This Year We’ll Find Out Who Can Sell & Who Can’t

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

We’re excited to make this FREE to everyone. If you’d like to subscribe and receive this directly to your inbox then simply click here.

In This Issue:

• Early Orders: This Year We’ll Find Out Who Can Sell & Who Can’t

• Boogeyman: Kill the Competition By Creating Your Own Boogeyman

• Trouble Calls: How Can I Keep Myself Motivated?

EARLY ORDERS
This Year We’ll Find Out Who Can Sell & Who Can’t

Many field sellers have told me this is the toughest selling season they’ve ever experienced.  They can hardly get farmers to talk to them let alone write orders.

There are many things that make each selling season different.

This is a year where seed reps will have to call on their sales skills to get an order at the price their asking. Growers are telling sellers they’re only going to pay a certain amount for seed.

What do you do when farmers dig in like that?

My philosophy is when push comes to shove, you become the one doing the shoving.

This year we’ll find out who can sell and who can’t.

Those who can’t get it done are the ones who haven’t learned to “shove hard enough” and drive their level of belief into their customers to get them to believe as they do.

To drive your belief into a customer you must generate so much emotion they begin to follow you. You need to turn belief into emotion and emotion into urgency and urgency into action by the farmer.

Start by “driving that belief” into the grower through eye contact. Emit a hypnotizing laser beam of urgency from your eyes that’s so strong the buyer is emotionally moved to take action. 

Here’s an example.

What do you say when a farmer says, “It’s too early to order, I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”  

Or, “Input costs are too high so I’m going to wait for the deals to come?”   

Start by checking your own level of belief on those comments. Is it ever too early to order?

The answer is no! 

Since it’s never too early to create a cropping plan, none of those are reasons, they’re just excuses.

So it’s your job to give him the reasons. 

When a farmer boldly tells you he doesn’t know what he’s going to do yet, he’s saying it out of disgust and anger at the economic situation at hand. He just doesn’t want to think about it. His mind is out of balance. So the first thing you do is get his mind back in balance with a minor, gentle correction like the following: 

Look the farmer in the eye and ask, “How long have you been farming?”  He looks at you and says, “Twenty years.”  

Don’t break eye contact.

Ask him, “What would be a dream crop of corn for you, one that would yield far above your APH (Actual Performance History) which is currently what?”  

He looks away, thinks for a minute and then looks at you and replies, “I am at 200 right now, so I would like two hundred sixty bushels per acre.”  

You look him straight in the eye and say calmly, “Wow, that would be fun wouldn’t it!  (Notice, that wasn’t a question. That was a “buy in” statement that gets him to agree!)

Why don’t we shoot for that this next year?

Let’s do things you’ve never done and see just how close we can get to that dream of yours? Let’s get the neighbors talking. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

He smiles, hesitates for a moment before replying in a slightly resistant manner, “Who’s going to pay the fertilizer bill?”  

You respond, “Stay with me now, you know that’s not our biggest worry or our biggest challenge. You have a dream so let’s go for it. Are you game to the idea of making your 200 bushel APH seem like a crop failure?” 

 He laughs this time and says, “Yeah, I would like to do that.” 

“That’s why you’re farming. You want to be a top producer and have fun doing it without worrying about the future don’t you. (“buy in” statement) We can create our own future by doing what we know how to do best…grow corn.  So let’s set our eyes forward, get ahead of everyone else in the game and get started.”

 “Okay, let’s do it.”

“I’ll start your cropping plan today and bring it by on Thursday around 9 am for you to approve. That will give me a couple of days to develop it. Then we’ll spend the rest of the morning looking at those fields and getting started on your dream. We’re not going to wait another day to start having fun. How does that sound?”  

“It sounds great,” he says with a big smile.  

The selling starts when you get a no, especially when you believe in your heart that you’re doing the right thing for the grower. The longer he waits, the less chance of being really successful.

Don’t just think believing is enough.

You need to practice driving that belief into customers’ minds.  Only when you learn to drive your belief, into every prospect and customer will you be in control of every part of your selling season and your future.  

BOOGEYMAN
Kill the Competition By Creating Your Own Boogeyman

How would you like to create an obstacle, a Boogeyman, so big that no competitor could overcome it or kill it? That’s right, it’s your turn to create a Boogeyman someone else has to confront.

It’s easy. Read on.

Have you ever driven into a farmer’s place to sell him seed, only to be told he buys all of his seed from a competitor?

Of course you have, it’s one of the most powerful Boogeymen salespeople confront because it often stops the selling process dead in its tracks. Trained seed sellers know that the Boogeyman is most often not real.

Most farmers just use it to scare untrained seed salespeople away.   

But the difficulty comes when that Boogeyman is real. When the farmer professes loyalty to a competitor in the form of all or nothing, he becomes a Boogeyman all competitors will face. That farmer turns into one of the most difficult sales obstacles to overcome.

Those farmers are actually laying claim to their seed supplier’s sales territory. When you hear a farmer lay claim to his supplier’s sales territory, you know that customer is no longer just their customer.

They’ve created their own Boogeyman.     

Laying claim to a territory is about loyalty. The customer becomes so loyal to his supplier he defends the rep and his company at all cost. He not only believes in the values he’s getting from his rep but is also enjoying a rewarding relationship with someone he perceives as a leader. Those kinds of relationships are not easy to find.

By virtue of being a 100% loyal committed customer to a company, the grower is qualified to become a member of their sales force and a real Boogeyman for the competition.  

I’ve always said sales reps should not try to break loyalties between growers and their suppliers in attempts to steal customers. Instead, sales reps who wish to crack through walls of dedication like pre-built Boogeymen need to become so attractive those farmer Boogeymen want to shed their loyalty and give up Boogeyman status on their own. 

Getting customers to become your sales force and play the role of Boogeyman for you doesn’t mean simply getting them to endorse you. It means getting them to “claim” that every acre they farm belongs to your company. And when farmers make claims like that, no one can easily penetrate that market. It scares most competitors away because that is a very big and powerful Boogeyman. No one can take that business away until the farmer himself decides to give it up.   

Field sellers need to turn every one of their customers into Boogeymen by getting them to lay claim to their sales territory. They need to start by using the most powerful statement I’ve ever developed that will take half of your “customers” (those buying 51% or more of their needs from you) to buying 100% of their needs from you and to Boogeyman status in just one year.

Memorize this statement word for word and don’t skip or change a single word. You will not only take half of them to a 100% of their business in one year, but you will also create a ferocious Boogeyman few competitors can kill,

“John, if I could give you enough reasons to plant all of your acres to my seed next year, would you consider planting all of your acres to my seed if I could give you enough reasons?”

The customer will almost always say yes because he’s already at “customer” level and likes you.

The customer is already buying more from you than he is from your competitor so all you need to do is give him the reasons. Those reasons have nothing to do with discounts, programs or varieties. The reasons are always based on things you do that no one else does, like focusing on the three key questions he can’t answer. Where do you want to take your yields next year.

What’s your plan to get there and what’s keeping you from getting there? 

So how many of you are building Boogeymen in your territory to help defend you against competitors?

How many of you have any number of customers who will stand up in your defense when you’re not watching and lay claim to your values and virtues when approached by competitors?

How many of your customers have laid claim to your territory and are willing to become Boogeymen that confront competitors who drive into their yards. They scare them off, never being tempted to buy from them? 

Get out there and make the Boogeyman your asset, not your liability by giving all of your “customers” reasons to become 100% loyal to you and no one else.

Trouble Calls
How Can I Keep Myself Motivated…  

Rod,

I’ve been in seed sales for more than 20 years and I’m currently having a hard time staying motivated in this business. The business isn’t like it used to be. I don’t like all of the changes that come with farmers getting bigger, fewer in number and harder to handle.

The business has gotten so complicated I find it hard to manage current sales and still have time to get new business.  I have friends who are saying the same thing.

How can I keep myself motivated to keep going and put the fun back in it?

Jacob M

Thanks for sending in your question.    

There are three primary things that can cause a veteran like you to lose enthusiasm for his job.  First, you’re mourning the loss of what you’d consider the “good ole days” in the seed business. You miss the days when selling was simple, prospects were plentiful and everyone wanted to try some or maybe even become on of your dealers. If you want to stay in this business, let those days go—they’re not coming back. You need to embrace the new and not the old if you want to continue to compete in this marketplace.  

Second, you’re not feeling valued. Because you’re still embracing the past, you haven’t allowed yourself to learn new things that can offer value to those who depend on you.

You feel you’ve been force fed new ideas rather than “self fed.”

You haven’t been spending enough time strategizing, plotting and planning, trying to figure out how to conquer the new challenges presented in the new market.

As a result, those new challenges are defeating you without you even putting up a fight. Put your brain back to work and devise plans on how you can impress every customer and dealer you work with in a whole new way.

Start by dressing up a little, changing your appearance and acting more professional. Re-write your sales story and practice it. Your spirit will return immediately when you see their responses to the new you.   

Last, and most importantly, you’re blaming something or someone else for your dilemma. You’re busy having a personal “pity party” and passing the blame for your own lack of motivation to others.

It’s caused you to lose control of your own destiny.

Get up and do something about it, even if it means changing careers. Don’t spend one more unmotivated minute feeling sorry for yourself when total responsibility for being motivated lies with you. 

Only you are in charge of your life—so take back control. At some point in your career you kicked butt, and now that you have all of this experience you’ve decided to let a bunch of "wet behind the ears" new marketplace kids kick your butt.

Get them “out of your house” and take back your territory or get a new career you love and take back your life. 

Did someone forward this email? Sign up to get on our list!