieties on an order are not attached to a field so there is no commitment to a plan, it’s just an order.
In this marketplace there is no such thing as an early order or a solid order because orders themselves have no value, yet companies are still trying to get them early. Orders have value ONLY when they’re attached to a cropping plan. Just as the new sales season starts the minute planters roll, the crop planning season begins at the same moment for the grower. Planting season signals the end of the old planning season and the start of the new planning season. Every day a grower waits to begin his cropping plan for next year once planting starts, the farther behind he gets and the more bushels it costs him through decision making delays.
So instead of trying to get farmers to order earlier, we need to get them to stop writing orders period, and start doing cropping plans. Once they understand how cropping plans are different from orders, they will see the many benefits cropping plans bring and stop worrying about ordering early or writing an order period.
Be sure to view the “Cropping Plans Win Sales, Orders Kill Sales video in Academy 101. It will give you even more reasons to stop writing orders with growers or if you are already writing cropping plans ways to do them even better.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Frank Wilczek said, “If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems and that’s a big mistake.” I remember when my son Tom was in first grade and was involved in wrestling. Tom was so skinny you could see his heartbeat through his skin. His singlet would just hang on him, almost looking for an opportunity to fall off.
One day when I was taking Tom to wrestling practice, remember he’s just in first grade, he said dad, I do pretty good when I wrestle my friends but there are some guys in my class who are really tough and I don’t want to wrestle them in practice. He said, they’re so strong, I can’t do anything. I just keep doing the wrong things and they pin me right
away.
I said, Tom, that’s the best way to learn by taking on the tougher guys and making mistakes. You don’t learn anything by wrestling people you know you can beat because you never make mistakes or have to get yourself out of trouble. But when you wrestle the tough guys and make a mistake, you have to figure out how to get yourself out of it.
That’s what life is all about.
Figuring out how to compensate for the mistakes you make so you can still go on to achieving your goal. He reluctantly started practicing with the tougher kids and improved a lot.
It’s a lot different today as Tom is now 6’2”, solid muscle with a body fat of less than 6%. He’s in amazing shape and decided not to pursue wrestling when he was in school. I know that lesson he learned as a youngster stayed with him. And now that he’s in his 40’s and competes in Jiujitsu, he will tell me how he goes up against the toughest guys in the dojo at every practice so when it’s time for a tournament he’s better prepared.
I see this phenomenon all of the time in salespeople. They let their fears keep them from attacking hard enough problems that may cause them to make mistakes. A prime example of this is prospecting for new business. Most salespeople hate prospecting because they’re afraid they’re going to make mistakes and lose the opportunity to get a new customer. Many salespeople rely heavily on plot data, programs and giving price deals because they’re afraid they’re not competent enough to sell themselves and fear they may make mistakes.
Are you the first grader avoiding wrestling the toughest kids?
What are you afraid of doing so you don’t screw it up. The most successful people I know say the reason for
their success was the number of mistakes they made in their lifetime. But they also say, you need to make as many mistakes as possible, just learn from each one and try to never repeat them.
Do you know what I’ve learned in my 52 years in the seed business by making mistakes left and right? I learned that not only is it ok to make mistakes, but nobody else cares how many mistakes you make or when you make them. So go forth and tackle the toughest problems you face and make mistakes. Everyone else has their own problems, just make sure you attack and solves yours.
Happy Selling
Tony Robbins says, “Life is always happening for us and not to us.”
That means regardless of what happens to us, we’re being prepared for something better ahead for us.
That’s hard to believe sometimes when we’re faced with difficult circumstances and events we had no idea were going to happen to us.
How can some of those things be happening for us you ask?
Well, it starts as a matter of not being angry or sad when something we don’t want to happen, happens, and moving to the attitude of, ok, so what’s the next step for me?
How do I handle this and how can I make what just happened to me a benefit or next step for me in my life?
Regardless of what’s happening in your life, good or not so good, you need to take time and allow yourself to step back and analyze the good and not so good moments and appreciate them for the possibilities they bring for you. Ask yourself, why did this happen to me and how can I turn it into something that actually happened for me so I could move on and become an even better, smarter person? Almost everything that happens to us becomes a learning experience for us.
Let’s use product performance issues as one of the most common examples of something happening to you that will often make it difficult to understand how it could happen for you.
When selling a living breathing organism like seed to farmers who rely on its performance for their livelihood, a LOT of things can happen to you. Varying performance caused by environment or mismanagement by the farmer can supply plenty of things that will then happen to you as a result. The farmer may blame the variety or he may blame the weather but either way he is blaming you because you sold him the variety he is not happy with. When that happens, and it often does, how do you turn that situation into something that happened for you and actually benefited you.
In a scenario involving disappointing performance of one of your varieties, you know this happened for you because of the many lessons you will now learn from this situation. The first lesson is a reminder that it is NEVER the variety’s fault.
It’s always the fault of the thousand variables.
Too often we forget and serves as a reminder for us. Second, this situation happened for you to remind you to do a better job of reminding customers of the thousand variables and what their impact can be so they stop blaming the variety or you for the disappointing outcome. Third, problems with performance of one of your varieties on a customer’s farm happens for you to remind you to remind customers of the need to put one variety in a field and set a bushels per thousand plant goal for each field. When you do that, performance issues go away because there’s nothing to compare the variety to. And last but not least, that situation can remind you to do a better job educating customers that the goal is not to measure the performance of a particular variety in a field, but to measure the yield average of the entire farm.
In the case of a farmer telling you that your price is too high or he can buy seed cheaper somewhere else, there are many reasons for that to happen to you. You’re reminded to reassess your sales story, your sales approach, your ability to sell value and why price even comes up at all. You’re able to reassess the real values you are offering to find out if prospects aren’t seeing their benefit or if they actually have no benefit to them. When price objections happen to you, the opportunity to assess your sales approach is the for you.
It’s true, life is always happening for us and not to us. But the goal is to make sure we know that and we are always prepared to make the best of what happens to us the best thing for us. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling better already. After all, everything that’s going to happen to me today is actually something I never knew was going to turn into something special for me.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Don’t Try This At Home:
Years ago, it wasn’t unusual to hear about people getting hurt or even killed when they tried to replicate stunts at home that they saw someone do on television. Then years later tv shows like Ridiculousness and movies like Jackass, made doing crazy stunts at home look fun, challenging, and romantic.
It created a major acceleration in both dangerous activities and injuries when stunts on both of those shows were done by amateurs at someone’s home.
So to keep from getting sued, companies started adding disclaimers to their programs clearly stating, “Don’t Try This At Home” or in the case of car stunts they would show a statement that said, Professional Driver, or Professional Driver on Controlled Course.
It’s only because so many people have no common sense, who are showing off or under the influence that that kind of advice needs to be given at all.
But believe it or not, seed sellers sometimes need to be given disclaimers too and reminded of things they should not be doing at home.
You’re probably asking yourself, what could seed sales reps possibly do at home that could injure them and their ability to get sales?
Well, it all starts with where the mind is located, not the body.
Did you know that 75% of all seed sales reps are hurt or severely injured mentally before they leave to make sales calls?
That’s right.
And in the case of prospecting, that injury rate is close to 100%.
So whether prospecting or calling on current customers, too much time is spent at home, thinking about making those sales calls but doing totally different and unrelated activities at the same time. If sales reps also farm, they’re often busy cleaning the machine shed or getting machinery prepared to go to the field in a few months. While doing jobs unrelated to making sales calls may seem harmless, those reps lull themselves into believing they are preparing for the calls just by thinking about them. But by the time they force themselves to hit the road, their desire, and their ability to execute are injured to the point of making them ineffective.
They tried to prepare for sales calls while working around the farm while their minds are “at home.”
When preparing to make sales calls you can physically be at home but your mind must be out there on the road in front of prospects and customers as you practice and role play the call with a business associate, spouse or partner.
Seed sales reps can never listen to markets at home without being severely injured or handicapped when it’s time to make sales calls.
That’s because they have no way of not having those market facts stuck in their minds when they make the sales calls. Top sellers know what to say when they out on the road if a prospect or customer brings up markets so they never get hurt with that kind of conversation. But when they listen to the markets at home prior making sales calls, they are badly injured mentally and much more likely to get into a price fight or lose their enthusiasm for making calls all together.
Another thing seed sellers should never do at home is think about test plots or study their products. They are injuring their ability to think about placing the right varieties in the right fields for customers. They also get hurt by thinking about last year’s results, regardless of whether they were good or bad.
Instead, they should be using the information gathered on the combine rides they did with each customer and be focused on the goals they set based on the bushels per 1000 plant goal for each of their fields.
So many sales reps have their sales either injured or killed by doing things they should not be doing at home.
Do you want your sales to go up?
Get your mind out of the house, off the farm and into the street where it can’t be hurt or killed. Keep your mind focused on prospects and customers who will test your skills and keep you sharp. Force yourself to wake up and see what a dangerous thing training your mind at home can be. And stop watching Ridiculousness or Jackass, it will only get you in the mood to do something stupid that could injure your mind and body permanently.
Happy Selling, Rod
Marcus Aurelius, a Greek Stoic and philosopher who lived from 121 AD to 180 AD said, “That which isn’t good for the hive, is not good for the bee.”
He believed that every part of the Universe is interconnected and part of a larger whole. He was one of the first to say he was not just a citizen of Rome, he was a citizen of the world. The idea that you are just a bee in a hive is the same concept. If you do something that is not good for the community you live in, it probably is not good for you either.
So what keeps a beehive healthy and strong?
It’s getting every bee to believe that whatever it does needs to be good for the hive.
As a sales rep working with farmers, what kinds of things do you do that are good for them as a whole?
We know that not every sales rep is helping the farmer hive become stronger and more health by the things they are offering farmers. In fact, over the last 20 years the farmer hive has become increasingly unhealthy leading to the loss of thousands of bees, I mean, farmers.
Offering programs, technologies and cheap prices in lieu of helping farmers raise yields continues to destroy the farmer hive. Farmers don’t need new varieties, new technologies, programs, or cheap prices. They need help making more money by increasing production.
As you start the new sales year, think about what you’re going to do in 2024 to enhance your hive of customers and the entire farmer hive by changing your sales approach.
Decide what new values you can offer outside of products, technologies, programs and price that will make every farm operation healthier.
Decide what your message is going to be during seed delivery.
Are you going to be there, taking the grower to each field to review the field by variety cropping plan?
Are you going to give each grower a calendar of events that will take place with you through 2024?
Are you going to be at every customer’s planter, do post planting report card visit, ride harvesters and so on?
Stop setting goals or new year’s resolutions for 2024 and start deciding what you’re going to do to enhance the health of your entire hive of customers. What new values are you going to bring, starting with your own personal appearance, your sales approach and sales story.
As Marcus Aurelius said over 2000 years ago, you’re connected to every part of the hive and what you do affects the entire hive, In return the hive, your customers take care of you.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Do You Know the Quickest Way to Improve?
In her TED talk, Janine Benyus talked about BIOMIMICRY, solving problems humans face by copying what organisms of all kinds have already developed solutions to. She says that over 30 million organisms have used the past 3.8 billion years to devise solutions to problems they faced and we need to study them and copy them.
For example:
Thomas and Ana Moore and Devin Gust (University of Arizona) are studying how a leaf captures energy, in hopes of making a molecular-sized solar cell. The goal is create a tiny, sun-powered battery.
J. Herbert Waite (University of California Santa Barbara) is studying the blue mussel, which attaches itself to rocks via an adhesive that can do what our adhesives can’t…cure and stick underwater.
Bruce Roser (Cambridge Biostability) has developed heat-stable vaccine storage that eliminates the need for costly refrigeration. The process is based on the same natural process that enables the resurrection plant to remain in a desiccated state for years.
Joanna Aizenberg (Lucent) has mimicked the process by which the Brittle Sea Star fish self-assembles distortion-free lenses out of seawater.
Every salesperson can improve their selling skills by utilizing BIOMIMICRY, copying strategies from already successful sales reps. How many challenges do sales reps face right now that could be overcome by studying and copying what successful sellers have been doing for 50 years. We’ve done a very poor job of passing on solutions to common challenges sellers face every day. The marketplace continues to change, but methods for handling objections such as price, performance issues, order urgency and others haven’t changed. Start studying and copying those who are already successful and watch your skills improve.
Every salesperson can improve their selling skills by using BIOMIMICRY, that is, if they can find someone to copy. Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Did you know that when talking to a prospect or customer, you have only 17 minutes of their attention before they stop focusing on what you’re saying?
That’s right.
And one of the biggest mistakes many salespeople make is they talk too much on sales calls, far exceeding the 17-minute limit.
They often dominate the conversation by telling their listener how good their company and products are. Well, a little bit of that goes a long way and unless they’re paying attention to the listeners body language, don’t realize when their prospect is no longer listening.
One of the biggest challenges seed sellers face is getting appointments with modern day farmers because they’re tired of being subjected to salespeople who won’t shut up. Today farmers are more discerning who they give their time and attention to. In fact, reps who have nothing new or any real value to offer farmers outside of their products have made getting their attention a limited resource.
Once a rep gets an audience with a grower they don’t need to just be able to hold their attention, they need to be able to exceed that 17-minute deadline without losing them. That means getting them involved in the conversation and wanting it to continue. That’s where the real problem comes in.
The best way to capture a farmer’s interest and not have to worry about the 17-minute limit and is by talking about them and their operation. People like to talk about themselves so the goal should be to talk about the grower and his operation.
When you combine that idea with the use of sales tools like a story book, farmers are more willing to give you the time you need and want. A well-thought-out storybook outlines how you help growers raise higher yields on their farms then asks the grower where he wants to take yields on his farm. It will not only help you get a sale but will also make the conversation a lot more fun for both you and the grower.
But sales reps can still end up staying too long which is the second biggest mistake many of them make. No matter how good your presentation is, you can’t overstay your welcome. A storybook is simply a way to guide the conversations and capture the farmer’s total attention.
If you don’t capture a grower’s attention before 17 minutes are up, you become a pest who will not be welcomed back for a second conversation.
Happy Selling,
Rod Osthus
Do You Know How To Train?
High School was easy for me, in fact, I never studied much at all. I played sports, had lots of friends, and spent 6-8 weeks of the year, at home, a week at a time, helping my dad on the farm. Back in those day all you had to do was tell the principal your dad needed you to help on the farm and you were excused. I wasn’t the smartest kid in class, but I was a solid B student without ever having to apply myself. That was in High School, but college was a real wake-up call.
I enrolled at South Dakota State University, majoring in Agronomy, and quickly discovered there was no easy road in college. Professors didn’t care if I came to class or did the work. I never missed class during the day, I studied every night and had a part-time job where I worked 20-30 hours a week during whatever free time I could muster. I needed the money.
Despite my hard work ethic, I ended up on probation after the first semester.
It’s not that I wasn’t smart enough, it was that I didn’t know how to study.
That’s right.
I had never studied in High School and didn’t know how to go about it in college. Was I supposed to learn from the textbook, listen to the lecture or take notes in class to learn the subject matter and prepare for exams?
Every professor was different. Some tested based on their lectures, some took it word for word from the textbook and others came up with ways to apply the material. I decided my only way to survive was to write down every word my professors said in class, listen closely as they answered questions and ask questions myself.
That’s how I learned and studied for tests.
It worked.
I clawed my way up to the Dean’s list.
That became a valuable lesson when I started learning how to sell seed. There were plenty of books on how to sell, but not a single one on how to sell seed. Seed is a special kind of sale no one seemed to have figured out how to do except by trial and error. I developed a system for selling seed through the experience of winning and losing. I learned to focus on what farmers really wanted and how to get it for them. My sales skyrocketed. That system was invaluable when I started the RC Thomas company and began teaching others how to sell seed.
Sales reps who attended my CAMP or Blueprint programs always commented it was the most valuable sales training session they’d ever attended. I would love to take credit for being a fantastic lecturer, but my real secret was knowing many of my students struggled to learn as I did, they didn’t know how to study. So I offered them multiple ways to grasp the concepts from lectures, to interactive exercises, to tests, to video and so on. Plus, students didn’t realize, the reason I left so many blanks in my handouts for them to complete was that it was my way of teaching them to take notes. Every student got a special notebook to take notes in at the opening of my sessions but many of those notebooks ended up with one or two lines written in them by the end of class. That’s why I made sure my manuals served as their notebooks, forcing them to write things down. Here are a few tips how to study and learn faster.
- Create a system for taking notes. I have a close friend who is a seed sales rep. He carries a bound, hard-cover note book with him everywhere. He takes notes in almost every situation he’s in. He has developed a system that’s easy, compact, and the hard cover gives him something firm to write on.
- Value your time. If you believe your time is at least as valuable as the person lecturing, you will take notes.
- When given the opportunity, look over the material before coming to class. When the material is available, it’s most helpful to study and even outline it prior to the lecture.
- Sit up front. Make sure you come early to sessions so you can get a really good seat close to the lecturer. Most students who don’t sit up front are afraid of being called on or asked questions during the session. Those who sit up front, learn more than those who don’t because they’re surrounded by others who are upfront for the same reason they are, to learn as much as possible.
- Write down everything the lecturer writes on a board or easel. Those are most often key points and highlights of the session.
- Stop believing you’re there to learn what you can during the session. You’re in the session to gather as much information as possible for use later. Learn to listen and write at the same time. As long as you’re comprehending what’s going on, you can write AND listening.
- Use your note pace to control the session pace. Some speakers talk faster than others and that’s where using abbreviations and short-cuts come in handy. But as you take notes, if you find yourself getting behind, ask the lecture to stop and repeat something. Sometimes a good note taker in the crowd slows a speaker who was talking too fast and it helps everyone in the room, not just you.
- Watch for lists and numbers. If a lecture says there are 3 reasons for this…get ready to write down 3 numbers with a reason beside each one.
- Never use a sentence where you can use a phrase. Never use a phrase where you can use a word.
- Don’t bother recording lectures. Lectures on tape are almost impossible to use for review. Written notes can be glanced over quickly and any part of the lecture can be referred to in an instant. Tapes take too long and it’s very hard to find the sections of the tape you may be looking for when you want them.
- Write class summaries at the end of class.
Make sure when you’re working hard to be a better seed seller, you know how to study…it will put you far ahead of those who don’t know how to study or don’t study at all.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Can You Explain Who You Are?
If you ask who I am and I tell you my name is Rod, Rod Osthus, you really wouldn’t know who I
am. You wouldn’t know why I exist. You would only know my name, what I call myself. You
wouldn’t know my true identity.
My true identity is much more than my name. It’s more than just the color of my hair, the color
of my eyes, my height, or my weight. My true identity is what you can’t see and that’s what’s
inside me. The invisible part of me that makes me the person I am is my true identity. It’s the
part that needs to be explained if you really want to know the real me. What you need to know
is what I think about most of the time, what drives me and how I treat people? You want to
know what real value comes from my existence and do I spend most of my time thinking about
myself or about to help other people?
Those are the things that make up my true identity and the only things anyone else cares about. When you asked me to identify myself you actually wanted to know, “Who I am and why do I exist?”
As a seed seller, how many times in a week do you tell someone who you work for? You say your company’s name but it doesn’t tell the person who your company really is. They may be familiar with your company, having seen your signs, recognize the colors of your company logo and so, but they have no idea who your company is or what it stands for. What prospects and customers really want to know is, who is _____________________________ put your company name in that blank?
For example, someone says, who is RC Thomas? The common reply would be The No.1 Seed Sales and Consulting firm in North America. But that wouldn’t tell them who RC Thomas is or give them our true identity, plus no one cares if we’re no.1 or no. 21. That’s not our true identity. Our true identity is why we exist.
So if I said, RC Thomas teaches sales reps how to double their seed sales in 3 years while helping their customers increase profitability by 10% the first year they work together, they would know who RC Thomas Company is and why the company exists. You need to know the invisible part of RC Thomas that you don’t see in a name,
a sign, or a logo. I call that creating a one-line bio that tells who you are and the value you bring.
What’s your company’s identity? What do you say when someone asks who you sell for and what they do? Why does your company exist? When developing your one-line bio here are a couple of things to think about.
One, what do you stand for?
How will you impact customers?
Are you the second largest seed company in the nation, well no one cares, or do you actually help farmers increase their yields by 10% the first year you work together which everyone cares about?
Two, is your company a hundred years old or a third-generation seed supplier, Well no one cares. Or do you help farmers lower the cost of every bushel they produce by 10% the first year by showing them how to raise yields to new levels?
Three, do you say you have the best service in the industry, which is what every other company claims, or do you guarantee to solve any problem a customer may have in 24 hours or they receive $1000 dollars?
What sets you apart from all other seed companies? What is your true identity. Figure it out so people know who you are and what you represent. Once you have your identity figured out, put it into one sentence and that will become the one-line bio about your company you will use every time someone asks who you sell for. That also tells everyone who YOU ARE.
After all, YOU ARE THE COMPANY YOU REPRESENT.
So, who are YOU? Figure that out too.
Happy Selling,
Rod
Let’s talk about The Power of Deadlines
I want to go back to an article I wrote a number of years ago that got so much response I want to repeat it again. Many of you remember a movie called Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks. It’s based on a true story that occurred on April 13, 1970.
Apollo 13 was to be the third mission to land on the Moon. But the mission was aborted two days into the flight because on the evening of April 13, when the crew was 200,000 miles from Earth and closing in on the moon, mission controller on the ground, Sy Liebergot saw a low-pressure warning signal on a hydrogen tank in the space craft. The crew flipped the switch for a routine procedure and a moment later, the entire spacecraft shook. Alarm lights lit up in Odyssey and at Mission Control as oxygen pressure fell and power disappeared. The crew notified Mission Control “Houston, we have a problem." An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks crippled the spacecraft during flight and the crew was forced to orbit the Moon without landing. All of you younger people may remember the movie, many of us older folks remember the actual incident when it happened.
NASA’s accident investigation board determined wires were exposed in the oxygen tank through a combination of manufacturing and testing errors before the flight. A spark from an exposed wire tore apart one oxygen tank and damaged another inside the spacecraft. They lost power, part of their oxygen supply and much of their food.
On Earth, flight director Gene Kranz pulled his shift of controllers off of regular rotation to focus on managing consumables like water and power while other teams worked around the clock to support the crew and reconfigure essential systems, using different, often odd parts of the aircraft to keep them alive and get them back home. It would be another 4 days before they returned home.
Today, Apollo 13's problems stand as a shining example of how NASA solved a life-threatening problems in space in a very short period of time and under a lot of pressure.
Many of us are forced to periodically work under pressure. Sometimes we create the situation ourselves, other times the situation is created for us. Regardless, many of us turn out some of our best work when time is of the essence. Why is that? The reasons are simple.
Deadlines force the mind to refocus.
Deadlines automatically remove variables that are no longer considered important to achieving the objective. When deadlines are imminent, processes are shortened and goals are most often reached within the shortened time frame.
Deadlines work because the mind is focused, and all of a person’s energy is put into achieving a single goal. The problem is, most deadlines are too far away. Too many salespeople set goals, which are deadlines, but they’re never achieved because they wait too long to attack the distant goal. When they finally do take them on, so many other elements needed for the goal are no longer available, ie. new customers needed to get an increase.
I operate best under deadlines and for me, the shorter the deadline the better I work. I find that my creative juices flow the best when I am under pressure to meet a deadline. I have the greatest focus when I know I HAVE to do it.
But despite the fact that deadlines are powerful and often very beneficial, I guess being aboard the Apollo 13 takes focusing on a deadline to an entirely new level. When I am under a deadline to write and make a mistake by creating a poor article, I just put it in the trash and start over. Those brave men on Apollo 13 didn't have that option. Meeting their deadline meant life or death. And even though achieving your seed sales goal isn’t life or death to you personally, it can mean life or death to your company. Maybe setting a few more, serious, shortened deadlines for yourself wouldn't be that bad. I look forward to seeing you in outer space, as soon as you send your sales into orbit.
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Don’t Knock the Competition?
The Golden Rule Of Selling states Never Talk Bad About Competitors.
Regardless of how much a prospect or customer knocks competitors, you can’t “pile on” and knock them too. They’re allowed to do it, you’re not, especially if the company they’re putting down is one they also buying from. For example, if your wife starts talking bad about her own relatives, you do NOT have the right to jump in the fray and say negative things about them too. That will get you into trouble.
When sales reps aren’t able to sell themselves and their own company values, it can be tempting to revert to breaking the Golden Rule. But it never works and here’s why. The value of the sales rep takes a nose-dive in customers’ minds the minute the rep starts “knocking” the competition.
This is not only Sales 101, it’s also common sense.
A friend and I recently went to a restaurant in a neighboring town and to my surprise, our waiter was a young man who had been working at a great restaurant in the town I live in for more seven years. He left when the restaurant was sold and became under new management. He immediately recognized me and I asked him why he left. He said the new owners were doing a really poor job and all of the staff he had worked with was leaving. He said the food had really gone to the dogs too. I listened as he carried on about how bad it was. Little did he know I had eaten there several times since the new owners took it over and I also know the new manager of the restaurant personally. The food was at least as good or maybe even better than before and the service was great. Many of the old faces were still there. This guy is a great waiter, but my perception of him dropped tremendously as he waxed on about how bad his former place of business was. Regardless of how he felt about the change, he should have said, I left to get a change of scenery and I understand they’re doing very well. End of story.
There are three things that occur in a customer’s mind the minute a reps starts banging on the competition.
First, the grower discovers the seller is afraid of them. If he wasn’t afraid of them, he would avoid the topic by making a positive comment about the competitor then move on. For example the grower might say, “I buy all of my seed from Brand X and I’m happy with them.” The seller must remember the Golden Rule and say, “They do a nice job, don’t they.” Now, that company may NOT be doing a nice job, but the farmer knows whether they do or not and is the only one who can criticize them. At that point the seller is free to continue selling his own values, having shown no fear of the competitor. This ALWAYS works.
Second, when reps knock a competitor, the grower immediately feels insulted. Any time you attack a competitor that the grower has been doing business with, you’ve told the grower how stupid he is for making that decision. That’s sales suicide with that grower.
And third, when you slam your competition, whatever level of trust the grower had for you at that point leaves. People don’t trust those who degrade others because they wonder whether you will talk about them the same way at some point in time.
They know people who degrade others can’t be trusted.
After all of these years, it’s hard to believe we still need to talk about the Golden Rule. But since we are, the next time you run into your competitor who loves to spread lies and rumors about you and your company, just use this great old line on them. “Hey John Doe, I’ll make a deal with you. If you stop telling lies about me, I’ll stop telling the truth about you!”
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Do you know how to win?
It’s obvious that some of you do and many of you don’t. If you’re still using weigh wagons, side-by-side comparisons, and test plots to see if you won, you not only don’t know how to win, but if you lose, you put the responsibility for losing in the wrong place.
It’s harvest season, the time when salespeople go nuts trying to figure out if their varieties won or not. Well just to be clear, the winners in the seed game aren’t the seed reps, their companies, or their varieties. The real heroes, the only winners are the farmers who work hard to maximize yield and profit on their farms regardless of whose seed they planted. If your variety happened to be at the top in a particular field, you’re not the winner, the farmer is because he’s responsible for the result, not you or your variety. You’re just the winner by association with the true winner being the farmer.
Varieties can’t produce to their maximum potential on their own, they need to be protected from the more than 1000 variables that detract from that potential and that’s the farmer’s job. Farmers need maximum yields to win and those maximum yields come from following certain protocols that direct them toward their goals. So stop trying to take the credit when your varieties do well on customers’ farms.
Do farmers need to rely on their seed rep for advice on which varieties to plant and how maximize their performance by following special protocols?
Of course.
But none of those protocols involve including weigh wagons, test plots or side by sides in the production strategy.
The real, yield building protocols are the Top 5 Factors to produce a Top Crop and when they’re properly employed the farmer is the hero.
He’s the one who executed them.
The bottom line is, stop thinking that you and your varieties are the hero when things go right and put the credit where it’s deserved, on the customer. Give your customers the kudos they deserve and watch them want to give you a repeat performance.
The more you remind customers who follow the Top 5 Factors of the great job they’re doing, the more they will continue to improve their game. Show them as important as varieties are, you’re not relying on them to get you to where you want to go but focusing on helping the farmer every way you can. You need to remember the grower’s participation in the final result and continue to teach them how to win. When you consider the negative impact customers can have on your variety’s performance when protocols aren’t followed, you will stop putting varieties in farmers’ hands and letting them do as they please with them. Instead, you will get them to follow a calculated set of protocols that will ensure achievement of their goals and so they become the winners.
Once you do that, both you and the farmer win.
There were a lot of surprises this fall, some good and some not so good. The good surprises came in the form of unexpected high yields despite the very dry summer. But the most important thing is to realize there are only two entities competing for the chance to win every year, one is the farmer and the other is the 1000 variables. When farmers follow protocols to the letter and invest everything the have into their crop and win…they are the true winners. Congratulate them and not yourself or the variety. But when things don’t go as planned and the crop was not as good as expected, the winner was the 1000 variables. Sometimes they are so overwhelming there is nothing a farmer can do to overcome their degree of impact. So if the farmer followed the protocols and did everything he could, he was not the loser either. Some things you just can’t control. Recognize how often your customers are the true winners when your varieties perform well and watch them want to repeat their efforts to win again.
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Steve Jobs said, “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will.”
At what point are you comfortable with what’s working for you when selling seed? At what point do you become so comfortable with your talents, level of knowledge, your selling style, and your ability to attract customers that you feel you don’t need to change anything? According to Steve Jobs, the answer is never. In fact, he was well known for cannibalizing his own products before competitors had the opportunity to do it. A great example was the iPod. The iPod became a huge success but when it did, Steve Jobs spent no time feeling the glory. He immediately started thinking about how other companies may be bringing music to their handsets and went about creating the iPhone. He made sure that he never gave competitors the chance to cannibalize his products by doing it himself first.
What’s working for you right now, that could be cannibalized by a competitor? What kinds of things are working for you right now that you should be destroying before a competitor has the opportunity to do it? What kinds of things should you be cannibalizing for the sake of staying ahead of everyone else?
The seed industry has always been one that, unless a new product comes to market is slow to change. It’s had a difficult time changing how it’s sold seed over the past decades. Companies still rely on programs rather than the talents of the sales rep. They’re still caught in price wars with customers because they haven’t cannibalized their values and upgraded them beyond everyone else’s. But in my opinion, the number one thing every company needs to begin cannibalizing is their own sales force. Mediocrity reigns among field sellers because they have not cannibalized them and made improvements to stay ahead of customers.
The first thing every sales reps needs to do is cannibalize himself. Destroy the old you and re-create the new you at the end of each selling season. Change the way you take care of your vehicle. Change your appearance. Build a new storybook and practice that new story. Learn how to do a better job of staying outside the circle and in control. Attend at least four days of seed sales training a year to keep up to date on how to sell in the 21st century. Remember, it takes special training to learn how to sell a living organism like seed, where you can’t control its performance. It also requires companies and their sales reps to re-invent themselves every year to give prospects and customers a fresh, new, exciting experience.
Make some real changes this year. Start with yourself. Once you do that, you will be different from every competitor and customers will notice by wanting to do business with you. The best part of all, you will be the most successful cannibal in the tribe. Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Why Farmers Go Out Of Business?
This podcast should create a lot of controversy, but I’m no stranger to that.
After all, I was first one of all sales trainers to say weigh wagons and test plots were a waste of time. That created a lot of comments like, “he’s an idiot”. That was more than 30 years ago. I was the first to say farmers don’t buy products on price and never will. They make their decision to buy the most serious input for their farm based only on their belief, likeability and trust in the sales rep. Again, “idiot”. And again, more than 30 years ago.
So here we are, well into the 21st century, with the greatest number of high performing seed varieties in history. They have amazing technologies attached to them and we still can’t seem to milk enough yield potential out of them to keep farmers in business. When the only source of profitability on every farm lies within the varieties they plant, and every variety has the ability to produce 2-3 times what farmers are getting right now, you’d think we’d have figured out how to help farmers harness that potential so they could make a living. But we haven’t. Instead we allow them to blame market prices, input costs and weather, while sales reps try to convince them all they need is a cheaper price or reward program. It’s not the farmer’s fault. He’s been taught to wait to start production planning because seed gets cheaper the longer they wait to order.
Seed companies keep complaining about the decreasing number of farmers, yet they’re the ones who keep driving them out of business. Most seed companies are doing very little for farmers except selling them seed. So many reps aren’t trained well enough to be on the farms of today’s farming professionals. Farmers need leadership. They need help raising more bushels with the tools available but aren’t getting that help. Farmers don’t know what to do to maximize yields because they keep being told yield is dependent on having the latest equipment and technologies. And oh yes, the weather is also a huge factor.
So what’s the first step to making money in farming today? It’s called early planning. Virtually all of the farmers I’ve helped coach over the years who had the highest yields ever year, despite the weather, all had one thing in common.
They all had their cropping plans in place before harvest...
Have You Ever Been Slapped Across the Face?
I have, many times in the early days of my seed selling career. I quickly learned that every time I got slapped, I deserved it, but it hurt, big time. If you haven’t had it done to you, then you haven’t been selling seed very long. I can tell the novices out there, that when you get slapped, it really wakes you up. It’s also more damaging to the ego than a punch in the nose. A slap across the face signals that, I’m going to slap you because you’re too much of a wuss to take a punch. You punch those you want to fight, but you slap those you want to humiliate. It’s a very condescending move.
Most seed sellers who don’t do their job right, know what I’m talking about. They get slapped across the face all the time, during harvest season that is. That’s when every seed seller who deserves it, gets slapped. You’d think that after getting slapped once, anyone receiving that humiliating gesture would change their ways. I know I did.
Planting season is the time when the seed marketplace winds up its arm to prepare to slap the crap out of well-deserving seed sellers during harvest. That’s 5-6 months of built-up momentum to execute a slap has the potential to not only disorient you as a seed seller but alsos knock you the hell out of the game.
I want you to visual the seed marketplace, extending its arm horizontally to the side, ready to swing it forward, and crack you across the side of your noggin because you didn’t properly prepare customers to ensure they have the best experience during harvest.
Harvest should always be an exciting time for seed sellers, but instead, it’s often just a hard slap across their face. Harvest exposes the results of everything you did or did not do with customers by the time your seed was planted. I’m not just talking about the performance of your varieties; I’m talking about how well you prepared your growers’ minds for the results that always come later in the season. By the time your seed is planted, customers should already be eagerly waiting for harvest to arrive because they understand everything they need to do to have a great experience at harvest...
Harvest Season: When Too Many Relationships Are Buried
For too many farmers, fall harvest season spells the end of their relationship with some of their seed suppliers. It could have been a first-time association with their seed rep or it may have been a relationship based on years of socializing, trusting, negotiating, joking, and ultimately buying.
The longer term the relationship the more enjoyable it usually is, but the more devastating it can be for the grower AND the seed seller when it ends. In long term relationships farmers have not only learned to trust their seed guy, but they have also found him or her fun to deal with.
But so many relationships will be lost this year following a highly variable harvest season. No, not just product variability, but relationship variability. In fact, harvest season should really be renamed the “Funeral Season.” It should be called a time for “mourning the loss of thousands of relationships” and their interment into the “crypt of low perceptions”.
Why is fall a time of year when farmers lose so many of their relationships? Especially ones as important as the ones with their seed guys? Well, it’s mostly because farmers don’t understand the real value of a seed relationship. They don’t realize that it’s not about yield, and it’s not about product and it certainly isn’t about price. A true seed seller/grower relationship is based totally on dependence. Because if a farmer takes the time necessary to develop a trusting relationship with his seed supplier, (which takes more than one season) he will have all of those things and more. But instead, he puts every one of his relationships on the line every year by looking at his “side by side” trial or his “on farm test plot” or his “yield monitor” and shoots himself in the foot by “burying” the relationships of the seed reps whose products didn’t perform to his expectations, despite the kind of growing season he may have had.
What today’s farmers need more than ever is someone they can rely on, 24/7 for things they need or don’t know they needs. They need a seed leader, someone to tell them when to buy, what to buy, when to pay, how to pay, where to use it, how to use it and how to measure it’s performance. They need to learn the value of having a relationship with every seed seller they work with. And when they gets upset with the performance of a certain brand from a certain sales rep, they should not be asking that rep to leave his farm, they should be asking for more help in managing the 1000 variables that affected the performance of that product in the first place. But too often growers sever relationships that actually have the potential to bring them a lot more than just bushels in the field.
And that’s what they don’t understand...
Stop Changing Your Schedule in Your Mind
Do you know that during my seed selling career I was my own worst enemy? That’s right. Speaking from experience, I was the poorest planner in the world. Too often I would fly by the seat of my pants, base my daily schedule on the weather, on whatever customers wanted me to do and even how I felt on a particular day. For several years I believed because I was in agriculture it was impossible to plan ahead and follow a calendar. Something was always going to interfere and change my plans. I did what every ignorant sales rep would do, plan in my head according to what came along or needed to be done that day. My mind controlled my schedule and it wasn’t a very good system.
The problem with letting your mind do the scheduling is, nothing is ever permanent. When you don’t have a fixed plan in writing, THAT’S when the real interference takes place. I was doing it all backward. I eventually discovered that when I developed an actual calendar in advance, and followed it throughout the season, the interference was much less because I was in control of how I spent my time. I surpassed every sales goal and not by a little, but by a lot. That’s because the calendar told me what I needed to do and when I followed it, I made progress. I no longer followed the whims of my mind but a real schedule.
The other thing I learned was when I DID create a calendar, my fear of not being able to stick to it went away. 95% of the time my calendar never changed during the season, and when it DID CHANGE, it impacted only a few days out of my entire year. Hard to believe isn’t it.
But in the minds of many seed sellers it’s a much bigger problem because that’s exactly where their planning lies, in their minds, and not in writing on paper or in their computer. They have a vision like I did, that making a calendar in our business and trying to stick to it is a waste of time. They keep thinking about some crazy week, month, or year in the past when the calendar got screwed up, and it was usually due to bad weather. You’ve heard me say many times that even when the season is delayed, you never delay your plans accordingly, you stick to the original schedule...
Are You Surprised When Your Training Works?
After teaching thousands of seed sellers all over the world how to sell seed to farmers, I’m still amazed at how surprised so many of them are when they discover the training actually works. The look on their faces is priceless and the comments they make afterward provide me with some great testimonials. It’s obvious that most of their shock comes from never having the right kind of training because when you have the right tools, selling seed is not that hard. I know that, because virtually every person I’ve trained who had no sales experience to farmers, make it look easy. Once they are fully trained and have role-played every part of the sales call, they are successful. And the interesting thing is, they don’t act surprised. It’s only the so-called experienced ones who going into shock.
One of the reasons my sales training sessions have been so effective is because I’ve made hundreds of seed sales myself, testing the concepts and showing others how to execute them. I learned early in my career leading more than 40 District Sales Managers and 1200 sales reps that you can’t teach what you can’t do yourself. For example, whenever our company raised the price of our seed which was never a popular move among the salesforce, my first job was to train the salesforce on how to handle the price increase. They needed to believe in it themselves before they could convince someone else it was a necessary move. Once I showed them how to “sell” the idea to prospects and customers, my next goals was to be the first one to fill an order book with sales from new customers. That would prove that increasing price was not a sales stopper. When I did that, they all had surprised looks on their faces that said, by golly, the training works.
But I wasn’t the only one using that kind of strategy to put surprises on the faces of their sales reps. I got a call from the Director of Sales of one of my large retail clients. He wanted me to teach another session of the Seed Seller Blueprint Strategy. The best part about working with this organization was they made sure EVERYONE in their company went through the training. They believed every employee, whether they were a receptionist, a person behind the counter, a warehouse worker or office worker, needed to know how they were attacking the marketplace. We finished the visit and just before we hung up he said, I need to tell you a quick story.
He said, I took two of our of our so-called experienced sales reps with me to conduct Post Planting Report Card visits. He said, these two guys were not buying into your Blueprint strategy and were saying their customers wouldn’t do some of the things you were telling them to do. They said customers wouldn’t go to the field with them and thought the post planting report card visit was silly. He said I decided to take them on a couple of calls to show them how this part of the Blueprint works, and if it was a success, they would be the best candidates for testimonials on how everyone should be following the Blueprint.
He said, he had asked each grower to meet him at one of the fields so he could do a Post Planting Report Card Check. They agreed to meet him there. He said, not only were the growers interested in the process, but they were also impressed with what they learned. The result was those customers decided to buy either fungicide, or fertilizer based on what happened in the field so they could continue to support the crop. One of the salespeople said to me, you didn’t try to sell them anything, they just wanted to buy. They said, it was so easy how the farmers got involved in figuring out their bushels per 1000 plants and how that was established at planting time.”
Those kinds of calls make my day. In fact, they make my entire year because there are so many field sellers who make the process of selling seed so hard. To me, it’s easier than it has ever been to sell seed to farmers. When I hear of people who discover how easy selling can be when they give farmers the kinds of new experiences I teach, I’m not surprised, just excited. As they said in my favorite movie “It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart of course, another angel got its wings.
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Who’s Helping You Live Longer?
I just finished reading Dr. Peter Attia’s latest book, “Outlive”, the science and art of longevity. The book is based on what he calls a “Centenarian Decathlon,” the things you need to do to live 10 plus decades. When I see people who are a hundred years old or more and are still active, it makes me want to achieve that same milestone. Peter admits there’s a genetic component to living a long time, but it’s not a direct correlation. That got me wondering about my future. I’m in pretty good shape for my age. I eat pretty well, exercise and get lots of sleep. What else can I do?
To get those answers I asked my dental hygienist. That’s right, my dental hygienist. Gwen has been a dental professional for over 30 years and knows how having a healthy body contributes to having a healthy mouth and how having a healthy mouth contributes to having a healthy body. Gwen is one of the smartest dental professionals I know. But she took her knowledge to a whole new level by becoming a Certified Integrative Nutritional Health Coach. She knows so much about being healthy because he has made the journey health herself. Through so many years of helping others, she found herself needing to make changes to her own health. After losing more than 60 lbs. and becoming Certified, Gwen now manages 20 other coaches and more than 100 of her own clients of her own. As of March, she will be retiring from dentistry, dedicating all of her time to coaching others how to live healthier, happier lives...
Are You Still in Your Prime?
The iconic actress Bette Davis said, “Old age is no place for sissies.” She was right.
If you want to continue to compete with the younger crowd as you get older, you need to keep your game at the highest level. That is, you need to stop whining about getting older and endure the pain that comes with working hard to stay in shape, both physically and mentally. It takes extra time and effort to keep up with or stay ahead of those younger than you. Plus, it makes it even harder to stay focused on those kinds of goals when society likes to put everyone over 50 into the “over-the-hill” category.
Most younger people dismiss us older folks as obsolete and unable to contribute as meaningfully as they do to their jobs and to society in general. Many think we are sissies. What they don’t realize is that sissies aren’t exclusive to the over-the-hill gang. Sissies are everywhere and, in great numbers, even among young people. The phrase in your prime no longer applies to any specific age group. There are people defying the so-called normal effects of aging. In certain sports, where physical prowess is required, people are proving they can outperform everyone else their age, and many who are much younger, by simply outworking them. And when it comes to mental capabilities, never underestimate the older crowd. A friend of mine is an archery competitor. He told me that at the Minnesota State Archery Championships this year there was a 95-year-old man who was competing. He told my friend he planned to continue to compete as long as he could.
As a seed seller, at what age are you no longer in your prime? At what age do your selling skills begin to decline and are no longer as effective as younger sellers? The good news is, as long as you keep training and practicing, sales skills never decline. They continue to improve. The bad news is there are plenty of people in sales who have grown old before their time. They’re the group of young sissies who don’t want to put in the time and effort to stay relevant—that is, keep in shape both physically and mentally. They don’t train, they don’t study, and they don’t practice. That’s the fastest way I know to grow old and past your prime in both the sales arena and in life.
Did you know you are always the same age on the inside? So how old are you mentally? Does it match your chronological age or is your mental age a lot younger? I know mine is. I’m 73, but I think and feel like I’m 35. For me, that’s what drives me every day—knowing I’m in an elite category for people my age. I’m not a member of the over-the-hill gang, but rather part of a group that can handle many of the young whippersnappers who want to challenge me to a selling dual. I may not be able to keep up with younger sellers physically, but I can hold my own in mental contests of selling skills. I’ve not only had more years of practice, but continue to practice what I preach.
The key to staying in the game of life is staying in your prime. Regardless of your age you need to decide what you want to feel like or look like in 5-10 or 20 years. Just look at people around you who are your age and decide if you want to look and act like them. What percent of them are in the elite group, far above all others in both their physical and mentally?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the gym, then role-play practice my sales story. I can’t let anyone put me in with the over-the-hill gang. I mean, that would signal that I’m getting old—even though I know I’m still only 35.
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
Do You Leave the Ring Because You Got Hit?
Epictetus was a Stoic, a member of a special group of Greek Philosophers who believed people needed to be able to endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. He was born into slavery and lived in Rome until his banishment when he went to live in Northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. Like all Stoics, Epictetus taught that all external events are beyond our control, therefore we should accept whatever happens to us calmly and without passion or concern. He also said that individuals are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through self-discipline. As with all Stoics he believed that we can only rely on our own responses to outside events, even when we can’t control those events.
Stoics liked to use boxing references when teaching about resilience and determination. They often refer to fighting because it's what they knew best. They wrote, for example, “that unbruised prosperity is weak and easy to defeat in the ring, but a man who has been in a constant feud with misfortunes acquires a skin calloused by suffering." The man who is calloused and bruised, he says, “fights all the way to the ground and never gives up.”
Epictetus would want to know what kind of boxer you are, if you leave the ring when you get hit or if you stay and fight? Getting hit is the nature of the sport of boxing! Would that stop you from continuing to fight?
What kinds of things stop you from achieving your goal? How big does an obstacle have to be to get you to stop pursuing it? Does it take a little obstacle to stop you or are you one who never quits? If something gets in your way, are you resilient enough and determined enough to find a way around that obstacle? Do you look for as many options as possible so you can stay on track to your goal or do you just quit when things get tough?
Over the years crowd sourcing has been an effective way of helping people or businesses that have special financial needs. The strategy involves asking people from all over the world for monetary donations so those in need can get back on their feet after a big loss.
But crowd sourcing is not new. It’s been a popular and effective strategy for the past 50 years in the seed business too, but not for financial reasons. The crowd sourcing I’m talking about is centered around obtaining marketing ideas from the crowd of other companies in the industry, including competitors on how to sell more seed. Virtually every company would keep their eyes on competitions to see how they marketed their seed and if successful, plan to use that marketing strategy the next year. The investigations went all the way from marketing programs to how much other companies were going to charge farmers for their seed.
Crowd sourcing to get new ideas helped a lot of seed companies stay in business over the years, and not just the ones that didn’t have their own marketing departments. As a seed company prepared for a new sales year, they would look at what other companies were doing and borrow their ideas. There were years, for example, when virtually every company was offering free trips to customers if they bought a certain amount of seed. In other years almost every company offered a unit of seed free for every unit they purchased. Companies used tools, household appliances, pickup trucks, farm tractors, grain bins and more to get farmers to buy their seed. Borrowing ideas from competitors, which back then would have been called, “pilfering” or stealing, was the primary way many companies came up with their marketing strategies. Very few had their own unique ways of going to market...
I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I try to make up for it by learning as much as I can, as fast as I can. Every day I’m surrounded by people who are smarter and learn faster than me. Therefore, to keep up, I follow the advice of author and podcast guru Tim Ferriss who said, “Always believe you’re the dumbest person in the room.” Well I believe I meet that standard whenever I’m with someone other than myself. If I believe everyone else is smarter than me, I work harder to keep up, learn faster and end up ahead of most everyone else.
The only way I got through college was by taking copious notes. I wrote down everything my professors said in every class. I had notebooks full of lectures. When every class is full of IQ’s higher than yours, you need to figure out how to maximize retention, even if it means carrying the information around with you. My note taking got me through college.
When I got my first job in research, I KNEW I was surrounded by people smarter and more experienced than me. Again, I found myself to be the dumbest person in the department so my entire focus was on learning all I could. It paid off as it got me promoted ahead and above many of my so-called, SMARTER peers.
In today’s fast changing seed marketplace how do you keep up with all of the changes? Do you believe you’re the dumbest person selling seed for your company? Do you spend as much time as you can learning how to stay ahead of everyone else so you can be the only one impressing the farmers you work with? It takes very little time to fall behind. In fact, any seed seller can be obsolete in a month if they aren’t adapting to changes. Most seed sellers don’t keep up. In fact, so many have fallen so far behind in their skills they’ve lost their ability to help farmers go where they need to go. The reason they fall behind is because they’re mesmerized by new products and technologies coming to the marketplace every year. They believe the only skills they need today are product knowledge skills. Worse yet, that attitude has rubbed off on their customers who have been indoctrinated with the same attitude. The result is stagnation of progress when working toward higher yields and profits. All farmers want to do is focus on choosing the right varieties rather than changing and learning new methods of producing higher yields.
Most of us have something we fear enough to do everything we can to avoid facing it. It may be fear of heights, flying, deep water, public speaking, getting sick and more. We all have reasons to justify our fears based on one of two things, unfavorable experiences of the past which caused the fear, or fear of something we’ve NEVER experienced and are afraid of trying. The word fear, F-E-A-R, has been given the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real. Many times, we don’t know why we have a certain fear, but often, once we face it, we find the fear was unjustified. There was no reason to be afraid.
But there is one fear that plagues virtually every seed seller. It’s the fear of prospecting for new business and it seems to be universal. In my 50 years in the seed business, I’ve found that any seed seller who claims not have a fear of prospecting is not telling the truth. The fear of calling on farmers you’ve never met and getting turned down is real. It keeps so many seed sellers from turning into the driveways of prospects to try to sell them something they’ve never seen, heard of, or purchased. That fear keeps seed sellers from reaching their full potential...
The late Don Hewitt, creator of the television news magazine 60 Minutes, was quoted as saying, “Television is good, not when you see it, not when you hear it, but when you FEEL IT." He and his staff created a very successful, long running series because they knew how to get their audience to “feel” what they were saying. Every segment was an emotional roller coaster for the watcher.
I’ve written a great deal about the difference between being mechanical when presenting your sales story and getting customers to actually feel what you are saying.
When they get a “gut feel” for what you are telling them and they are fully understanding the values you’re talking about, they’re no longer just listening, but having their thinking impacted in the process. That level of execution on takes preparation, practice and even role play. It requires that you listen to yourself and analyze each point you’re making. Until you FEEL IT so strongly yourself that customers get excited and shake their heads in agreement, there’s no way you can move them emotionally enough to get them to do what you want them to do. Unless they FEEL it, they won’t believe in it enough to do it.
From planning to harvest, raising a crop is an emotional event for both farmers and sellers. In fact, emotions often become so strong they become visible. Eyes widen, facial expressions change and everyone gets excited about raising a top crop. But how do you get prospects and customers to “feel” what you’re saying to them? How do you get their blood pressure to rise in anticipation of what’s to come?
Focus On the Process Not the Goal
Every year salespeople set goals for the upcoming sales season, but the majority never achieve them. Why? Because they focus on the wrong thing. They focus on the goal instead of what they need to do to achieve that goal. They forget about the process. They focus on the result, not the process. The process is the sacrifice, it’s all of the hard parts—the sweat, the preparation and practice. But most of all it means following every step that takes you to your goal.
How do you intend to achieve your sales goal this year? What processes are you putting in place and preparing to follow to reach your sales goal? And when you have those processes in place, will you make the sacrifices those processes require you to make? Every sales goal can be achieved if the processes to achieve them are in place and followed.
The problem is, many salespeople struggle with creating and following systems. They often get tired, bored, or distracted and tie their happiness and satisfaction so closely to the outcome that they become impatient and focus only on the goal. The problem with being too goal-oriented is that they can’t always control the outcome. But they can control their progress when they take consistent, deliberate steps toward the goal. They feel better and more in control of what they’re doing...
Farmers are becoming more sophisticated every year.
Their understanding of the seed marketplace they’re in, and the methods companies use to get them to buy, has grown tremendously. In fact, many growers believe their own marketplace IQ, has achieved a level so high they can immediately recognize when there is parity among products and services offered by different suppliers. Their keen eye for value coupled with an inherent need for value, has caused them to become more discerning than ever when it comes to deciding who to buy from. Most farmers have come to believe that virtually all seed, technologies and services are the same.
And once that thought gets into their mind, it becomes a tie between you and your competitor as to who they should buy from.
Of course, the only one who wins, is the one who breaks the tie.
Someone has to break the tie. In sports, a tie is generally broken by going into overtime or sudden death play. But when selling seed, those are not options. When the competition between two companies for selling a farmer becomes a tie in the farmer’s mind, the companies don't end up breaking the tie, the farmer does. And it’s seldom based on the value one company offers over the other because the farmer has already tied the game based on parity in the offering...
One of the common complaints I get from sales reps is how exhausting selling to farmers can be. I understand working with farmers can be draining. There are so many different activities taking place on a farm at one time, especially during the growing season and those activities often involve the seed rep. But it’s not the farmer who wears down a hardworking rep, it’s what the rep sells the farmer, the varieties themselves.
Seed is a living, breathing organism with a life of its own. It’s constantly changing in response to both management and environmental conditions. For example, corn can grow up to 6 inches in a single day during its 6 -7-month life span. That means every day brings a new stage of growth that put demands on both grower and the seed rep to ensure the crop never has a bad day. That requires time, effort, and lots of energy. As a result, seed sellers need to be in shape to sell seed...
Have you’ve ever been on trial?
The word trial spelled t r i a l, comes from the Anglo-French word “trier” meaning, try, or something to be tested. If you sell seed to farmers, you’ve been put on trial and tested many times. In fact, the minute a farmer sees you drive into his yard or place of business you are put on trial. You are judged by how your vehicle looks and by how you are dressed when you get out of it. You are immediately put on trial and judged by how you greet him even though you’ve never met.
Many put you on trial and judge you by how firm your handshake is, at least that’s how my dad judged many people, especially salespeople. A firm handshake got his immediate attention and sent a signal that the person was strong and deserved respect. My dad was a farmer who spent most of his early days working with his hands doing a lot of physical labor that made his hands very strong. He always bragged about how firm his handshake was and put everyone on trial, judging anyone who didn’t have a firm grip when they shook his hand. He even criticized our minister for having such a soft unworthy handshake.
Why would you expect your minister to be a cow milker, bail thrower or a manure pitcher like my dad was?
But it didn’t keep him from talking disparagingly about someone who didn’t have what he called a working man’s hand. He would comment about how soft those people were and that they had never done any REAL WORK. But as he got older and did little or no physical labor, his handshake became like those he usually made fun of.
Virtually everyone is put on trial at some time in their lives. No, not for crimes they’ve committed, but for things other people believe they should be judged.
The typical definition of someone who is a head case is a person who is insane or mentally unstable.
However, that is not the context of this podcast. MY definition of a head case is someone who is full of excuses for not achieving their sales goals.
For 45 of my 50 years in the seed business I’ve been working directly with people who sell seed to farmers, helping them achieve their sales goals. I have been constantly looking for ways to make selling easier for them and for me. I learned all my techniques by having a sales territory of my own even when I was VP of Sales. My boss believed it was important for me to be leading a dealer force and selling direct to farmers where I didn’t have dealers so I could show, as the team leader, I could everything I asked my managers to do.
They could see whether I could get customers to follow me, handle objections and achieve sales goals even during the toughest times. They saw that I never lost a sales contest. They saw that I was a student of the art and learned my way around every obstacle I faced. They watched as I made selling seed seem almost effortless and trouble free. Everything I teach today is still relevant, the problem is, there are too many head cases in the business...
To grow your sales territory, you have to invest time prospecting.
Prospecting? But I’m so busy serving current customers, plus new farmers don’t want to see me until after harvest, right?
Wrong!!
Well, I know you're busy, working in your sales territory, fulfilling duties within your company and trying to have some time for yourself and your family! With all of those responsibilities, where are you supposed to find time to get new customers?
Your struggle is real.
But believe it or not, it's a good thing when you find yourself in that situation. It means you've been working hard. But just working hard is not the only key to growth. Real comes from doing the hard work of finding new clients who will help you build your sales territory...
Someone once said, life is simple but not easy. That means the route to a happy life is easily understood, but not always easy to follow. In fact, often the simpler something is to understand, the more difficult it can be to do. For example, if you follow a few simple rules for a happy, healthy life, like getting plenty of sleep, eating nutritious foods, having a job you enjoy, and following God’s no.1 commandment to love one another, you WILL HAVE that happy, healthy life. Those principles are simple, but they aren’t always easy to follow. Sometimes for legitimate reasons we don’t get the amount of sleep we need. Cravings can draw us to foods that aren’t good for us. At certain times our job may become stressful to the point where we don’t like what we do. And it’s not always easy to love everyone.
There’s a difference between simple and easy. Simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy to implement...
Are You Busy Doing Spring Cleaning?
Nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment when you get a head start on spring cleaning.
Whether you have only a few hours to freshen things up, or several weeks dedicated to doing a full spring cleaning, it needs to be an essential part of making sure everything is spic and span and in its place. After all, too much clutter creates stress, increases anxiety and adds roadblocks to a path to smooth living.
By the way, I’m not talking about cleaning and organizing your home or office. I’m talking about cleaning and organizing your sales plan for the upcoming selling season. Think about the sales plan you had last year; how well did it work? What have you done to analyze all of the customer contacts you made during the last selling season to see if they accomplished your goal of changing customer thinking? What needs to be cleaned up, changed, or eliminated in your sales plan?
Ask yourself the following questions about the condition of your sales plan for the new seed marketing season...
We have been focusing on the theme of Not Aging Gracefully. Last week I listed the things that indicate you are aging gracefully and not doing what you could to extend the quality and quantity of your life. Today I will show you how to tell if you are doing things to, if not extend the quantity of your life, to make the quality better. I call it going full throttle.
Here Are Indicators You Are a Salesperson Going Full Throttle
■ You are so protective of your sleep that you leave parties and social events early to make sure you get to bed on time, will be well-rested and prepared for your workout the next morning.
■ You start every day with a shower.
■ You floss your teeth every day, something my dental hygienist says less than 1% of the people do.
■ You always dress better than your customers and your competitors.
■ You look at your vehicle in a critical way every day, making sure it’s sparkling clean inside and out to impress prospects and customers. It’s your on-the-road office, be proud of it.
■ You set a goal every day to do something special for your business, yourself, and someone else.
■ You practice before contacting growers.
■ You give customers a calendar showing them the weeks and months you will be contacting them during the season and how they will be involved in the contact.
■ You follow every step in the SeedSeller Blueprint to grow your business.
There are many indicators that you are doing everything you can to extend the quality and quantity of your life. You may already be going full throttle, going as fast as you can, flat out, full steam ahead, like a mad man, at a gallop, at top speed, lickety-split, hell bent for election, at warp speed, a mile a minute, like wildfire, as fast as your legs can carry you, having the pedal to the metal, and well, you get the idea. All of those expressions mean the same thing, making life more interesting, exciting, useful, and prolonged. Those terms also apply to the most successful seed sellers I know because they ARE ALL GOING like a bat out a hell.
Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus
I had a lot of feedback from my last podcast on aging gracefully, with a couple of questions that kept coming up. I’m going to handle one of those questions in this podcast and the other one next week. The question I will address today is…
How Do I Know If I Am Aging Gracefully?
Remember last week’s podcast where I talked about the fact that we don’t want to age gracefully. To the average person, aging gracefully means that as we get older we begin to slow down naturally, we start to take life easier, stop doing activities we used to do, gain some weight, and start sleeping in. People who age gracefully believe that’s what they’re supposed to do or deserve to do when they get older. It’s their excuse for slowing down or even becoming lazy. They may even use the excuse my dad used as he got older. He would say, “I’ve gotten my share of exercise and done my share of work over the years, let the young people do it.
But slowing down and aging gracefully is not my goal and it shouldn’t be yours either. Instead, you should be increasing your commitment to remaining active and working even harder to keep your body and mind moving. In my case, I call it going full throttle. You need to be conscious of how you’re aging because you can start aging gracefully and not even realize it. Before you know it, figuratively speaking you’re an invalid both physically and mentally.
Of course this concept applies to all people, but right now I’m going to speak to salespeople. Here is a list of indicators that may help anyone in sales answer the question, “How do I know if I’m a sales rep who is aging gracefully?”
You’re a sales rep who is aging gracefully if...
Make Sure You Don’t Age Gracefully
One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from one of my dealers back in the days when I was still managing a sales territory.
It was a beautiful spring morning and we had just finished unloading two large truckloads of seed corn into his warehouse, bag by 80,000 kernel bag. This was pre-bulk packaging days. My dealer and I walked outside to dry the sweat from our shirts when he commented that it was his birthday. I said, “Happy birthday, you really look good for turning 55. You’re aging gracefully.”
“Yeah,” he replied, “and I hate it. I wish I was in the kind of shape you are in. I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “You’re on the go all of the time, working hard. You are focused and happy, you find time to work out, you never seem to get tired, and you always have a great attitude.”
“But you look good too and you seem to be aging gracefully,’ I replied.
“I don’t want to age gracefully,” he said. “What’s wrong with aging gracefully?” I asked...
How long have you been selling seed? What was your level of enthusiasm for the job the first year you started selling and what is it now? Has your love for calling on farmers increased, stayed the same or decreased over the years? It’s easy for customers to tell how much you love what you do. But most reps don’t monitor their level of love for the business to make sure it never wavers.
The reason you need to monitor your love for selling seed is because that love can have a half-life. The term half-life refers to how long it takes for the full concentration of something to be cut in half. Half-life is used in the drug industry to monitor drugs to determine how fast they decrease from their full potency to half potency in the body. For example, a drug would have negligible therapeutic effect in the body after 4 half-lives. That means, it goes from 100% potency to 50%, from 50% to 25%, from 25% to 12.5% and from 12.5% to only 6.25% potency of the original dose. So, does your love for selling seed have a half-life? Has it decreased at some level since you started?
What level is it at...
The average 4-year-old child asks over 400 questions a day. They’re constantly using their brains. It’s been found that children use their brains twice as often as adults when it comes to learning and putting that learning to use. Not surprising, all of that learning starts in the crib. Research shows that a positive learning environment at the youngest ages increases IQ. The more you read, talk, and teach young children, the faster their brains learn and keep on learning. The environment kids are in early in life has a great influence on their IQ.
It may not be surprising that kids learn more than adults, heck, they’re younger.
But the real difference is kids never want to stop learning. That’s why they ask all of those questions. Adult brains are fully developed by age 25, but many of us stop learning by the time we are no longer in a classroom...
Do You Hug Your Customers?
I know what you’re thinking right now. Just hearing the title of this podcast caused you to think that Rod has really lost it this time. I thought he was crazy when he said he wears a sport on sales calls, but the idea of hugging customers goes way too far.
Well, before you stop listening, hear me out. I’m not going to tell you to hug customers. I would be the LAST person to suggest you do that without good reason. But just so you know, if a customer is a good friend you haven’t seen for a long time, a hug may be warranted. Or if a customer suffers a great personal loss, that may also call for a hug. Hugging is one of the most effective ways you can comfort someone, make them feel loved and make them feel better. It’s also one of the fastest ways to increase a very important relationship building hormone in the body, oxytocin. In fact, any kind of physical touch will have a positive effect on oxytocin. If you go to certain countries, kissing on the cheek is the custom. I learned that every time I went to Brazil and Argentina. But the United States is one of the few countries where kissing on the cheek or hugging is an uncomfortable thing to do with anyone you meet, even relatives. However, there are ways to make people feel good without hugging them...
Are Your Customers Failing 99% of the Time?
Research is full of trials that don’t work. For example, plant breeding is 99% failure and only 1% success. That means 99% of the time plant breeders fail to achieve their goal of developing a better variety because the plants they’re working with can’t defend themselves sufficiently against the environment and produce top yields at the same time.
I was a corn breeder for more than five years. My job was to take a group of corn plants and expose them to as many different, challenging environments as possible, while measuring how well they yielded under those conditions. We would plant the seed three inches deep in the spring to select for seedling vigor, inoculate them with all kinds of diseases, and apply different forces on the growing plants to see which ones wouldn’t green snap. I would select only the plants that passed all of the tests with flying colors and cross them with other plants of a different family that passed the same tests. As strange as it may sound, one of my goals at the end of each season was to throw away as much breeding material as possible and keep only the very best. Many plant researchers don’t think that way because their egos won’t let them. But if the plants you’re currently working with can’t defend themselves against the environments they’re exposed to, they don’t get a second chance. That’s why each fall when it came time to harvest MY breeding nursery, I asked our Director Research to walk through it and tag only the plants he thought should be kept. I would discard the rest. When he was done, he had usually tagged 99% of the plants in my nursery. Although it was hard to watch, I knew it was for the best. This guy was ruthless but had a proven record of releasing great varieties to the market...
Dr. Dennis Charney, a researcher and expert in neurobiology and the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York said, “The Brain is Plastic, the more you use it, the better it gets. The more you use it, the better it functions. And the secret to maximizing your brain’s function and improving its performance is to use it. You need to utilize the plasticity of your brain by giving it practice.
When I joined our local volunteer fire department, I knew nothing about fighting fires. They trained two nights a month, but when you’re starting at zero like I was, that isn’t enough. In the first three months, I went on several major fire calls that included a 3-story group home, a large grocery store and several house fires, all total losses. That summer, because I was new, I was sent to State Fire School, the only one out of the 25 firemen on our department who was sent to State school. I just figured all of the other firemen had done plenty of practicing and had their brains stretched enough to know everything they needed to know about how to fight fires. But I was wrong. Many of those brains were actually concrete and hadn’t been stretched in years.
What I learned during the three days at State Fire School really stretched my brain...
Have you ever wanted to improve your performance, that is, get physically or mentally better? I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to improve. I’ve made many changes over the years that I thought would make me stronger, faster, or smarter and give me an edge over other people my age. I’m not trying to outdo other people, I’m trying to outdo MYSELF. But I believe by challenging myself in ways others aren’t willing to, I will have an automatic edge OVER EVERYONE MY AGE. The definition of an edge is having more of something than anyone else. That something is of great importance to everyone, but only a few are willing to go after it. At my age the edge usually involves, feeling better, having more energy, being better prepared, gaining extra knowledge or even living longer. The key is, whenever an opportunity to improve comes YOUR way, you need to think seriously about taking it....
didn’t watch the Grammy Awards a week ago, but you couldn’t miss seeing the highlights of the night broadcasted by the news channels. Dozens of artists young and old received awards for their new, and most popular songs of the year. Although I’m not into all of the different genres, I am amazed by how much creativity it takes to write a new song. Every time I hear a new one on the radio, I think to myself, how many ways are there, to take a limited number of notes, and put them in an order that creates a sound people like but have never heard. That takes creative thinking, the kind that says to the writer, I need to write a song no one has heard that speaks to the listener. In addition, I need to do it in a way that gets peoples’ attention, so they get excited about hearing that song again. It’s been shown many times that you don’t have to have a great voice to have a hit. Some Grammy winners simply talked the lyrics instead of singing them.
My dad was a good singer. He had an amazing voice and loved to sing. But he always said, there are a lot of people who have hit records who are not good singers. They just have a style that is different from everyone else’s and one that appeals to the masses. They can take a song one artist did not make popular and make it a hit by singing in a different way. A great example of that was the song, Gentle on My Mind, first sang by Felton Jarvis but the song went nowhere because, according to people in the know, he sang it too slow. Glen Campbell took the song, speeded it up and made it a huge hit. My dad would also name people like Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, and Ray Charles who in his opinion made themselves successful by being different from everyone else. They had unique voices and their own styles of how they sang songs. He said in his estimation, they weren’t great singers as you would normally think of what makes a great singer. Great singers have an amazing range and perfect voice control. He said that many successful recording artists don’t have great voices, but they have a way of singing their songs that people love and want to hear over and over again. I guess he was right about some artists...
Betty Reese said, “If you think you’re too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.” Wow, that’s an experience I’m sure we’ve all had. That lone, little mosquito can be very effective when he’s focused on his mission. I keep getting calls from salespeople who are just completing their first year selling seed to farmers. Every one of them tells me their biggest problem their first year wasthat they didn’t feel qualified when calling on today’s sophisticated farmers. They felt they couldn’t tell growers anything they didn’t already know and were intimidated by their own lack of knowledge and experience when in front of them. On the surface, I guess that feeling is understandable, considering the years of experience most farmers have compared to someone who is younger or new to selling. But that makes every sales rep with that attitude worthless when it comes to their ability to help farmers.
Charles M. Schulz said, “Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.”
Having multiple gears on a bicycle gives the rider options when confronted with varying environments like wind, rain, hills, valleys and so on. Different size pulleys on both the pedals and rear wheel offer changeable gear ratios which determine how many times the wheels make a complete turn with each rotation of the pedal. The key is to know how to use the right combinations to make peddling easier or harder, in the case of exercise bikes, and make the bike go faster. Throughout the years, the option of having different gears on a bike change bike riding forever, making it possible to accomplish feats on a bicycle no one else ever thought possible...
The Christmas season is my favorite time of the year, but it’s way too short. The celebration of our Savior, the sharing of good will, and time spent with family are highlights of the Christmas season. But none of those events last long enough. I enjoy them so much. They’re so meaningful and have so much impact on my life that I never want them to end. The Christmas season is just too short.
Another thing that makes Christmas special for me is the music. I can’t get enough of the Christmas music and the spirit those songs generate. From the old standards which will never go out of style, to several new ones I downloaded this year and continue to play. From Thanksgiving into early January, my entire day, every day, is accompanied by nonstop Christmas music. It makes me happy and puts me in a sharing, caring mood. I listen on-line and they try to stop me when they quit playing them. But I don’t let that stop me. My cardio workouts each morning start with 6 different Christmas songs, 4 which are new this year. I know that sounds weird, but it makes me happy and puts me in a great state of mind.
Billionaire Mark Cuban says, “Once you’re a salesperson and know how to sell, there is nothing you can’t do."
Do you believe that? You’re in sales, is that the way you think? When you know how to sell, you can get almost anything you want, anytime you want. So instead of becoming the victim of obstacles that are placed in front of you and having your progress come to a halt, true salespeople use creative thinking to keep them moving forward toward their goals. They know that almost nothing can stop them because THEY are in control.
When you understand obstacles are just part of life and you know how to handle them, you never lose. It never works trying to find someone or something to blame. The key is to know how to stop playing the victim and that’s starts with knowing you have the power to control how you react to any negative situation....
Do Something That Sucks Everyday
How many of you made New Year’s Resolutions for 2023? If you did, I bet ALL of them involved changes that would make your life better if they became reality. But I’m also willing to bet that the route you need to take to make those changes into reality will suck.
For example, if you pledged to quit smoking, it’s going to require a lot of will power and struggles to break that addiction, which means achieving that goal is going to suck. If your goal is to lose weight, it means changing your lifestyle, eating habits and level of exercise which is going to suck. If you decided to get in shape, that means starting an exercise program and sticking with it which is going to be painful and will suck. We all know that if the process of accomplishing all of those things didn’t suck, we would already be doing them...
How much time do you spend practicing and role playing your job? How much time do you spend practicing before making a sales call? I’m not talking about just going over it in your mind before you make contact with a prospect. I’m talking about practicing the entire call with someone so when you actually make the call, you’re in control and it takes you where you want it to go.
I realize that practice of any kind can seem to be a drag sometimes. But what if there was a way that would make you want to practice harder than ever before? What if there was a way to help you make more progress than ever before? And what if there was a way to always make you look forward to practicing? Well, there is a way to have all of those things and that is to have a training partner. Someone who has the same goals as you, someone who is not afraid to critique and be critiqued and is will to commit to pushing you and being pushed...
Most Sales Reps Are Lousy Teachers
How do you learn? Do you learn by someone telling you how to do something, or from sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher, or do you learn best by DOING?
Ben Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”.
Everything you’ve learned, you probably learned by doing, that is, interacting with your environment so you can put the knowledge you’ve been given to work.
Studies have shown that students who went through active learning, that is, got physically involved in putting the subject matter to use, saw much higher test scores and improvement rates. Another study found that students who did not engage in hands-on learning were 1.5 times more likely to fail a course than students who did active learning.
Hands on learning involves physical activity. It involves being aware of your body positions and movements through your muscles and joints. It’s getting students physically involved in moving their whole body, not just their mind, so they can more easily process and learn new, and sometimes difficult information. Thislearning by doing style provides students with instant feedback so they know what they need to keep doing, what they need to improve, and what they need to stop doing altogether. Hands-on movements can be as small as taking notes, drawing a diagram, painting a picture, or much larger actions that are athletic related. The key is, you learn best by physically doing what you have been taught.
Too many sales reps are lousy teachers because they never get physical with themselves, or with customers. They try to teach customers by just telling them what they want them to do, but never ask them to actually do it. Therefore, customers never really learn what’s being taught...
How Do You Ensure Every Day is a Success?
Well, that’s not always easy, especially when bad things happen to you or one of your close friends. At that point you may find yourself not focusing on how to make that day a success, but instead asking yourself, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That’s the title of an outstanding book by Harold S Kushner, a Rabbi who lost his young son to cancer several years ago. This week caused me to reference his thoughts to make sense of a major loss in our community.
This weekend the son of our former head football coach here at BOLD High Schools died of cancer. He was 37 years old. He had beaten the cancer as a teenager and went on to play quarter back for he father, the 8th winningest football coach in Minnesota history. Ironically, the treatment they used to kill the cancer before, was what caused the cancer to return, taking his life and leaving a wife and young kids behind. He was a high school football coach himself at an area school who everyone loved and respected. His name was Trevor Solem. He was a great young man who was dealt a bad hand.
It’s hard to make sense of those kinds of things that happen to good people. Some people blame God for not stepping in and changing the situation. We all pray for those kinds of miracles.
But according to Kushner, what we need to realize is that God is not responsible for things that happen to us…he does not control your life or my life. He allows choice, he allows things to happen as they do in nature, and it can’t be explained why bad things happen to good people...
How creative are you? What’s happened to your level of creativity AND your level of productivity as you’ve gotten older? Have those things increased or decreased? Most people would say, as you age, the creativity is often still there, but the level of productivity declines, it’s just part of getting aging.
People are generally pretty creative, regardless of their age. Creativity doesn’t come only from those in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, but a majority of it comes from the older crowd. If you’ve read any of the Stoics from the 14th and 15 centuries, you’d know that there aren’t many NEW ideas at all, just new applications of old ones. And most of those Stoics, the Marcus Aurelius’ of the world for example, were pretty old when they did their best thinking and were the most creative. This includes the Michelangelo’s, Beethoven’s, and Picasso’s of the world. It’s also been shown that founders of STARTUP companies here in the U.S. are more likely to succeed if they’re 50 or over. That’s because the older people get, the more creative they become. Maya Angelou said, and I quote, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” End quote. The ability to learn as you age doesn’t get worse…it continues all through life. Creativity should always be increasing within each one of us as we get older because creativity is a result of time and experience. And only aging can confer that. Creativity doesn’t belong only to the young. Older people have shown they can be immensely creative, and that creativity tends to increase in people as they age...
Richard Branson, Entrepreneur and British billionaire said, “To be highly successful in your career, you need to make four important decisions. First, decide what it is about your job that you LOVE to do? Second, list the things you are really good at in your job. Third, write down things you HATE about your job and don’t like to do. And lastly, list the parts of your job you’re not good at?
By answering those four questions, it’s easy to recognize what you need to do to improve your job performance. Whatever you love to do, you will most likely be very good at and vice versa. That translates into success or lack thereof.
A great example of this is staying on an exercise program. Millions of people begin exercise programs every year. When they first start a new exercise regimen they love it and love the thought of improving themselves. That new level of enthusiasm is exciting and keeps them working out. Many times, they’re so motivated in the early days of the program that they overdo it. But in 95% of the cases, as time goes on, exercise becomes work, and they begin to dislike working out. In fact, they start to hate it. The more that feeling of hate is allowed to grow, the less likely they are to stay on the program. Eventually, those 95% quit working out altogether...
Change Your View on Aging
I’m 72 years old, but I don’t feel that old. They say you’re always the same age on the inside, so I guess that’s why I think I’m still 25. My late wife used to say to me, “When are you going to grow up and act your age?” I didn’t have an answer for her because I never wanted to grow up, and certainly didn’t want to act my age, whatever that was supposed to look like. I just wanted to stay young in my thinking and remain active, doing everything possible to keep from LOOKING old. Well, that last one is a lot harder. I’m still working on it with marginal success.
The idea of aging has always been on my mind, especially as I grow older chronologically. It’s hard to believe how much looks change as a person ages. I look at photos of me when I was 30 years younger and say, “Wow, I have really changed.” Of course, when you lose all of your hair, you do look a lot different...
During the 1900’s in Okinawa, Gichin Funakoshi, founded modern-day Karate. He went to Japan and other parts of the world including the United States to teach what is known today as Shotokan Karate.
I spent 14 years in Shotokan Karate. Funakoshi was known for saying, and I quote, “Many times I was forced to eat the dirt off the dojo floor.” The dojo is the training room. That statement didn’t mean he actually ate dirt from the floor as punishment. It was an expression he used to say how hard he trained to perfect even the simplest techniques. He said, “Many days and nights I found myself totally exhausted, face down on the floor from training so hard, but I had to keep training on the things I wasn’t good at so I could get off the floor, better than when I went down on it.”
Saying you eat dirt off the floor as an expression that you’re doing everything possible to achieve your goals may sound like a gallant act, but it’s actually a message of improving yourself at the most elemental level. It’s getting down in the dirt, getting your hands dirty so to speak, working in the real-world, doing the extra things most people won’t do to achieve their goals. It means picking yourself up, and continuing to train, even when you’re tired and don’t want to do it anymore. Anyone who is really good at their art, or their job has eaten dirt off the floor. We’ve all had to do things when we were tired, things that weren’t fun or easy, and often included a learning curve. It’s during that learning curve where many people give up. They don’t put forth the effort to go down to the floor and confront the obstacles, eat the dirt most of us eat every day. And when they see how successful WE are, they don’t attribute it to the fact that we ate dirt to get where we are. They think we’re just lucky....
There’s an old saying that says, “Crisis brings Clarity.”
A crisis is defined as something that interferes with your normal pattern of living. Most often a real crisis is considered to be the result of unexpected trauma such as a major loss, illness or environmental issue that interferes with your livelihood or your life. A crisis of those magnitudes often means being dislodged from your current situation. It creates a feeling; an internal emotion that makes us anxious and confused because most crisis are so overwhelming; we can’t handle them ourselves. We feel vulnerable, unsure of ourselves and helpless. When we experience a real crisis, it becomes obvious that the usual way we handle problems doesn’t work.
But a crisis can be both an opportunity and danger. A crisis can be dangerous if you allow the problem to overwhelm you and cause so much anxiety and pain that you become depressed, unable to do anything to solve the situation. A crisis can also be an opportunity when it causes us to open our mind and seek new ways to cope. It can cause us to think more clearly about a situation, forcing us to develop new skills, increasing our competence and making us permanently stronger.
Every year farmers are faced with something many wouldn’t call a crisis, but I do. It’s called harvest and to me it’s more than just a challenge, it’s a crisis because it involves their entire livelihood. The challenge of raising a crop in an environment that is often almost impossible to navigate can put many farmers into crisis mode, at least mentally. They become frustrated about things they did or did not do throughout the year to help avert the crisis, especially when the crop doesn’t meet their expectations or their needs. When yield results come in, it becomes clearer to growers what they need to do to improve their crop and avert any chances of a crisis occurring the next year. Every harvest could be defined as a time of crisis for farmers. It’s the time when they’re able to have a clearer view of what to do to improve on next year’s results. The crisis brought on by harvest definitely brings clarity...
Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, and best-selling author, was asked by Tim Ferriss, how he comes up with ideas for his comic strip, every day. Scott said, the first thing I have to do every morning is clear my mind so I can then FLOOD IT with new ideas. But clearing my mind starts first with changes within my body. He says, when you have ideas going through your brain and a good new idea enters your brain, it will create a reaction inside your body. It might make you chuckle, give you an adrenaline rush, get the endorphins flowing, or send chills up your spine.
Feeling a reaction within your body will tell you when you have an idea that others will likely react to in the same way.
When it comes to thinking of new things to talk about with customers, have you ever made that mind—body connection? Salespeople are constantly asking me for new ideas so they can update their sales story, mailers, blogs, marketing programs and so on. When they ask me for help, I know they’re just using their brain and not listening to their body to help sort ideas. Because once they understand the feelings that occur in the body when thinking of ideas, they will see how much easier it is to identify that new and exciting idea...
Do you know that one of the primary differences between highly successful seed sellers, and those who are not as successful is, Repeatability?
That’s right, Repeatability.
Have you ever had a sales call that went so flawlessly, it was akin to hitting a golf ball in the sweet spot?
Making the sale was so easy you could hardly tell what you did right to get it. But then, the next sales call may not have gone as well. That extreme variation in results is due to lack of repeatability. The ability to do it the exact same way, every time.
However, selling shouldn’t be like most amateur golf games, where some days you’re hitting everything perfectly and other days you wished you would have stayed home. That’s the difference between amateurs and professionals. Sure, professional golfers can hit a bad shot too, but those are few and far between. That’s because they practice enough so they can rely on repeatability, that is, doing everything exactly the same way every time they address the ball, which means the shot most often goes where they want it to go, every time...
A lot of people like a good mystery, in a movie, a novel or a “who done it” played at parties. People who like mysteries like to see justice done and the evil doer, the guilty one, punished. Most mysteries end that way.
A mystery is something that is unknown and often impossible to explain. That’s why they automatically grab our attention. Mysteries are often crimes, a murder, a kidnapping, or a robbery and we want to find out who the perpetrator was. That gap in information is the unknown and is what people find so attractive. Once they get that missing piece, the whole thing fits together, just like the missing piece of a puzzle, which is what a mystery really is, a puzzle.
Not many seed sellers realize that mysteries are also an essential part of selling seed, at least they should be. If there’s no mystery in the offering to growers, no missing piece of information, there’s nothing intriguing that will get them to want to investigate more or even buy your product. If growers believe they have you and your strategy figured out at the start, there’s no mystery and they lose interest.
The only thing that holds your attention in a mystery, and a farmer’s attention when you’re trying to sell him is the fact that he has to work to figure out the unique set of values he would get when he buys from you. You created a mystery that the grower wants to solve. But today, it’s hard to find seed sellers who have any mystery in their offering whatsoever. Companies aren’t offering unique values. They’re offering new products, programs, and prices just like everyone else which aren’t intriguing at all. There’s no mystery in those offerings at all...
As the years go by I hear more and more seed sellers complaining about reality.
That’s right, reality.
They complain about the way the marketplace is, compared to how they wish it was. They complain that farmers are too price driven and getting harder to access. That is reality. They complain that farmers are getting smarter, harder to stay ahead of.
That is reality.
They complain that farmers keep putting them off, not wanting to place an order until after harvest.
That is reality.
Seed sellers who complain about those things don’t live in the real world. They live in a world of wishful thinking because they do nothing to change those realities....
According to a Wall Street Journal study, 95% of heavy gamblers lose money when they gamble. And in the same study, big losers outnumbered big winners, 128 to 1. In a larger study of over 4,200 gamblers, nearly 90% lost money. I guess that’s not a surprise to most people. Everyone knows gambling is a game of chance and the chances of coming out on the winning end are very low. But people continue to do it. Some can afford to gamble with their money, most can’t.
But gambling isn’t associated only with money.
Most people don’t know that gambling has become a common practice among salespeople, especially seed sellers. Every day, 99% of all sales reps gamble with their future. In fact, the level of gambling by seed sellers has become so high, that it’s become an accepted method of running a sales territory. They gamble all year long with the greatest number of chances taken and the greatest number of losses occurring during harvest season...
Scott Adams, best-selling author and creator of the comic strip, Dilbert, says, and I quote, “Losers have goals and winners have Systems, end quote. We’ve all set various goals throughout our lives and have failed to achieve some of those goals. What happens that causes us to miss a goal, any goal? Was the goal unreasonable and unachievable or was the goal just outside our area of expertise? Most, often, that isn’t the problem. The problem is, in most cases there was no plan.
I’ve seen this happen over and over in the seed business. Seed sellers will set a goal for the number of units of increase they want to sell over the previous year, but have no detailed planned how they’re going to get that increase. On occasion, their manager will step in to help create what they believe is a sure-fire way of achieving the goal. They take the rep’s current customer list and indicate who could buy more seed. After that exercise, they make a list of prospects for the rep to call on to get new customers. The rep is then sent out the door to make calls. That entire exercise is a waste of time if there is no step-by-step plan, or system, the rep can follow to get the increases wanted...
Are You 10% Better or 10 Times Better?
Astro Teller is CEO of X, a diverse group of inventors who build and launch technologies with the goal of improving the lives of millions, even billions, of people. Our goal says Teller, is 10X impact on the world’s biggest problems, not just a 10% improvement.
He says, when you go after a moon shot, something that’s 10 times bigger than what you’ve seen or experienced before, not just 10% bigger, a number of things happen. First Astro says, when you’re going for 10% bigger, you’re competing against everyone. But when you’re trying to go 10 times bigger, you’re all by yourself. For example, when your trying to add 40 more years to your life, not just 3 or 5 years, there probably isn’t anyone else out there trying to do that. In fact, most people are doing the opposite, shortening their life spans with their current lifestyles.
Imagine you’re looking down the rows of a fully tasseled corn field, and all you can see ahead of you is a light brown, furry image, broken into two sections and spanning the distance between three rows of corn. You can’t see a head or a tail. Your eyes can only see two sections of hair among the leaves, and a body divided by the corn rows, but your mind instantly made it into one image telling you, it’s a deer. Your brain’s ability to join those pieces together without seeing the complete picture, is a process called amodal completion.
The eyes only see fragments, but the brain pieces them all together so you can recognize what you see. Through years of evolution animals gained this ability to see prey, recognize a mate or predator through dense foliage even when the image was only partially in view.
The concept of amodal completion is the same kind of system my brain uses when I’m qualifying a prospect. A list of attributes I want in a customer, flash through my head one at a time as I interview a prospect, surveying his farm, the condition of his machinery, how he treats me, whether he appears progressive, is in the age range I want, and so on. Within seconds my mind pieces together a complete visual of what that person would be like as my customer. Sometimes I see a potential customer and I continue to pursue him, and sometimes I don’t and I leave...
The other day, my 11-year old grandson Logan was at my house for his 2-3 hour time with Grandpa. Every grandchild has his or her very own day and time to spend with me during the week. Logan is a sport expert and I don’t say that lightly. There is no one, and I mean no one his age or even holder who knows as much about baseball, basketball and football as Logan does, including every player on every team, college or pros. This kid is amazing.
Logan and I were talking about practicing because he practices all of the time. He just finished baseball season and he is getting ready for football to start. I said to Logan, “I love how much you practice because practice is the most important thing.” To my surprise, Logan said, “No, it’s not.” I said, “What do you mean it’s not?” He said, “Perfect practice is the most important thing....."
Have you ever seen people doing things that were against the rules you were taught and the general norms of society? It bothered you didn’t it, especially if those rule breakers ended up creating a new trend.
When I was 8 years old I watched my cousin talk back to his mother. She told him to take the garbage out and he said he wasn’t going to do it; she could do it herself. My cousin’s younger sister and I stood there in shock as we waited for the hammer to drop and punish him right in front of our eyes.
But it didn’t happen.
His mom just walked away in disgust. Later, the younger sister was told to clean up the mess she had made with her toys. She said, “No, I don’t want to.”
Again, her mom got a frustrated look on her face and walked away. The little girl also got away with talking back to her mother. My aunt accepted that disrespectful behavior and enabled her two kids to learn that it was ok to talk back to your parents. Acceptance becomes enabling.
If I would have talked back to my parents when I was growing up they would have enabled me to pick my teeth out of my underwear.
Roy T. Bennet said, Changes takes place at the ENDS of your comfort zone. I have to say, no truer words were ever spoken.
Every morning at 4:30 am, I experience that quote firsthand, waking-up in the comfort of my bed, not wanting to change a thing at that point in time. It’s dark, quiet, warm, and peaceful under those covers, making it the perfect comfort zone. This is the point in my day where I’m not mentally ready to change anything, but instead, stay with the status quo. I’m more concerned about remaining comfortable in my comfort zone. I’m telling myself I need more sleep or I deserve a day off instead of getting up and going to the gym as scheduled. I tell myself no one else gets up at 4:30 am to workout, well ok, Jocko does, but he’s a freak. I’m talking about normal people, especially the ones my age. My mind continues to argue over what I want to do and what I SHOULD. I know what I SHOULD do, but I’m so comfortable in my comfort zone. I really don’t want to do it.
There’s an old saying, “You can’t shoot a canon from a canoe.”
To shoot a canon and get the result you want, you need a solid foundation for the canon to sit on. If you fired a canon from a canoe sitting in water, the shot would be a dud because the canoe wouldn’t provide a base solid enough to satisfy Newton’s law. Newton’s law says, For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. T
he canoe wouldn’t provide that equal and opposite reaction strong enough to help propel the shell out of the canon to the target, keeping the canon from functioning as it should. You would never hit your target. But if you placed the canoe on the ground, the solid earth would provide the opposite reaction needed once the canon is fired to propel the shell to the target.
There would be an equal exchange of ENERGY between the canon and the ground, putting Newton’s law to work...
As a young boy growing up on a farm, I learned the power of a smile. I learned that just one smile from someone, anyone, could determine my attitude and how I felt about myself at that time. But the one smile that had the most influence on me growing up was my dad’s smile...
As an independent seed seller, you can compete against anyone. You just have to be better than your only competitor, the person selling against you...
Do You Believe in Magic?
NBA Basketball star Ray Allen played 18 seasons in the NBA and held the NBA record in career three-point field goals during the regular season from 2011 to 2021. He has been the no. 2 ranked 3-point shooter of all time.
When addressing a group of students Allen was asked how he became so great at the 3-point shot. He held a basketball above his head and asked the group, “Do you believe in magic? They all shouted, yes. Ray said, but what is magic? This ball is not magic, it doesn’t move unless you make it move. How do you make basketball magical?
Allen said, you make a basketball magical when you move it in the right direction, and at the right speed, then great things happen. And when you do it enough times, consistently, people begin to believe its magical....
Dr. Rhonda Patrick is a biomedical scientist who specializes in aging. She has spent years studying the intricacies of the human body, especially when it comes to age-related stress and ways to control it. She says there are two kinds of stress. Good stress and bad stress...
Frederick Herzberg, was an American psychologist who taught at the University of Utah. He was most noted for the motivator hygiene theory he developed in 1964. It was a theory that described the number one factor he believed motivates employees to love their job.
Mr. Herzberg said, “The most important motivator of employees is the work itself.” He said, “The urge to perform, does not lie in external drivers such as incentives or punishments, but instead in making the actual work itself more satisfying.
Many companies face a relentless surge from competitors trying to pilfer their most valuable workers by offering them higher salaries and greater benefits. These companies are in a constant struggle to figure out how to keep employees...
Almost everyone likes dogs.
In fact, some people love their dogs so much they consider them part of the family. I grew up on a farm where the dogs lived outside, and the people lived inside.
But today, dogs not only live in the house with their owners, many sleep in the same bed. Dogs are constantly in the laps of their masters or by their sides; they like being friends, but more importantly, they like being petted.
When you pet your dog, it feels love and a sense of approval, and approval is a feeling every dog seeks to get almost every minute of every day.
Pardon the analogy, but during my selling years, on more than one occasion, I found myself acting like one of those love-able canines....
Punch drunk is a term used to describe a boxer who has taken too many hard blows to the head. Their brain has been bruised causing them to become dazed, confused and unable to think clearly. They’re usually the ones who stayed in the business too long and lost too many matches.
But if I were to describe a sales rep as being punch drunk, it wouldn’t be due to blows to the head. It would be due to blows to the rep’s attitude, confidence, and spirit...
Your Varieties Got Beat.
Wow, there’s 4 words that strike fear in the hearts of even the most veteran of seed sellers, especially when they’re followed by 8 more words...
...I don’t want any more of your seed.
Did you know your brain weighs just 3 lbs. but has a power output of, GET THIS, a Gigawatt, which is a Billion Watts of power?
That’s equivalent to the power generated by 1.3 million horses, or 2000 Corvettes, or 500 Wind turbines, or 100 million led bulbs, or 4.6 million solar panels or a nuclear power plant.
And your brain has as much power as the most advanced computers in the world filling an entire city block. Can you believe it?
Do You Do a Lot of Thinking?
Where do you get ideas? Where do you get information that can help you solve problems in your territory or get more customers? Where do you get ideas that help you stay ahead of the competition and allow you to lead growers?
You need a source, everyone does.
But contrary to popular thinking, the best source you could possibly have is YOURSELF...
Leading farmers through a marketplace that changes as quickly as ours, is a challenge as well as a huge responsibility. In fact, the seed marketplace has changed so dramatically in such a short period of time, its trapped many veteran sellers, people whose strategy for success was to keep doing what they've always done...
Do you pre-fish the lake?
I asked Shad how pre-fishing a lake could relate to selling seed. He said pre-fishing a lake is like doing field visits with customers and potential customers who buy your seed.
He said, field visits allow you to gather information you need on the way to harvest so you have more control over how your varieties perform. Shad says, you need to be in growers’ fields so there are no surprises at harvest, EVER...
The big news this weekend was the return of Tiger Woods to the Master’s Golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia.
No one expected him to ever again golf in a major tournament after his accident, let alone, enter this year’s Master’s tournament, which he won 5 times in the past years. But whether you’re a fan ofTiger Woods or not, it’s no secret he is one of the best golfers in history.
And even though he didn’t do very well this past weekend, he’s someone very special when it comes to having talent, determination, and a very strong work ethic...
Have you ever been slapped across the face?
I have, many times in the early days of my seed selling career. I quickly learned that every time I got slapped, I deserved it, but it hurt...big time.
If you haven't had it done to you, then you haven't been selling seed very long. I can tell the novices out there, that when you get slapped, it really wakes you up...
Have You Offended Mankind?
Leonardo da Vinci died at the age of 67. His last words before he died were, and I quote, “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”
That quote is quite shocking considering the exceptional quality of work he did throughout his entire life...
One day I was listening to NPR radio about using systems in the medical field. The person being interviewed was a doctor who said there had been a major problem the past few years with people dying after surgery in several hospitals across the country...
Are You Always Early for Appointments or Are You Always Late?
What’s the difference between those two groups of people, the ones who are always early and the ones who are always late? What separates these two groups in how they manage their time? I know that just by hearing that question, you’ve already put yourself into one of the two categories...
Many seed sellers are stuck in Groundhog Day.
They’re stuck with customers not increasing their buying, constantly taking them to price, wanting to delay ordering, controlling their time or leaving them completely.
And is it any wonder?
Those sales reps simply haven’t changed how they approach their job or done anything different than the way they’ve done things in the past.
I get plenty of sales reps in my sessions who don’t like my messages or agree with what I teach, because they believe my strategies won’t work in their territory.
They tell me their customers won’t do what I teach.
The only thing that attitude tells me is that their customers are not the problem. The real problem is those field sellers are uncomfortable with their own ignorance. They’re uncomfortable with not knowing the answers to their problems and are unwilling to admit it.
As a result, they pretend things are going ok. They’re not just afraid of new ideas, they’re afraid of taking the risks of changing.
But worst of all, their ego keeps them from being successful...
Did you know that your mood follows your actions? Repeat.
So many sales reps suffer mentally because they don’t take the actions needed to work toward their goal. As a result, they aren’t happy, but only due to their inaction. Rather than taking action, they just think about what they should be doing which makes them feel worse.
How many current customers are going to leave you when a competitor comes along and offers them a so-called “better deal”?
How many farmers are going to cancel your order because you never confirmed it prior to planting?
The lack of having a proven plan to protect and confirm your orders with customers may already be costing you and your company a great deal.
My grandfather passed away when I was six years old, leaving my grandmother to live all alone on their farm. From that time on almost every Sunday after church my family and I went to her house for dinner. She was a wonderful cook. She had given birth to 8 kids and was a wonderful, 3cook. A few minutes prior to sitting down for our noon meal with my grandma, she yelled from the kitchen, “Rod, go down to the cellar and get some pickles.”
Being an obedient child, I jumped to my feet and headed for the front door. The entrance to the cellar was outside the house, guarded by two heavy wooden doors that lay almost flat on the ground...
How much can you bench press?
That’s probably the most common question asked to someone who lifts weights, by someone who doesn’t. After all, to the non-weightlifting aficionado, the bench press is wrongly viewed as the real test of overall strength. It’s not. Being able to bench a lot of weight is about three things.
One, leverage. The shorter your arms are the more you can bench. It’s just physics. Second...genetics, some people are born stronger.
And third, learning to get past the sticking points. Today’s lifters don’t just focus on the amount of weight they can lift. Instead, they concentrate on getting rid of the sticking points...
How many current customers are going to cancel their seed order because you haven’t taken the time to confirm it?
How much money will haul back surprises and high inventory end up costing your company? What will you say when a current buyer wants to leave you for a cheaper price this year because they don’t see the true value you provide over your competitors?
The lack of having a proven plan to follow this confirmation season may already be costing you and your company a great deal!
Did you know that the Uniform Code for Military Justice says, that any military officer can be Court-martialed for sending a soldier into battle without a weapon?
Well, if that was a law in the ag business, the jail would be full of prosecuted sales managers and the hospital would be full of wounded field sellers. That’s because every day, salespeople are sent out to call on current customers or new prospective buyers unarmed.
They’re asked to call on prospects and customers without the ONLY weapon that can keep competitors at bay, keep them from getting pinned down by strafing rounds of objections, pulled into fire fights on price, or have their egos mortally wounded by getting turned down.
Buckle your seatbelt today, I’m going to talk about handling product performance problems for a few minutes, things like Tar Spot.
So how has your year been so far?
Did you have a variety or two that surprised you in a good way or bad way. Almost every sales rep I’ve talked with in the last 2 months has experienced a mixture of both excitement and disappoint. But of course, they don’t call me when things are going really well. Most of them call me when they want to know what to say to a customer when their variety got killed by tar spot, anthracnose or spider mite. They want to know what to say to a customer when he says your variety fell over and your competitor’s didn’t.
There were plenty of those kinds of issues this year. But every rep has the same question. “How do I handle it, the guy is blaming the variety!”
Do you have farmers who still want to delay ordering their seed for next year?
Why is that?
It’s mostly because they’re waiting for a reason, an excuse to order.
That excuse comes either in the form of an attractive program, or from the seller convincing the grower it is in his best interest to plan early. Which one is easiest? Of course, it’s easier not to have to THINK about it and just wait for a program or a winning yield trial to do the job instead taking time to build a value story...
On April 11, 1970 Apollo13 was to be the third mission to land on the Moon. An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks crippled the spacecraft during flight and the crew was forced to orbit the Moon and return to the Earth without landing.
The mission was aborted two days into the flight...
The iconic actress, Bette Davis said, “Old age is no place for sissies.”
She was right.
I can tell you from experience that if you want to continue to compete with the younger crowd as you grow older, you really need to step up your game. You need to stop whining about getting older and be able to endure the pain that comes with working hard to stay in shape both physically and mentally...
Ask anyone in the seed business what the number one factor to growing a successful sales territory is, and virtually everyone will say, a talented, professional, highly trained sales rep. That’s why every company in this business is constantly looking to hire more top salespeople.
But is that really the final answer?
Don’t forget that every seed sale requires a minimum of two people, a seller and at least one buyer...
How many current customers are going to cancel their seed order because your varieties didn’t out-yield the competition?
How many farmers will blame your products for the poor performance this year instead of the 1,000 variables that affected the crop (i.e. drought)?
What will you say when a current buyer wants to leave you for a cheaper price this year because they don’t see the true value you provide over your competitors?
The lack of having a proven plan to follow this harvest season may already be costing you and your sales territory a great deal!
Today’s farmers need to understand that raising a top crop is a system, not an à la carte strategy.
That system begins by starting early and selecting the right portfolio of varieties for the right field. Plus, doing it early and before harvest removes the emotion from the process, allowing growers to make pragmatic decisions according to the plan.
How to Develop a “Roadmap to High Yields” in 5 Simple Steps [Blueprint Step 6]
Our guest this month on the SeedSeller Academy podcast, is Matt Fenske, CEO and owner of Millborn Seeds in Brookings, South Dakota. Matt and his wife, Jody, purchased the fast-growing company from Clint Johnson approximately three years ago.
In this episode, Matt talks about his early years in the seed business, where he found himself in sales and quit because he felt he was not good at it. However, he returned later and eventually discovered that his true love was sales.
Matt is highly innovative and forward-thinking. His comments and insights hit close to home, so I know you will identify with much of what he says about growing a business in this marketplace.
Get ready to take notes as you listen to this fun and highly valuable visit with Matt Fenske.
Have you ever driven into a customer or prospect’s yard or place of business with no idea of what you are going to talk about? Well, that is how I started my career in seed sales, and it doesn’t work.
Today’s growers are too sophisticated to spend their time dealing with amateurs who have no idea what they’re doing.
Salespeople like to believe all they need is a good sales pitch. But, it doesn’t work that way.
How to Deliver a Killer “Sales Story” That Actually Sells! [Blueprint Step 5]
This month, my guest on the SeedSeller Academy podcast is Clint Johnson, one of the youngest and most successful entrepreneurs I’ve ever worked with.
Clint and his wife, Heather, bought a very small three-employee seed business and grew it to more than 50 full and part-time employees.
Clint has since exited the business and sold Millborn Seed to one of his employees three years ago.
Listen to Clint talk about how building the right kind of culture inside a business is the key to success, regardless of the industry you are in. In my opinion, there are few people in business who understand culture building as well as Clint Johnson.
There is an old story about the famous american bank robber and jail breaker William Sutton being asked why he was robbing banks. His genius answer was “That`s where the money is”.
Prospecting can be difficult in any sales career, but with farmers it can be especially challenging.
Do You know…
- Why most salespeople don’t make their sales goals?
- Prospecting is not selling—it’s qualifying prospects?
- We don’t cold call anymore—we do 5-Minute Drills?
- The fastest way to grow your sales is to turn down small orders?
- How many prospects you will need to make your goals?
- Why so many sales reps hate prospecting?
Prospecting should not be a hated activity—it should be one of the most fun and profitable activities you do as a sales rep.
The key to prospecting success is having a plan.
And that plan includes changing prospecting from a dreaded task, to an activity that can be fun and motivating. All you have to do is understand how to prospect properly
It's much easier to get customers to follow your lead when they see the true benefits of doing so.
That starts with taking your customers to the field right now and helping them discover the potential they have to make two profits in a single year.
Two profits?
That's right, when you combine high yield potentials with high market prices, growers have the opportunity to cash in.
That is where the Post-Planting Report Card comes in. You need to take your customers to the fields right now and conduct this critical customer contact.
And after listening to this podcast, you’ll have the 5 Key Steps to Conducting a Successful Planting Report Card Visit.
Welcome to this month’s SeedSeller Academy Podcast.
This is a very special podcast…
I interviewed John Polasini, who I consider to be one of the top seed sellers in the United States. John started as an insurance salesman but has since become a real student in the art of selling. He also happens to be a professional bass fisherman.
I hope you will take the time to watch this whole podcast and share it with members of your sales team. John emulates the kinds of things all seed sellers should be doing with customers in their own sales territories. He "builds a wall” around his customer base so competitors can't steal any of his business.
We also talk about the impact that COVID-19 has had on his ability to sell and how he believes it ended up helping his sales last year.
Please enjoy this hard-hitting, highly educational podcast with John Polasini.
This 90-Minute LiveStream teaches you why “visiting planters” is a vital part of your sales growth. Do You know… * How to get a customer to stop planting when they are in a hurry? * What to do if your seed is not being planted when you stop by? * What to do if the planter operator won’t follow your recommendations? * What to do if the owner is not operating the planter? * How to find time to visit planters? * Which planters to visit first?
After listening you'll learn simple tactics (that nobody actually does) that will give you a HUGE unfair advantage over your competition this spring!**
Are You Going to Get Your Butt Kicked in 2021...
...or Do Something About It?
When you're in sales, it's hard-hitting questions like that you need to ask yourself.
That's why I hosted this special 90-Minute LiveStream.
If you run a sales territory (or even manage a region or sales team), I need to listen.
Step-by-step, I show you how to manage the chaos of growing your seed/ag sales.
After all, field sellers who follow the Seed Delivery Experience to kick off their sales year have the largest sales increases and the fewest returns every year.
It's all part of my SeedSeller Blueprint and we are kicking off with Step 1 of the Blueprint in this podcast.
In today’s Master Class I’m giving you a sneak peak to the opening keynote I delivered last year at Blueprint LIVE in Minneapolis. I started the session by telling a true story about a sales rep who had a serious problem.
Enjoy this twenty-five minute training.
Happy Selling,
Rod
The first (in a year-long series) of monthly livestreams to break down the SeedSeller Blueprint.
Ask yourself...
- Do you find it hard to overcome the price question from farmers?
- What’s your plan to compete against the crazy programs companies will be offering farmers again this year?
- Are you frustrated or starting to lose the confidence it takes to compete in this extremely price sensitive marketplace?
If you answered YES to any of those questions, you need to listen to the replay from for our VIRTUAL live workshop.
Do you have what it takes to sell to today's sophisticated farmers?
In this episode I’ll show you how through every trial and error and the practical (real world) advice I’ve developed over my five decades in the seed industry.
It’s all yours as an Academy member!
Welcome to our new Academy 101 Series of podcasts. In this episode we are going to cover another foundational piece of our sales philosophy: The Journey a Prospect Takes to Become Your Customer (P.R.O.)!
Welcome to our new Academy 101 Series of podcasts. In this episode we are going to cover another foundational piece of our sales philosophy and the SeedSeller Blueprint: Top 5 Factors to Producing a Top Crop.
Welcome to our new Academy 101 Series of podcasts. In this episode we are going to cover the one of the most important factors to leading others—in this case customers—is understanding a strategy called: “Staying Outside the Circle.”
Staying Outside the Circle is not only a tactic for staying in control of the conversation so you can handle objections better, but it’s also the first step toward getting farmers to change how they think about running their businesses.
Do you plan to get surprised at harvest time?
Most salespeople don’t plan on getting surprised, but far too often it ends up happening.
Surprises like...
- Poor product performance
- Price deals by competitors
- Customers who ordered early but canceled once they got into harvest
Don't let these types of surprises happen to you this fall.
Instead, it's time to change harvest season from a typical slow time for getting orders to one of the most productive times of the year.
To help you do just that, I’m hosting a virtual seed selling class – How to Harvest Sales During Harvest.
When you listen to this 3-hour workshop, we cover:
- How to "Harvest Sales" During Harvest Season
- What to say to customers when your product gets beat
- Why You must be there during harvest and prevent Looting
- Why Harvest is NOT a “time off from ordering”
In case you missed Monday's Live Office Hours Call with Rod you can listen to it right here...
In case you missed it here is the LIVE Office Hours with Rod Osthus from Friday, May 29th, 2020.
Welcome to Tune Up Tuesdays. The only place in the entire seed industry where you can get your knowledge base repaired, your sales approach fixed, and your attitude adjusted. You may not need a complete overhaul, but a regular Tuneup is always helpful and that’s what we do here every Tuesday.
Let me start by asking you a few questions.
- Do you have a hard time getting early orders?
- Do you have a hard time getting the seed you want?
- Are you constantly faced with price objections?
- Are you surrounded by competitors?
- Are your programs not working as well as they used to?
These are just a few of the kinds of things you can fix with just one TUNE-UP…
Listen to this month's recording of Rod's LIVE Office Hours...What's Keeping You From Moving Forward As Fast As You Want?
In this episode of our podcast, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Dean Cavey. I’ve known Dean for more than 35 years and consider him a great leader and a mentor for me in the seed business.
He brings a whole different perspective to our podcast series as we discuss the future of the seed industry, the future of the independent companies, and the key to success in every business.
Please enjoy this expansive conversation with Dean Cavey.
Happy Selling,
Rod
P.S. Looking for a LIVE training workshop to help you overcome sales objections and outsell the competition? Want to learn a brand-new selling system to ensure you hit your sales goal each and every year?
Then get registered today for SeedSeller Blueprint LIVE in Minneapolis January 20-22, 2020 (12 tickets remaining!!) – https://seedsellerblueprint.com
P.P.S. Academy members can save $200 off their ticket by using the Promo Code: SSA
Welcome to this month’s SeedSeller Academy Podcast.
This is a very special podcast for two reasons. The first, I interviewed a person I consider to be the No.1 seed salesman in the United States, Shad Schenck. And second, this podcast is special because I had the privilege of training Shad starting the day he graduated from college.
I can’t take credit for his success, but it sure has been rewarding to watch him execute things I taught him, better than I could execute them myself. I hope you will take the time to watch this podcast in its entirety, and show it to members of your Team.
Shad emulates the kinds of things all seed sellers should be doing with customers in their sales territory.
Please enjoy this podcast with Shad Schenck.
What are you doing right now?
You should be trying to impress your customers and set yourself apart from the competition.
Dressing to impress?
That's right...one of the most controversial topics I preach about.
Enjoy this week's segment on What Are You Doing Right Now!
This month, my Academy podcast guest is Bob Thurston.
Bob is the founder of Thurston Inc. and Thurston Genetics.
I was thrilled to have Bob sit down for a podcast as he is a true icon in the seed industry and someone I've known for almost fifty years and have tremendous respect for.
Whether you are in sales or not, you will really enjoy the amazing conversation I had with Bob at his office in Olivia, MN.
Happy Selling,
Rod
What are you doing right now?
Every day counts as the selling season continues to pass us by. Remember, the ideal time to start developing next year’s cropping plans with customers is prior to harvest. This is the time when very few, if anyone else is out there developing next year’s plans with growers. They may be walking their fields, but they aren’t having the kinds of conversations we have with growers this time of year.
Right now, you need to be using the field visit as the foundation for creating next year’s plan.
Enjoy this week's segment on What Are You Doing Right Now!
“What Are You Doing Right Now?”
Are you caught in Planning Fallacy?
I hope not.
Enjoy this short, to the point audio lesson designed to keep you on the right track this week on ensuring you reach your sales goal for this year.
Enjoy our next episode!
Happy Selling,
Rod
"What Are You Doing Right Now?"
You should be Validating your sales goal for this year!
Enjoy this short, to the point, audio lesson designed to keep you on the right track this week on validating your sales goal.
Enjoy our second episode below!
Happy Selling,
Rod
This month, my guest on the Academy podcast is Jason Greenfield.
Jason is a Regional Sales Manager for a large retailer in Missouri (MFA, Inc.).
In this episode you will learn how Jason went from flat out non-believer in my selling strategy and turned into not only the biggest proponent of it, but also one of the best executers in the industry today.
Jason is a true student of the art when it comes to selling in agriculture today.
You’ll also learn how Jason started using a new Language with Farmers to not only sell more, but help farmers produce more in their farming operations.
This month, my guest on the Academy podcast is Tony Lucius.
Tony is a District Sales Manager for a large retailer in Missouri (MFA, Inc.).
The timing of this interview couldn't be any better since we begin the podcast by talking all about attitude. With the incredibly difficult spring so many of you are facing this year, you will get a lot out of this episode with Tony.
Ask yourself, are you being the best version of yourself?
This month, my guest on the Academy podcast is Lauren Mac Namara.
Lauren owns and operates her own Ag Retail company called Revolution Ag in Winchester, Ontario in Canada.
You don’t want to miss this interview…
This podcast is full of some great tips and strategies for anyone selling today. But it’s a gold mine if you are younger or a female selling in Ag today.
Ask yourself, are you bringing a complete plan to farmers or just selling products based on price?
If you are really serious about building better relationships and increasing your sales, then you must implement the strategy of visiting planters with every grower. Not only will you increase sales, but you'll be able to write those orders much, MUCH faster and earlier in the growing season. This episode of the Academy podcast walks you through the entire Planting Customers program.
We had some excellent questions submitted for this month's Live Office Hours. A big shout out and Thank you to all who attended live.
For those who missed it, never fear, here is the complete audio podcast of the call.
A few of the many topics covered:
-
The illusion of Productivity
-
3 key ways to decide whether or not you are making real progress or if you are just under the illusion of productivity
Question from Jeff:
"We have a new group of salesman who are starting from ground zero to build clientele. What would you recommend we should be doing this time of year to start the relationship building process? It seems like farmers are making some late input decisions yet, so we still have an opportunity to place some products, but I’m thinking more long-term in hopes of capturing more of a footprint on new grower’s farm moving into 2020."
Question from Jim:
"A lot of the larger farms are implementing many precision ag planter enhancements. How do we address slowing down the planting speed when they say that that is why they invested in these improvements? They seem to expect a perfect planting performance."
Question from Clayton:
"Hi Rod. I really like what you do. Lots of great ideas. The problem is my territory is in one of those badly flooded areas. Some of my farmers won’t be in the field for a long time and some may not be able to farm certain fields at all. I don’t know what to say to them. I don’t think I can go out to sell until after harvest this year because they are not going to want to talk to me at all about next year. They will just want to get this year out of the way. What do you think?"
Any many more...
Today my guest on this podcast is a Seedsman I have a lot of respect for.
He has built a very successful seed business and also farms. The most successful farmers who sell seed have a seed business and also just happen to farm.
That is the opposite of what most farmer dealers do.
Most put farming first, therefore they are farming when they should be selling and their seed business is not all that successful.
Please enjoy my conversation with Greg Mills.
This month my guest on the Academy podcast is Matt Long.
Matt is a farmer from Leoti, Kansas, where he and his wife Jenny also own and operate a very successful seed business.
Matt and Jenny are not your typical farmer couple and Matt is not a typical farmer dealer.
He is not a farmer who sells seed.
Instead, Matt is the owner of a seed business who also farms…
…there is a BIG difference.
SHOW NOTES:
Below are the programs/trailing tools mentioned in this episode:
1) A personalized monthly coaching program to help you achieve even higher levels of success in sales. Learn more at https://www.rcthomas.com/accelerant/
2) Purchase my exclusive How to Handle Sales Objections from Farmers’ Playbook. Learn more at https://www.rcthomas.com/playbook/
3) Experience the most effective LIVE sales workshop for Seed/Ag sellers this summer- https://seedsellerblueprint.com
Audio recording of the January 28, 2019 Live Office Hours conference call. Some of key topics/questions answered are...
Question from Roger. He says, I farm and sell seed. Your method of selling seed is not only new to me but very innovative. I wish I would have had this 10 years ago when I started selling. The problem I have is, I have been doing it my way for so long, how do I all of a sudden tell my customer I have changed everything and have this better approach? They’re going to wonder why I didn’t do it before. Any advice?
Question from Gerald, he says, I work for a retail and when things get busy in the spring it is almost impossible for me to get to do the planter visits. You say how important it is to be at the planter, but how can I do that if I’m pulled in 10 different directions and need to do so many other jobs? Please give me some ideas.
Question from Clyde. Clyde says, I’m am finishing my first year in the Academy and my first year selling seed. I came out of an entirely different industry and have little experience in ag. I was a successful in my other industry but felt I needed a change. A friend of mine talked me into selling seed for his company, and since I needed help, I decided to join the Academy. I have to tell you that I have been a poor member. I have not followed you every week or watched all of the programs. Maybe I need to, but customers tell me they don’t want to order early, and they don’t want to buy more than a trial size order the first time. They want to buy 2 bulk boxes, they just want to try 12 bags, for example. When I mention ordering early for example they just tell me it’s too early. I feel like I’m wasting my time and money by being a member. I’m just being honest. Give me your opinion. I trust you will be honest with me. Thanks, Clyde.
Question from Meghan. She says, since I am only in my late 20’s, a lot younger than most farmers I call on, I have been starting to use doggy treats to open the sales call. I found an article in Fortune magazine about the group that is making artificial meat and gave it to a cattle producer. First of all, he was impressed that I read Fortune magazine, and second, he felt that I was kind of pre-warning him of what is coming. I was very surprised on how great it worked. I bought 3 more issues to give to other cattle producers in my area and every one of them gave me an appointment to come back. What other publications do you read and use as doggy treats that farmers don’t read?
Question from Raymond. Our company often delivers seed to at different times to the same customer because not all of the varieties are shipped out of the same plants. That makes it hard to finalize a customer’s order or cropping plan if all of the seed isn’t there. Also, sometimes my seed is delivered to a customer before my competitor’s seed arrives, so I get put in the back of the warehouse and my competitor’s seed is placed in front of mine. I’m afraid I will get planted last or not planted at all. How can I overcome this problem. It is out of my control.
Question from Ross. He says, After only one year in the Academy, I have learned so much. But the one thing that has stuck with me the most is the thing I have he hardest time changing and that is the Ag Cycle. My sales are going up, but I have not gotten anybody out of the Ag Cycle and doing their cropping plans before harvest. My question is, if my sales are going up and things are working ok this way, why would I need to change it? My customers don’t want to order before harvest. I love the Academy, just a little frustrated.
We've got a special treat for you this month...a sneak peak from our SeedSeller Blueprint Live training. We put together a special podcast of the opening hour of my 3-day workshop in Minneapolis that we just completed.
In this podcast, I cover:
- A call I got from a Farmer Dealer who's getting attacked by the competition
- Autopsy on Your Current Sales Year
- How to keep current customers excited by being a true Leader
- How to read the Handwriting on the Wall in this crazy marketplace
Audio recording of the 2019 New Year Office Hours with Rod Osthus. Some key topics covered:
- The Marketplace is not the Way it Should Be, It's the Way It Is
- Changing from Proof Selling to Faith Selling
- You are the ONLY value the Farmer gets
- MAKE the Decisions for New Prospects