Make One Last Call

It’s late in the afternoon on any given day and you’ve logged a lot of miles this week.  As you drive through your territory or you sort through e-mails at your desk, you gradually start to reason with yourself.  “I need to take a break”.  “No, I Deserve a break!”.  Your mind starts to wander to a nice place you might stop off at instead of working…a fishing spot, a local hangout/watering hole, etc.  After all, you closed a deal on Monday, got yelled at for a late delivery on Tuesday, tracked down & met with a large prospect on Wednesday and got kicked off of a farm on Thursday because your prices were too high. So it’s Friday and you tell yourself, “Farmers are probably all done for the week and I don’t want to bother someone on a Friday”.  It really sounds good as it rolls through your mind and the urge to quit for the day grows stronger.

If you are able to resist that urge for the next 20 seconds and mentally compel yourself to make one last call, you will be greatly rewarded.  Maybe it will be a bust and you won’t connect with the farmer or the Ag Retailer you called.  No harm done and no real time lost.  You were just going to listen to talk radio anyway.  If you are able to resist that urge to cut the day short, you will add an average of 250 farm calls or phone calls in your territory.  Let’s be conservative and say you only get the urge to cut your day short twice a week.  That’s still over 100 more farm calls a year.  If you make 4-5 farm calls a day, this would be the equivalent of gaining an extra 25 days of work – an entire month extra.  Fight the urge and get 13 months out every year.

While, I have used this to technique to be effective at growing my territory, I have also used this in many of my fishing trips.  As you may have guessed, I enjoy fishing and reference it occasionally in my posts.  As I get towards the end of a good day of fishing (there’s really no bad days), I play the “one more cast” game.  I reason that I will just make one more cast.  Then I reason that I don’t want to end on a bad note so I make one more cast until I catch a fish.  Then I reason that I shouldn’t end on catching a small fish, so I make one more cast.  I’m pretty sure this is why my kids may have opted out of some of my fishing trips.

Ag Sales is a very competitive environment and you need every advantage you can get to grow your business.  Take advantage of a very simple technique to increase your sales to your farmers.  Fight the urge and get an extra month on your calendar.

Good Luck!