100% Customer Retention Is In Your Reach

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In This Issue:

• Early Orders: 100% Customer Retention Is In Your Reach

• Boogeyman: Stop Creating Boogeymen

• Role Play: If You Can’t Do It In Practice, You Can’t Do It When It Counts

EARLY ORDERS
100% Customer Retention Is In Your Reach

When I had kids at home, I kept my freezer full of the best, farm raised bovine (beef) I could find. I still love beef but since it’s just me, I don’t buy it on the hoof anymore.

But when I did, buying it on the hoof from people I knew had properly cared for the animal was very important. That way I was assured the beef I was buying was the best available and that made me happy. But my journey to getting the best beef possible didn’t stop with procuring the right animal.

I made sure to put my prized steer in the hands of a trustworthy processor. I’ve had experiences where I’ve taken an Angus to a butcher and gotten back a Holstein wrapped in paper.

Even this old “hog-raiser” can tell the difference between the quality and flavor of Holstein and Angus. But how could I argue with the butcher once the black and white spots no longer surrounded the meat. As a result, after I picked the right steer, I took great pains to choose the right processor. 

I didn’t start by standing next to the butcher and watching every move he made. No, he started by informing me of the journey I was about to take on my way to getting the finished product.  He listed the specific steps he would be taking before I left his place of business.

I was excited.

He said he would keep me informed of the progress of my gourmet food supply. He would call me when each stage was complete and tell me what to expect. He said he would call after slaughter to tell me what the animal weighed and that he was going to hang it nine days (instead of the industry standard seven) which would make it extra tender and more flavorful. He said he would call me on the 10th day to review cutting instructions and make a few suggestions.

When the cutting and wrapping was complete, he said he would call me again to say my special beef was wrapped in water-proof freezer paper and stored at zero degrees temperature. It was at that time he said he would coordinate a day for me to pick it up. And guess what, he did all of those things just as he described.

How do you think I perceived this guy?

You’re right, he wasn’t a butcher. To me this guy was a gourmet beef processor who understood what people wanted, personal assurance their purchase was going to turn out perfect. 

How would your seed customers feel if they got that same kind of treatment about the seed they ordered from your company?

How would they feel if you told them what was going to happen once they ordered seed from you?

They would get a note in the mail, a text message, a phone call or an email periodically throughout the growing season talking about the progress of the seed they’d previously purchased?  

Imagine starting a grower’s cropping plan in July, then sending him a note with information on the condition of the seed fields in early August, complete with flowering dates and silk dates on the varieties he has on order.

Imagine that same customer getting another notice from you in mid to late September, complete with a picture of the seed field, informing him of the harvest status of his varieties and how the seed fields look in general.

Visualize a customer’s reaction when he receives a call from you on his cell phone, telling him of the “sheller run” germinations you just got back on each of his varieties and updating him that everything looks great going into the conditioning tower. And once the seed is in the bag, he’s again notified that his high-quality seed has been packaged, placed in climate-controlled storage and scheduled for shipment to his (or his dealer’s) warehouse on a certain date.

That is a “fool proof” confirmation program. The impact is amazing. You will have gained a lifelong believer and customer. Your customers would be amazed, impressed, and excited about the amount of caring they get for buying their most important input from you. This kind of attention to detail would prevent more potential problems than you could imagine. 

Have you ever wondered why customers get upset when they’re told the seed they ordered is in short supply and may need to be allocated or not delivered at all?

The reason they get upset is they had no idea what happened to their seed during the growing season. It was a surprise and farmers do not like surprises except at Christmas and Birthday parties. They simply wonder if someone else got what they ordered or was there really a problem in the seed field?

All they know is that when they order seed from most companies, they know nothing about that seed, the quality, or condition even when it’s finally delivered and they open the bag or bulk box at the planter. 

For you skeptics who say this concept is overkill and not practical, think backwards for a minute. How many hours does your sales force spend each year dealing with customers via phone, in person and employing salvage strategies while creating all forms of compensation to address seed orders that were promised at ordering but ultimately couldn’t supply?

Add it up.

You’ll find that taking a few minutes to develop the software, the programs and the strategies needed to conduct the kind of communication I’m talking about, would not only change the dynamics of your company, but would also pull your entire customer base closer to you. You will be communicating with every customer more often, and each one of those communications will involve his own order.

What better, built-in, continuous relationship building program could you offer? 

Personal attention and caring is the secret to happy customers and maximum customer retention. You would be the first in your industry to give customers what they’ve been asking for—a stronger, more meaningful relationship with a caring seed supplier they like and trust.

What better way to do that than by making each customer’s seed order the focus of all communication with that customer. Communication is the key to solving problems, and solving problems is the key to happy customers.

Just don’t be surprised when everyone of your customers never wants to leave. It’s called 100% retention and it’s in the reach of those who take customer communication seriously.

BOOGEYMAN
Stop Creating Boogeymen 

In our last issue of SeedSeller Coaching I said you should be creating your own Boogeyman, a Monster that would stop every competitor from stealing your business.

It’s the kind of Monster that, when put into play can launch any sales territory into a whole new sales orbit by keeping all competitors out of your business.

The problem is, many seed sellers are already good at creating Boogeymen, (Monsters) but they’re the wrong kind. The kind of Boogeyman everyone currently creates ends up becoming an obstacle to growing their own territory and not a catalyst that helps them increase sales like the one I described in the last newsletter.

Every time you sell a farmer seed, you have the potential to create another Boogeyman,(Monster) one that is going to become your enemy and not your friend. It happens when you sell farmers what they want to buy and not what you need to have them buy.

For example, every time you write a trial size order as a way of getting your foot in the door, you create a Boogeyman that’s going to work against you.

When you sell small, trial size orders to first-time buyers your chances of getting back on the farm next year are less than 10%. Those who “try” your products don’t want you to win and only 1 out of 10 will buy again the next year. Even if you do well, they won’t buy more the next year.

Companies continue to prove that tactic does not work.

When you agree to let a customer do side by sides in fields rather than insisting only one variety be planted in each field to maximize yield in those fields, you create a real Monster, a big Boogeyman. Again, it’s been proven over and over by companies who allow side by sides that the chances of a farmer becoming a customer the next year are less than 10%.

At that rate you will run out of farmers to call on in a couple of years.

Every test plot you enter also creates Boogeymen that will fight you all season once the plot is harvested. When I first started selling, it took me five years of both winning test plots and losing on occasion to figure out they weren’t helping me, they were actually hurting me.

Once I stopped entering test plots, that Boogeyman went away and I had 17 years of consecutive sales increases.  

You create a Boogeyman for yourself every time you lower your price. That’s because the next year the customer’s focus is on price and not on value. Every farmer you gave a deal will want an even better one the next time he buys. That Boogeyman never goes away. 

Stop creating Monsters, Boogeymen that have only one mission and that is to make your life harder and maybe eventually put you out of business. All of those old, 20^th century selling tactics, Boogeymen, I talked about may have worked years ago, but they sure don’t work today.

All they have done is create more Boogeymen for everyone who sells seed.  And those Boogeymen continue to make themselves the dominate way seed sales are attempted. This has to change. Every one of those Boogeymen must be eliminated by giving farmers what they really need and want, ways to increase yields and profit.

But that will happen only when sales reps decide they’re the only real value farmers get when they sell them seed. Until then, farmers will keep losing ground in their quest to increase yields and profit and sales reps will continue to lose sales when fighting the Boogeymen they created themselves.

The question is, “At what point does the monster you created eat you?”  “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” 

Role Play
If You Can’t Do It In Practice, You Can’t Do It When It Counts 

A few years ago, my daughter and son-in-law asked me to babysit their two children ages 5 years and 6 months. Grandpa couldn’t turn down that cream puff job, after all I was a veteran, having helped raise 3 of my own.

Grandma wouldn’t be able to come along to our daughter’s house to help, and in my mind, she really wasn’t needed anyway. I was willing to play the hero and drive the hour and a half to perform this rescue mission.

I picked up the 5-year-old at school then stopped by Chipotle to get her favorite, soft shell tacos. After struggling to hold her up high enough so she could decide what she wanted on them, I asked her if she had lead in her shoes.

Are kids heavier now days I thought? And I wondered if all of those hours lifting weights in the gym were really paying off?

What the heck? 

How does my daughter make this look so easy. 

After we got our food we headed to the day care to pick up the 6-month-old boy. My daughter teaches fourth grade so day care is a regular drop off point for her youngest.

When we arrived home I changed his clothes and got him ready for dinner. I found myself in a balancing act, working to keep the 5-year-old’s tacos on the table, while opening her root beer. (her mom said she didn’t need pop for dinner but grandpa’s willpower is as weak as his hearing, especially when the grandkids look at me with those puppy eyes, forcing me to give in.)

All of this time I’m trying to keep the hungry boy from screaming in my ear and sliding down my hip that’s jutted nearly out of its place to the right. I knew he was hungry but have they also increased decibel levels in these kids?

Good gosh!

Then he stiffened up and used the standard method of escaping they all seem to be born with. I gripped him tighter as I tried to figure out whether the can of formula meant fluid ounces or liquid ounces. It didn’t help when the 5-year-old yelled, “My mom doesn’t do it like that.” Thanks, but not helpful I said through gritted teeth. And what happened to my math skills.

Why did I spend so much time on sine and cosine in college as I poured the rice cereal into the formula, hoping to just make a slurry. I had forgotten rice cereal defies gravity as I was suddenly standing in a cloud of it. Every time the boy screamed another cloud formed. Ok so the heck with formulas, feeding him a little off recipe couldn’t hurt. Plus, I’ll just fill him up with a bottle of milk, as soon as I figure out where all of the pieces of this new-fangled baby bottle go.

When we had kids, baby bottles had 3 pieces, a bottle, a nipple and a cap that could be easily assembled and attached to the bottle. Does anyone know how many pieces there are to the modern-day baby bottle?

I didn’t either.

I was told that was why it leaked all over both of us. Even a pair of water pump pliers couldn’t stop the leak.

I guess the moral of the story is, no matter what you’re asked to do in life, it always helps to practice first. I’ve watched my daughter do this balancing act at least a half dozen times, one handed, with ease.

I guess that’s called practice and maybe a certain higher level of intelligence that comes from practice. Either way, I have some advice for anyone who finds themselves in a new situation. If you don’t practice, don’t get cocky and think your old ways of doing things will still work. Even the 5-year-old was yelling at me for not doing it right. Suddenly she was the smartest one in the room, no joke.

Don’t go into situations of any kind without practice, especially selling. If you think a 5-year-old can make you look stupid, try performing in front of a farmer whose been doing it for 30 years.

You won’t just be embarrassed, you will be asked to leave the farm and never come back. Come to think of it, my daughter never asked me back. I guess she didn’t need the help, at least that’s what I tell myself.

Just spend more time practicing your skills, it will keep everyone from creating a fuss, especially the people who have to put up with your lack of practice.

Cheers, G-daddy. 

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