And how easy it is to correct
Hypocrite is certainly a strong word and I can soften it up, but I’m afraid that’s exactly what we do. We say one thing and do another. In sales, it means expecting our customer to do something that we don’t do ourselves. Frequently in a training or coaching situation, I run across the three examples below. The light goes on for a salesperson once they see their behavior as a little bit hypocritical.
Let’s run through them.
- Asking your customer to embrace technology but not embracing or using it yourself:
Technology has been and always will be important in growing your business and being successful. Farming may be slow to develop and adopt some technologies, but in the last 20 years, the pace has skyrocketed. To sell in this market, your customer has to embrace and execute on these technologies. Precision Ag practices are taking hold, but many farmers still do not use them nor see the value. Working with sales teams that sell to farmers, I hear the complaints, “I wish these producers would look at what we could do for them”
Later in the sales training session, that same salesperson will tell me how bad they are with computers or don’t understand the software themselves. Often, they don’t even sell a product because they think it’s too complicated to explain. Or they don’t use a program because they haven’t taken the time to learn it.
If you want to sell better, become a trusted advisor to your customer and help them in every way you can, then you have to walk the walk and use technology yourself. For many of your products, the only way for the customer to see its value is to embrace the technology. Don’t ask your customer to do it if you aren’t willing to do it yourself.
- Wanting your customers to embrace data, but not using your own data to sell better and sell more:
This is an interesting one. Data is a very hot topic in Ag right now. Who owns it, how it’s gathered and how to use it. Most of our products require the customer to look at and understand the data that shows the ROI. “Our fungicide gets 3 more bushels to the acre in this soil, based on the data”. “Our direct fed microbial gets an extra quarter of a pound in average daily gain, based on the data”. Precision Ag is all about gathering more data, making it available to the producer and then making decisions ahead of time instead of after the fact. Salespeople get very frustrated that their producers don’t use or look at the data and see how good their products really are.
Later in the sales training or coaching discussion, I will ask this same sales person about using their company’s CRM platform (Customer Relationship Management). They tell me, “Oh, I use it a little. I really don’t like that program. Just seems like Big Brother to me. I mean, I’m not going to sit around all night entering notes every time my customer and I have a Diet Coke.” My first coaching to this person is about the Diet Coke comment. “If that’s what you think you’re supposed to enter, then we have a real judgment problem.” My next comments address the time comment. “These programs take minutes at most to enter the critical information about a sales call.” They don’t even require good writing skills. There’s certain information that needs to be captured so you can pull it out quickly for your next sales call. Next, we discuss the Big Brother comment. First of all, it really is your company’s customer and if you are required to fill it out, then you do it. Might be an old school thought but it’s usually the “old schools” that I have most of these discussions with. Secondly, if my company wants to see what I do and check on how hard I’m working, then more power to them. As a matter of fact, come sit in my home office and ride with me on sales calls and tell me how I can get better. The only people who are afraid of Big Brother telling them they aren’t making enough sales calls are the people who aren’t making enough sales calls. The rest of us are trying to grow our territories.
Lastly, I address the importance of learning how to use the mountains of data that can be pulled out of a tool like a CRM platform. This data can be used to sell better, sell more and reduce wasted time. See my three-part series on launching a CRM program in Feed & Grain Magazine: “CRM: The Love/Hate Relationship”.
- Asking your customer to change but not changing yourself:
Selling is often the process of getting a prospect or customer to change what they are currently doing. I can remember calling on someone who had done business with their supplier for 20 years. Yet, there I was asking them to change. “Bring my products in and buy from me.” Maybe not everything on day one, but a product or two. Or, I had a long-term customer that wouldn’t bring in several of our products or use all of our services. So, I spent many sales calls trying to get them to change. Frustrated, I would continue to use the same methods and explain the features/benefits the same way. As time went on, I slipped into a rut of how I ran my sales process. How I pre-call planned, what questions I asked, where I steered the sales conversations and how I closed. Hypocritically, I would complain to my peers about how customers were stuck in their ways and wouldn’t change.
Take a look today at your own practices. Are you using all the technology available to you? If not, you are cheating your customer from their benefits.
Are you using data to help sell more and sell better? If not, your cheating both your customer and yourself. How? It cheats the customer by not using the data to select the best products or implement the best services your company has to offer. Not using data to its full extent, cheats you by slowing you down and requires you to go off of a gut feel instead of proven data. Imagine if you had information as to which types of customers are more likely to buy the different products you offer. Focusing your time and effort, you can stop wasting time on unlikely prospects.
Are you changing your sales approach to meet customer needs? Are you on a path of continuous improvement? If not, start today. Start small and make gradual improvements to your selling skills. If you are an experienced sales person and already have those skills, then use them. Bridge the “Knowing-Doing Gap”.
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