Don’t Mortgage Your Training Time

Welcome to our bi-monthly newsletter dedicated to those who sell seed!

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In This Issue:

• Early Orders: Don’t Mortgage Your Training Time

• Boogeyman: Message Penetration: Get the Sale

• Podcast: Why Do Salespeople Hate Scripts?

Early Orders
Don’t Mortgage Your Training Time

I’m constantly asked, “What factor contributes the most to a seed seller’s success?”

My answer is always the same: “Confidence at the point of sale.” 

Unshakeable confidence by the sales rep, not arrogance, makes it almost impossible for any prospect to say no when approached to buy seed.

A confident seller is a leader and a well-organized professional. Confident salespeople have the ability to think on their feet and handle every objection thrown their way.

The next question I’m asked is, “How do you build confidence?”

Again, my answer is always the same: “By being competent.”

Competence creates confidence. And, without hesitating, I answer the next question before they ask it—how do you achieve competence?

The answer is through practice. 

Practice creates competence and competence creates confidence. 

Every scripted play, every sporting event, and every act that will be performed in front

of an audience is rehearsed over and over, prior to the actual performance.

Why?

Because audiences, especially the live ones have both time and money invested in the event, just like a farmer invests time and money into listening to seed sellers give them their sales pitch. Both groups expect and deserve a great performance. If live audiences don’t get what they expect, they often walk out.

That’s the equivalent of saying no to a seed sales rep!

But isn’t it interesting that live audiences who have great expectations of the performer but not nearly as much invested in the performance as a farmer, never get actors who haven’t rehearsed prior to the performance? Yet, seed sellers are by far the largest group of people who don’t rehearse at all prior to delivering their performances.

Despite the fact that seed sellers are attempting to sell their audiences, farmers, products that determine their entire livelihood, they don’t practice before the call. Instead, they constantly borrow on their training time. What does it mean for sales reps to borrow on their training time? 

I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every salesperson who walked into one of my training sessions with a facial expression that said why do I have to be here?

Too many field sellers look at training, practice and role-play as a waste of time and often find other things they can do to avoid training. They borrow on, or as I call it, mortgage their training time. They constantly do other things when they should be training. Then they complain when they can’t handle price objections, product performance issues, or close sales. 

Mortgaging your training time is like continuing to borrow money from a bank, using your home as collateral.

You know you need to pay that money back but decide not to make payments back to the bank on the loan. Eventually, constant borrowing without repayment creates a situation where you owe so much money there is no way you can pay off the Mortgage.

It puts you into bankruptcy.

Reps who borrow on their training time keep failing to get sales because they don’t attend seed sales training. Thus, they Mortgage their training time and never give themselves an opportunity to pay it back. 

If seed sellers don’t start training and practicing at some point before their sales goals are due to be achieved, they won’t have time to catch up and they too will be placed into sales bankruptcy. They simply borrow too long on their training time and don’t have enough time left in the selling season to learn how to achieve their goals. 

Borrow on your training time long enough and you too will go into sales bankruptcy. You will be so far behind your intended sales goal that you won’t be able to catch up. Stop putting off attending seed sales training sessions and stop putting off practice and role-play.

Make attending seed sales training your No.1 priority. 

Stop mortgaging your training time by doing things that don’t get sales. Prepare yourself to achieve every goal you set next selling season by investing in seed sales training and practice time— not borrowing against them.

Notice I said seed sales training.

Selling seed to farmers is different from any other kind of sale and requires specialized training that only RC Thomas offers. 

We’re not shy about telling you that we’re the only ones who can show you how to take prospects and customers where they don’t know they need to go. That’s why you need to know how to lead them there.

Pay off your training mortgage and get into seed sales training today.

Handling Objections
Message Penetration: Get the Sale

Many companies can’t get sales increases because they don’t “penetrate” the marketplace with their strategies, programs or their salesforce.

Their messages don’t not find their way through the maze of competitive signals given off by numerous companies at the same time.

Some of the most well designed, thoughtful, innovative advertising campaigns and programs, designed to warm up customers before their sellers arrive, never make it to the minds of customers or prospects.

There is a lack of penetration. 

The problem is most advertising campaigns go untested before they’re put into play so their true effectiveness is not known before they’re launched. Next, many company programs aren’t designed to target particular customer segments, but instead blasted across large audiences at one time that don’t get anyone excited.

Lastly, seed sellers who don’t have adequate training can’t execute even the most basic “penetration move,” that of getting appointments with prospects. As a result, sales don’t take place, and the time, money and effort are wasted. 

Here are signs telling you that your organization is getting the “level of penetration” it needs to increase perceptions, setup sales and write larger orders.

Your marketing programs are “penetrating the marketplace” if:

• Your company is getting cards and calls from prospects who want to talk to a sales rep.

• Your sales reps are having an easier time getting appointments.

• Average order sizes to both prospects and current customers are increasing.

• Non-customers and competitors are talking about your company.

• You’re getting lots of applications from people who want to work for you.

• Customer retention rates are increasing.

Your field sellers are "penetrating the minds of prospects and customers if they are:

• Not relying on product performance to get sales.

• Not relying on price to get sales.

• Writing larger orders with current customers.

• Writing large orders with new prospects on the third contact, at least 70% of the time.

• Getting orders on their time schedule, not the prospect’s.

• Achieving or exceeding their sales goals.

The secret to being successful in the seed marketplace is maximizing the “level of penetration” of marketing programs and salespeople who rely on those programs to set up a sale.

When both achieve their goal, sales and customer retention rates go up. In contrast, when sales are not increasing, it’s likely a problem with lack of penetration of the marketing messages. 

As a company manager or sales rep, take some time to determine your level of penetration in your market area. It will tell you whether or not you’re getting into the minds of prospects and customers.

After all, selling is 100% a mind game. Until potential buyers decide in their minds they like and trust your company and the sales rep who represents you, they won’t buy. 

It’s easy to measure.

Just look at the sales report and see how many territories had significant increases in sales over the past three years and how many new customers you brought on-board. You may find you have some work to do.

Podcast
Why Do Salespeople Hate Scripts?

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 about 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 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.”

Click here or the image above to this to this 4-minutes mini-podcast.

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