The Blog for the Ag Sales Professional
An Agriculture blog dedicated to selling in agribusiness. These Ag blog articles focus on the best practices for selling to farmers and livestock producers. We also focus on those salespeople who call on Ag buyers at the thousands of agribusinesses that serve the farming community
Thanksgiving Edition In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought I would offer an Ag sales version of what I am thankful for. Manufacturing Location improvements that gave me Faster truck lines at the elevator Better Pellets! – Less Fines! (kind of like taste great – less filling) More consistent products Less mistakes and faster ways […]
Gray Areas in Ag Sales “And I want full credit. I don’t care about your policy on returning treated seed. As a matter of fact, you should pay me for the time it took me to drive here. Gas isn’t free you know. I called you and told you to send me my seed. […]
Losing Losing a sale. Losing a customer. Losing a peer to a competitor, a co-worker to retirement or a mentor and leader to cancer. In today’s Ag market, losing your business unit to a merger is a definite likelihood. It’s a fact of life in sales as well as many areas of life. Over […]
I’d Like a Brand-new Feed Mill for Christmas The old saying “Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it” comes to mind throughout this adventure in what was to be my second worst day at selling feed. We operated two mills in the area. One, built in the 1950’s and […]
The Day our Feed Trucks Quit I still remember the location on Highway 90 that I was driving on when I got the call from the feed mill. On a boiling, warm Tuesday morning in July, my family loaded into the minivan and headed to O’Hare for the vacation of a lifetime. Fifteen years […]
Switching Dog Food Customers It was the end of my first month in sales, many years ago. I was all set up at the best spot in one of my dealer’s store locations with my card table of pet food samples of all kinds…large dog, small dog, overweight dogs and even a cat food […]
Tough times in the Ag market can lead to higher A/R and more write offs Times are tough. I should actually say times are tougher, as we tend to feel like times are always tough. As margins narrow and producers & Ag retailers operate extremely close to or below break-even, paying their bills gets […]
Sales Territory Organization Last week, I spoke to the importance of getting organized in your territory. I broke that organization into five categories. Those five categories of organizational skills are: Customers, Technology, Supplies/Equipment, Seasonality and Geography. See last week’s blog for the info on Customer and Technology tips on organizing your Ag Territory Supplies/Equipment – […]
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