Time is Spelled: M-O-N-E-Y

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In This Issue:

• Early Orders: Time is spelled: M-O-N-E-Y!

• Boogeyman: Run From the Bully

• Podcast: I Mourn for Those Who Have Nothing to Sell

Early Orders
Time is spelled: M-O-N-E-Y!

Time is money.

How many times have you heard that?

Well, it’s true.

When the only thing seed sellers have control over besides their attitude is their time, they need to make it something of real value. 

If you ask sales reps what their time is worth, most of them will divide their gross income by the number of hours they work and get a per hour value. For example, a sales rep who earns $40,000 per year, working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year (2000 hours/year) would be making $20 per hour.

Consequently, they assume that when they’re not being productive with their time, it’s costing their company $20 per hour. But companies have a lot more invested in sales reps than just their wages and a sales rep’s selling time is worth a lot more than $20 per hour.

The real cost of a rep’s time has little to do with salary.

Instead, the real cost is based on the dollars not being generated when the rep isn’t selling. For example, if a sales rep works 2000 hours per year and generates $1 million in sales, that rep’s territory generates approximately $500 per hour for the company. Every hour spent writing orders in that territory generates $500. Conversely, every hour not spent selling costs the company $500. 

But few if any sales reps spend all of their time selling.

In fact, if I’m generous I would say they spend no more than half of their time selling seed. That would make their hourly wage $1000 per hour, not $500. That’s how much it costs the company when reps are not productive when half of their time is spent selling in a 2000 per hour year. 

If a sales rep manages a $5 million territory while spending 1000 hours, half of their time selling, that sales rep generates $5,000 per hour for the company when selling and costs the company $5,000 per hour when the rep is not selling. Quite dramatic isn’t it. Those are real numbers.

The key to making the most money for yourself and your company is to manage your time properly, but that has nothing to do with the clock or the calendar.

Time management in selling is based totally on which farmers get a farmer’s time and how much each one gets. Too many sales reps don’t put a dollar value on their time and end up giving it to anyone, regardless of how much of that time they really deserve.   

Do you know what your time is worth on a per hour basis? Since the rates we calculated are real numbers, you need to know that number. You also need to decide who is going to get your time and how much.  

Are you going to give $2,000 per hour time to a farmer who buys a small, trial size order or are you going to give it to the farmer who’s buying most or all of his seed from you?

If your biggest customers who are willing to pay $2,000 per hour for your time, find out you’re giving that same value to farmers buying only a small amount of seed, they should fire you. 

As I said, time management in sales has little or nothing to do with the clock or the calendar and doesn’t always mean changing your work schedule. It means deciding who you’re going to spend your time with to generate the most sales per hour. 

Your biggest customers are your biggest customers because you spend more time with them, communicating with them in many different ways. You built those sales by focusing more on them than you have other farmers who are buying less.

When you decide time is actually spelled M-O-N-E-Y and not T-I-M-E, you will change who you sell to, who turn down and how much time you give the people based on how much they buy.

That my fellow street fighter is true time, I mean, money management. 

Boogeyman
Run From the Bully

Do you runaway when "bullies" threaten to beat you up?

Most people advise standing up to bullies because most of them aren’t as tough as they act.  As good as that advice is in life however, it’s not what I advise seed sellers to do.

I tell them to run when threatened by a bully.

Bullies in the seed business are 100% loyal customers of competitors. 

They’re just waiting for you to stop in and sell them seed so they can prove they can clean your clock when it comes to product performance and eliminate one more competitor from calling on them.

These loyalists want to pit one of your varieties against the entire lineup they’re planting from their favorite company. Like every bully, they don’t fight unless they have a huge advantage from the start by insisting on buying a small amount to try, telling you if it works they will buy more in the future.

That’s a lie and the typical first line the bully draws in the sand. 

At this point, seed seller egos usually kick in, keeping them from running away. The chests of both parties puff up like powder pigeons. Seed reps don’t want to turn down the challenge in fear of being called chicken and lose what they perceive as a chance to get more business next year, which seldom, if ever, happens.

But smart sellers don’t take the bait and run away.

They know bullies never plant your products first, they plant them last, on their poorest ground and don’t want you to win. They know they get once chance to perform for a first-time buyer and when they sell a first-time buyer, it needs to involve an order larger than first-time buyers normally buy. 

Top seed sellers get prospects to buy at least three varieties the first time, and in larger quantities. If bullies are unwilling to do that, run away and refuse to write an order if the fight isn’t fair. And when you refuse to fight, it puts you back in control of your perceptions and your future.

You can always go back and try again. But if you take an order for a small quantity or for one variety when a “bully” tries to sucker you into a fight you can’t win, you will never be able to go back.  

Many average seed sellers disagree with what I’m saying because they’re not yet tired of getting their asses kicked. You can tell who they are because they’re walking around with partially filled order books.

They smile at me with the few teeth they have left in their head and call me “chicken.”

That’s ok though.

I’ll just give them a big smile that includes all of my teeth and flash my commission check….it will be bigger than their annual salary and I didn’t have to fight for it. 

Podcast
I Mourn For Those Who Have Nothing to Sell

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 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…

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

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