The Life & Times of an Ag Sales Professional – The EARLY Years

There’s a life cycle in every career and being an Ag Sales Professional is no different.  In most cases, we start out young, with little experience.  If we stick with it, we move into our experienced years, where we climb to success and then move into the waning years of our career.  Below are a few ideas I thought about as I reflected on my early years.

Things I did Right:

• Called on the real end user so I could better understand my customer (dealer)

This was critical to understanding the dealer.  Without an Ag background, I had a lot to learn quickly.  Calling on dealers when you have no idea what is going on either in their dealership nor at the end user’s farm was very intimidating.  I went to an area of my territory where I didn’t have a dealer network and started calling on larger horse farms.  I chose that area so my dealers wouldn’t think I was out trying to sell direct around them.  It worked great.  In a couple weeks, I had a fairly good understanding of what was going on and it gave me the confidence to hold a conversation with a dealer.

• Got Extremely Organized

This became a passion or maybe an obsession.  I never wanted to fail at follow up.  With a large territory (2 state area), I had to juggle a lot of information to keep the prospect funnel going in those early years.  Failing to follow up will do great damage to your credibility at any stage of your career.  As a new sales person, I didn’t want to give prospects any reason to not do business with me.  So, I kept follow up as a top priority as one of my strengths.  Still do today.  This was before CRM products, so I created some very simple spreadsheets to track it all.

• Asked for advice all the time

I was fortunate to have a sales manager that was also a great mentor and could give me excellent perspective on both selling and my career.  So, we talked frequently in the early years and it helped more than I can say.  I also asked for advice from anyone that had interactions with our customers: sales coordinators, loading dock workers, truck drivers.  Heck, I even talked to accounting once in a while.  Peers were extremely helpful over the years as they were going through the same things I was.

• Went on peer ride alongs that were both nearby and in other geographies

Do this early and often.  These are the people that are going through some of the same stuff you are.  Maybe they have figured it out.  It’s not enough to just talk on the phone.  Go ride with them and ask the questions you don’t feel you could ask your supervisor or “upper management”.  Don’t just ride with the sales people near you.  Get out of your box and go to a new geography.  The box will be there when you get back and you can jump right back in.  But, I’m guessing once you’ve been outside the box, you’ll expand your view just a bit and be better for it.  Ok, enough about of the box.  By doing ride alongs, I found some great new products to bring to my territory.  I found a critical factor in controlling grain mites by riding along with another sales person from about six states away.  I also learned new ways to position a product or service that I used back in my territory.

• Knew and kept up on our internal processes and procedures

Be useful to your customers by digging in and knowing the details.  I know what you’re saying, “We have people that can explain the credit terms or the pre-payment program or how to read your invoice”.  If you do and they are extremely responsive, then fine.  Let them call that person.  If not, then you do the homework for the customer and make sure it’s taken care of.  I know we would all rather be out in the country selling benefits and explaining features but the customer’s mind won’t be on task if they haven’t received their grain payment or their feed invoice is all messed up.

• Knew my competition better than they knew themselves – or so I thought

I studied their products and programs as much as I could.  If someone was going to compare me to the competition, I wanted to know how we stacked up prior to getting in front of a customer.  The internet has made this so much easier than gathering brochures & feed tags.  There’s just no reason you shouldn’t be doing this.

• Self-improvement

The library has free books on tape.  Become a regular patron.  You can hear from all the greats on sales, leadership, management, etc.  If they don’t have it, create a learning library at your local office.  Buy the CDs and store them at your office so everyone that wants to can listen to them.

• Went anywhere and everywhere and sold everyone in between

There probably isn’t a sales person out there that hasn’t started their career off by going everywhere and trying to sell everyone.  It’s part of the tuition you pay to learn how to recognize the right opportunities.  If you’re hungry, you’ll chase a lot of opportunities that you later learn not to chase.  You learn the hard way.   I’d rather learn it that way than miss sales because I didn’t want to chase down an opportunity.  In the beginning, you are trying to learn where you fit into the market and what customer segment you will best identify with.   Just make sure you learn to recognize them and narrow down your scope or you become very inefficient.

Things I did Wrong:

• Went anywhere and everywhere and sold everyone in between

See above.  It fits in the Wrong category if you fail to learn where your strength is in the market.

• Customized everything

I never wanted to turn down a sale.  So, if I had to customize a product or service, I went after it.  A little of this is ok, but it can be exhausting as it takes more time than selling the program.

• Trusted a few Accounts Receivable situations that I probably wouldn’t today

Another trap I fell into when getting very aggressive in my early days.  It ended up costing more time and effort since I then had to chase them down and collect on bad debt.  Learning how to dial this in is important and it happened after a few years.  If you’re too stringent, you will pass up sales.  If you’re too loose, you will spend all your time chasing accounts receivables and getting calls from your credit manager.  Not to mention, your judgement might get questioned on future opportunities if you fail to learn this skill.

• Talked too much during the sales process

It’s a common scenario.  I was new.  I wanted to explain how great my products were and how much I knew.  I didn’t want to come across as a rookie.  So, I spewed information.  As time went on, I learned to ask questions.  Steven Covey taught me to “Seek first to understand, then be understood”.  No, not personally, I borrowed his CDs from the library.

• Presented the marketing material as is – failing to make it come from me

Similar to talking too much is using the presentations and marketing material you get from your company and presenting them as is.  To Be Clear, I am not suggesting that you change them.  What I am saying is that you have to read them thoroughly, ask a lot of questions, understand them completely before you present them.  Then, present the material with “Your” take on it.  How or why you think the features or benefits are important.  Otherwise, you’re just reading the PowerPoint slide or brochure to your customer.  In my current business, I run into this with famous quotes.  Many speakers will quote Gandhi, JFK, MLK or sales leaders like Steven Covey or John Maxwell.  That’s ok I guess, but I’ve heard most of those quotes and can find them myself.  What most people want from someone that quotes one of the greats is their interpretation of how it applies to this situation.  Tell me how you think JFK would solve this pellet quality problem.  Or How would Steven Covey have stopped the turf war argument at the last sales manager meeting.  Don’t read the brochure, show your customer how important it is to them.

I’m sure there were many more but hope this proves helpful for you along the way.  If you’ve been out selling a while, I’m sure you can see yourself in these situations.  If you’re new, just know that you probably aren’t the first to go through these experiences.  Reach out and share with a peer or more experienced sales person and learn from both the right and wrong ways.

To Schedule a Free initial coaching session today, contact me directly at Greg@GregMartinelli.net

For more on Ag Sales Training, Ag Sales Coaching and Leading Ag Sales Teams, go to  http://www.GregMartinelli.net/