We wear complexity like a badge of honor
Keeping it Simple
“Well, it depends,” Chris told the producer. Inside my head, I was screaming at Chris to just make it easy and explain in simple terms. Unfortunately, he didn’t and the producer responded with the typical, “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
I’m going to follow my own advice in today’s blog by keeping it simple and making it easy.
Chris was a grain buyer for a company I was working with to improve their sales team skills. His manager hired me to ride along with the sales team on their farm calls to improve their selling skills (grain buying skills in this case). On this ride along coaching session, Chris and I were meeting with a 1500-acre corn-soybean producer. In the 90 minutes we were there, Chris presented four different grain marketing products to this producer; storage, Delayed Pricing (DP), a basis contract and an options strategy. All good ideas, but this producer was thoroughly confused and didn’t know what to do. Chris explained everything in detail, but it was obviously just too much information for this producer.
So, the producer started asking a few questions. Good questions, but pointed out his confusion on how the grain marketing strategies worked. That’s where we were at the beginning of this blog. Chris was answering one of those questions. Unfortunately, instead of simplifying things and making it easy, Chris jumped into the minutia of the different grain marketing strategies. He went over all the different ways they worked, what triggers there were and at what point the producer would have to make decisions and phone calls, etc. I knew the process well and it was daunting to me.
The producer did what everyone does when they don’t understand. The confused mind says. “Nope. Not today.”
Do you recognize this behavior in yourself as a salesperson or someone on your team? Do you sell Precision Ag products or programs? Or maybe, you sell microbials or other invisible animal nutrition products which require a lot of technical explanation. Ph.D.’s and engineers on our teams love to do this. It’s natural. They have a deep understanding of the technical or mechanical way our products work. They want to help the customer by telling them all about it. Unfortunately, our customer is confused and needs the information and data in easy to understand terms.
That’s your role as a salesperson. Make the complicated simple to understand. One of the best ways to keep the complicated simple is to use a story. This puts the complicated in a real-world example of how the product or program works.
I know we want to show our customers how much we know about our products and services. That’s fine at certain parts of the sales call. However, when the customer starts asking questions or you are in the Closing Phase of the sale, simple & easy are better.
Making it Easy
“Fill these out when you’re ready and fax them to that number at the bottom of the page,” Liz said as she dropped several forms onto the dairy producer’s desk. “Here’s my card. You can call your order into that 800 number on the back of the card. You’ll want to ask for Betty. She’s the sales coordinator that puts orders in and schedules trucks,” Liz summarized as she began to stand up and leave the producer’s office.
“Ok, well, I’ll do that,” said Kevin, our prospect that we were calling on for the last two hours. Kevin ran a 500-cow dairy and agreed to meet Liz to review his feeding program. Liz had done a great job of uncovering a need for Kevin and positioned her custom feed mix as the right product for his dairy. All we had to do was collect the order. But instead, Liz ended the call by actually giving the producer three different jobs to do before he could get feed: Fill out credit paperwork, fax it in and then call in the order.
Once again, I was screaming inside my head to MAKE IT SIMPLE for this guy. Fill out the paperwork with him or for him. Put the first order in with him or for him. Later on, after he has purchased several loads of feed, then you can have him do his own ordering. But, in the beginning, you want to make this change as easy as possible.
Yes or no, do you think Kevin jumped through all those hoops and put the order in at the feed mill? You guessed it. He did not. In fact, when Liz called him back to see what the delay was, he told her he had changed his mind. He was going to stay with his current feed supplier.
All that work to sell this prospect was lost because we didn’t make it easy.
Simple and Easy
Do you make it easy to do business with you? Do you make the complicated sound simple? Try it today as you end your first sales call and ask yourself these two questions. If the answer is no on either, then make an adjustment on your second, third and fourth sales call.
If you found this to be helpful, forward on to someone you know who might also appreciate it.
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