Reducing Farmer Complaints by Setting Expectations

Nobody likes to be surprised after the sale

“I didn’t realize I only had a week to use the service!”

“You didn’t tell me there wasn’t downside protection on this option strategy”

“If I’d have known that, I never would have bought it!”

Ever hear these comments from a customer?  Do you hear them too often?  If you are a sales manager, are they mostly from one sales person’s customers? If you answered yes to any of these, read on.  If not, then please share your secret.

Agribusiness can be a complicated adventure.  It’s an outdoor sport where weather and seasonality play a big part of the products & services we offer.  Often our programs and costs change drastically from month to month in the growing cycle or minute to minute in the grain marketing business.  Add in the multi-levels of marketing that our product goes through:  manufacturer, dealer, distributor, transportation.  Next add in the multiple ways our information gets to the market:  traditional advertising, social media, word of mouth and of course our sales team.  Lastly add in the many people involved:  our sales team, our sales coordinators, our call centers, our operations or accounting people that might interact with a customer, our distribution team to include drivers, family or employees of our customer, our dealer’s employees, etc.  At any point in the customer experience you can have a recipe for misunderstandings to go on.  The end result is unhappy customers that may or may not have understood the transaction they were involved in.  Sometimes, they truly don’t understand.  Sometimes, of course, they have selective memory.

Either way, we have to deal with the misunderstanding, clear up the transaction and try to keep the customer.  With experience, we learn to prevent these situations from happening.  Here’s a few tips on how:

1. Nobody likes a surprise in their business transactions – If you know or even think there’s a chance the customer doesn’t understand, you owe it to them to keep explaining it until they do understand it. Sure, you can see the sale in your hands.  Sure, further explanation might change the customer’s mind.  However, most sales in agribusiness are long term relationships.  So, getting that sale today under foggy understanding is far worse than losing this one sale and  getting the customer what they truly need.

2. Best Case/Worse Case Scenarios – These are great ways to explain the outside limits of a transaction. They work well in grain marketing to explain what happens in a bull/bear market scenario.

3. The Real Estate Example – Recently when buying a house, I signed a lot of contracts. After many of them, I then signed a piece of paper that summarized what I signed for and said I understood what I signed for.  It seemed silly at the time to sign something that said I understand what I’m signing for.  However, it’s done for a reason.  It prevents a customer from coming back and saying they didn’t understand what they were signing. Probably not practical in many of our sales transactions, but there is value in using signed agreements or contracts.  There’s also value in summarizing the key points in writing for customers.

4. Build Bumpers: What Normally Goes Wrong? You work with these transactions every day.  You see the misunderstandings happen all the time.  Just like bumpers on a bowling lane, build them in to keep your customers out of the gutter.  At a minimum, overcommunicate the traps and pitfalls around those normally misunderstood areas of your products.

5. We know our products, but the customer might not – This includes jargon and acronyms. I watched a sales person explain a product once.  It was riddled with company jargon and acronyms that were second nature to the sales person.  I could see the customer had no clue what they all meant.  Slow down, review your marketing material for clear communication and ask the customer once in a while if they understand.  Use their real-life example to improve understanding.

Over the many years of coaching Ag salespeople, I had the unique opportunity to observe many of these interactions.  Very few went off without a few misunderstandings.  It didn’t matter whether they were face to face, over the phone or presentations to larger group customer meetings.  As you can imagine, communication skills – speaking, hearing, listening – vary widely from sender to receiver.  With a little effort ahead of time, you can prevent a lot of pain down the road.  Often that pain is a financial cost.  In a misunderstanding, the company often absorbs that cost.  Avoid this situation by preventing it from ever happening.  If you don’t, I guarantee you someone in your company will.

 Want to learn more Cold Calling & Prospecting skills?  Join me Wednesday, June 28^th for a deeper dive and insights into how to not only conquer your fears but enjoy this part of the sales process. 

Click on the link below!

Make your next meeting memorable by bringing in a speaker who’s been there.  Contact me to find out how Greg@GregMartinelli.net

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