Learn to Thrive on Meeting Future Customers! “You will lose 25-30% of your customers every year!” “New customers are the Life Blood of the organization”. These words rang out as I listened to the speaker. This speaker knew what he was talking about as the leader of a growing and thriving agribusiness. His point was […]
Stop price resistance and get paid more “Stop Price Resistance and Get Paid More”. It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? No more price complaints AND you get paid more from your customers. It can happen, but it looks a lot different than you think. It’s no surprise that grain and livestock producers are […]
Practical Steps to manage your fears when selling Jody was calling me from the prospect’s parking lot. A bit nervous to make her first call on a prospect alone, she phoned to “just talk” for a few minutes. It didn’t take long to realize the anxiety around this call had been building with Jody […]
How can Reality TV help you be a better Ag Sales Professional? Twenty-one years ago, I was running hills on a training run to get ready for my 7th marathon. As I did, something snapped in my ankle and suddenly I was in extreme pain and couldn’t put weight on it. No, it wasn’t my […]
The Ag economy is in tough shape for producers and Agribusiness! What to do? Rethink Upselling! A word of warning about this article. Please read it entirely before passing judgment on what I am proposing. The reason I say that is because it challenges a long-standing belief that we should continuously upsell customers. I am […]
We’re “Fixin” to get busy in the farming and agribusiness world. Many parts of our industry are busy all the time, but late March through mid-June is an extra busy time. On the farm, ground needs to be worked, fertilizer spread and crops planted. In our Agribusinesses, we prepare for this rush of activity and […]
Trap #1: What do you have for me today? See Last Week’s blog post for more on how to handle this situation Trap #2: What’s Your Price? Other potential versions of this are: “How much is this going to cost me?” or “I can’t afford that!” or for my grain buying friends, “What’s your basis?” […]
I really shouldn’t call them traps because I truly don’t think our customers are setting a trap. They are just busy people and want to get right down to the point. As most of us know, the sales process involves – Connecting-Asking good questions to uncover needs-Presenting a solution to those needs-Closing […]
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of training many salespeople in the skills and art of becoming an Ag Sales Professional. While it’s true that selling is selling, there are some specifics that help when you know the industry you are training in. For this week’s article, I started to think about how I […]
Senior Year 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. This […]
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