Protect Your Product's Performance

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In This Issue:

• Protect Product Performance: Top 5 Factors to Produce a Top Crop!

• Boogeyman: Watch Out for the Boogeyman!

• Trouble Calls: How to Get Back on the Farm When Product Lets You Down

PRODUCT PERFORMANCE
How to Protect Product Performance at All Costs!

Let me ask you a question.

What would it take to ensure your products perform the way you want them to every year on every customer’s farm?

Well, it would start with a wake-up call to an awful lot of seed sellers. For years I’ve been preaching about the 1000 variables that affect the performance of living organisms like seed. They’re made up of a combination of both management and environment.

Let me repeat—more than 1,000 variables affect the intended performance of the living organism (your products) on your customers’ farms every single year. When you combine all the different management systems farmers use with the innumerable types of environmental factors out there, you end up with more than 1,000 variables.

Water alone can create over 400 variables. For example, imagine having too much water. When did we have too much water—at V1, V2, V3, or V4 vegetative stages of growth or was it at R1, R2, R3, or R4 reproductive stages of growth? And when did we have too little water at any of those stages?

I’ve also told seed sellers how to minimize damage from those variables by getting customers to follow the Top 5 Factors to Produce a Top Crop.

The Top 5 Factors are the only way to ensure the genetic potential of every variety is realized on every farm. They’re also the customer’s “job description”.

They tell customers that their only job is to follow the Top 5 Factors from planting to harvest in order to produce the highest yields possible.

But I keep asking farmers I meet if they’re familiar with the Top 5 Factors to Produce a Top Crop and most say, no. If they say they’ve heard of them I ask if they follow them. Again, the answer is, “No, not really”.

So after more than 35 years of preaching about the most important path seed sellers can take to teach farmers how to raise the best crop possible every year, the message is not getting out.

Why Is The Message Not Getting Out?

The reason the Top 5 Factors are still largely a secret is because seed sellers haven’t adopted them as their secret to winning on every farm.

It’s not that hard, they just have to do a few things differently. First, they need to educate every grower about the 1000 variables and the Top 5 Factors and why they are important concepts.

Next, they need to be at customers’ planters to make sure factors 1, 2 and 4 are being followed. But few if any seed sellers do planter visits or know how to do a planter visit correctly. If they are at the planter and the grower is not following 1,2 and 4, they don’t know how to get him to change.

They don’t have the farmer focused on maximizing bushels per 1000 instead of setting a yield goal for each field. They don’t do post planting visits 4-6 weeks after planting to take bushels per 1000 readings and plan the next crop protection move. (we’ll cover this more in future issues)

The 1000 variables are real and seed sellers need to wake-up and stop relying on their varieties to fight those 1000 variables on their own. No variety can do it by itself.

You only have one chance to get it right. You only have one chance to help farmers capture 100% of their yield potential. That’s why it’s imperative for you to make minimizing the impact of the 1000 variables a key part of your sales story.

Develop your entire sales story around the 1000 variables and the Top 5 Factors and watch your success on customers’ farms skyrocket!

BOOGEYMAN
Watch Out for the Boogeyman!

I describe the Boogeyman as anything that can interfere or hinder your day, your week, your month, your year, or your life. It has potential to permanently damage your ability to achieve goals in business and in life.

Few seed sellers know about the Boogeyman or if they do, how to deal with him when he shows up. He comes every year, most often when least expected.

The Boogeyman is the most unpredictable and most feared predator you’ll ever face in the seed business because he shows up every year, often when least expected. You never know when he’ll come, how big he’ll be or how much damage he’ll cause so you always need to be prepared for his arrival.

What Does The Boogeyman Look Like?

He may show up as uncooperative weather threatening the performance of your varieties, in the form of competitive programs that disrupt customer attitudes, or sagging market prices in a bad economy.

But the most destructive boogeyman of all is the one salespeople create themselves by not preparing themselves and their customers for his arrival. 

Right now the Boogeyman you should already have prepared your customers for is the “Calendar” Boogeyman.

He's the one that preys on farmers’ minds, causing them to do things they should not be doing like, planting when conditions aren’t right, hurrying to get the crop planted and not following the Top 5 Factors because the calendar says it’s getting late.

They start believing planting early is the secret to high yields when planting the crop properly is the real key. They veer from the cropping plan and instead start using the calendar as their guide to raising a top crop. Instead of focusing on the proper time to execute to maximize yields, they get distracted by what the calendar says and do things even when conditions aren’t right.

That’s why the “Calendar Boogeyman” is so dangerous.

Planting is a prime example. Normally farmers aren’t concerned about the calendar as long as they can plant without interference from the weather. But as soon as they feel planting is being delayed, the Calendar Boogeyman causes them to jeopardize their ability to raise a top crop.

So What Can You Do?

First, educate your customers on the Boogeyman and why he’s so dangerous.

It may be too late for planting season, but there are plenty of boogeymen to come yet this season. Constantly remind them what it can cost them to not prepare for him by protecting the crop at all cost. Tell them to stop looking at the calendar and follow the cropping plan.

Next, write cropping plans instead of orders. If customers don’t have a cropping plan, they have no blueprint to follow and are more likely to revert to the calendar. And lastly, remind them to always focus on doing the things that will get them to their goal. Allowing the Calendar Boogeyman to alter tactics will take away any ability to raise a top crop.

Remember, the Boogeyman shows up every year, in some form or another. And the best way to make sure he does a minimum amount of damage is to prepare your customers for his arrival ahead of time.

TROUBLE CALLS
How to Get Back on the Farm When Your Product Fails

How many opportunity calls have you been on in your seed selling career?

That’s right, opportunity calls.

Although many people, including me still sometimes refers to them as trouble calls, they are almost always an opportunity.

In fact, in more than 50 years of being in the seed business I can think of only a couple of times, out of hundreds of complaint calls I’ve been on that didn’t end up as opportunities. And those couple of times were because the farmers who complained were total jackasses, trying to cheat me.

But not only is a complaint (trouble call) an opportunity, each one is also a unique opportunity because every customer who complains believes they are unique. That means showing them that you KNOW they are unique by doing things that surprise and impress them.

In today’s issue, I’m going talk about the single most important Step in Getting Back on the Farm When Product Lets You Down and that is Step 1, Respond Quickly or what I call today, the Lightning Quick Response (LQR).

Lightning Quick Response

You know anyone who complains wants special attention so give it to them. Regardless of how uncomfortable it may feel to contact a farmer who’s upset, do it so fast he’s forced to comment on it.

Over the years the LQR has turned almost every complaining customer into a long-term loyal customer. Everyone was so impressed by my quick response that it never came down to how we settled the problem. We did make sure any settlement was fair for both parties while not playing the role of Santa Claus to try to buy their loyalty. It always came down to how fast we responded to the complaint because as with every complaint, the only thing the customer wants to know is “Do you care about me and am I important to you regardless of how much or how little I buy?”

In my full training course called Getting Back on the Farm When Product Lets You Down you learn that it has little to do with the product itself, but almost entirely to do with how appreciated the customer feels.

This has been proven over and over by loyal customers who suddenly have a problem. If those loyal customers have been well taken care of over the years, they may not even complain when they have a problem.

But if they do complain, they often make excuses as if it was their own fault or something they did wrong. But regardless of how long they’ve been with you, the rules are the same.

Employ the LQR if you want to keep anyone long-term.

If you take nothing else away from this brief discussion, remember, LQR, Lightning Quick Response (in the course I say, Respond Quickly).

A fast response will solve many of the complaints you get, in customers’ minds even before you get to the real solution. They will be so impressed they’ll want to help you come to a fair agreement of how to move forward.

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