Ag Sales Professional's Podcast by Greg Martinelli

Which to measure and why

Lead indicators are great, but only effective if they lead to Lag indicators!

Lag indicators are the ultimate result of your selling efforts! But don’t always tell the full story.

So, which should a salesperson or sales manager measure or monitor? Which is more important? Which do you or your sales manager focus on?

Listen in as we discuss the importance of both lead and lag indicators to improve your sales results!

5 Motivations to keep going and when to quit

Successful salespeople are generally motivated people.  They have a drive to succeed.  As their managers, we try to motivate them in various ways:  Sales meetings, financial incentives, pep talks, etc.  Some work sometimes, but none of them work every time.  The reason is based on the motivation theory that you can’t really motivate another person.  Motivation comes from inside each person’s mind.  What motivates me may not motivate my fellow salesperson. 

So then, what to do and how to motivate our sales brain?

Listen in as we discuss five ways to generate internal motivations to succeed in building your sales territory!

5 Motivations to keep going and when to quit

Successful salespeople are generally motivated people.  They have a drive to succeed.  As their managers, we try to motivate them in various ways:  Sales meetings, financial incentives, pep talks, etc.  Some work sometimes, but none of them work every time.  The reason is based on the motivation theory that you can’t really motivate another person.  Motivation comes from inside each person’s mind.  What motivates me may not motivate my fellow salesperson. 

So then, what to do and how to motivate our sales brain?

When I say sales brain, I’m referring to the motivation to keep selling when everything indicates you should not.  It’s different than non-sales employees.  Salespeople will spend 80-100% of their time with prospects and customers.  They will spend that time on tasks that may or may not produce an ounce of results.  Yet they have to remain internally motivated to continue despite not knowing if their efforts will be rewarded. 

So, again, how do we motivate our sales brain? Especially, when it’s difficult economic times on the farm like right now, when producers are unhappy, when cold calls seem like an intrusion, when prospecting seems unproductive, or when you just want to help but can’t. 

Recently, while completing my ninth ironman triathlon, I realized 5 self-motivation techniques.  These five have proven to get me through both physically difficult races as well as the long journey of growing a successful sales territory.    

At some point in every ironman race, there is that moment.  The moment when you are not sure your gonna make it.  Your physical energy is depleted, and your body begins to shut down.  Essential electrolytes are used up, blood glucose is burned up, and hydration is on empty.  Your last hope in your desperation to finish what you started is your brain. 

The last line of defense is your mind.  More specifically, your motivations.

Selling is no different.  You do everything right to sell great products that save your customers money and provide better results in their business.  You try to do everything right by following a good sales process.  Yet the sale can still be lost or delayed indefinitely.  At times, you feel depleted and have nothing left to go on – except your sales brain. 

Your sales brain knows that you have to persist somehow.  If you quit, you lose that sale.

Motivating your Sales Brain:

Think about this – motivation is an emotion.  And like any emotion, it’s all in your head.  It’s interesting that one of the most powerful sales resources you have is inside your head in the form of an emotion.  Few salespeople would want to admit it, but it’s true.  Most salespeople think the biggest strength needed is technical knowledge or better pricing.  While those are great, someone always comes along with a lower price and a more technical product advantage.  We can always strive to have those advantages, but it’s your internal motivation to sell that keeps you going. 

If you truly believe in your products, your company, and your ability to help customers, then you are motivated on every sales call.  You will eventually succeed in sales.  If you have ever tried selling when you don’t have that confidence, then you realize how hard it is. 

One key thought:  Motivation does not allow you to do everything.  By that, I mean if I have trained my physical body for a 13-hour result in my race, no amount of motivation will get me to a 10-hour finish.  Motivation can inspire me to train for a future race and maybe get to 10 hours, but not today.

It’s no different in sales.  If you haven’t done the correct selling steps, competitively priced your products, and positioned them as solutions for your customer, then motivation by itself is not going to overcome those basic steps.  Your motivation might keep you in a positive mood, but customers will soon tire of your poor selling skills. 

Lastly, motivation is very individual and internal to you.  It’s different for every single person.  Don’t be discouraged if you are not motivated by those things that are supposed to motivate you.  A great example of this is motivational speakers at sales meetings.  By their very title, they are designed to motivate us to sell more.  Some do, but many don’t.  In racing, the cheering fans calling out your number and telling you, “Looking great, number 1029!”  are supposed to motivate me to keep going.  While I appreciate their comments, it does little for my mental strength to keep going.  Yet, I am very motivated to know that family and fellow racers are somewhere on the course or in the audience waiting for me to complete the race.  So, know your own motivation triggers and feed them into your head daily…hourly if needed.

Here are the 5 motivations that have helped me get to the end of an ironman as well as build a successful sales career.:

Listen to the podcast version of this blog to hear more about the following elements of motivating yourself.

3. Visions (only ones that help): 

4. Awareness of how your mind works:

5. Comparisons (only to those that help)

Final thought on motivation:  Don’t use these techniques to “Never quit”.  There are obvious times in a race that require us to quit – torn Achilles, complete dehydration, or your bike breaks on mile ten.  However, that is not quitting the overall goal of racing.  That is repairing or regrouping for a better recovery to get back in the next race.

Same thing in sales.  I have worked with many salespeople who needed to simply quit on a customer or customer segment.  Their inner drive to never quit was admirable, but it held them back in their ultimate goal of becoming a high-performing salesperson.  Persistence is an absolute must for a successful sales career.  However, knowing when to persist and when to quit is key.  There is a fine line between being persistent, being a pest, and moving on to better opportunities. 

Successful people in any endeavor have a strong ability to quit what is not good or not working and focus on what is working.  Fight the instinct to never quit.  Realize the key points of when it is better to quit and move on to better opportunities.

I wish you all the best in your ability to harness your motivations for selling success!

Using the golden rule of improv to help you sell

If you want to improve your selling skills, find your local improv group and participate in one of their workshops. 

Performers have to be quick on their feet.  They have to react quickly to changing topics and physical movement of the other performers.  Sometimes props are brought into the performance, which adds new dimensions and directions.  Audience involvement is often solicited to get them engaged in the performance.  The randomness of it all can lead to slow moments from a comedy perspective, as well as hilarious moments. 

Doesn’t that sound a lot like selling?  The prospect knows why you are there – to sell them something.  However, they don’t know where you are going with your sales call.  You think you know where you are going with it, but you truly don’t know for sure.  Will it get shut down in the first few seconds or will you be there for an hour, or more? 

Listen in as we discuss how to use an improv session or role-play exercise to improve your selling skills.

And how to minimize or remove them

Every business has a bottleneck. 

Your sales territory is a business, and it has bottlenecks. What about you and your territory?  If you are selling $1 million in products, then ask yourself.  “What is keeping me from growing that to 2, 4, or 6 million?” 

In other words, “What’s the bottleneck?” 

Most salespeople will answer that question with the one-word answer, “Time!” I completely get that.  So, let’s break down how a salesperson spends their time. 

Listen in as we discuss the four primary bottlenecks holding us back as Ag Sales Professionals and how we can minimize the impact to grow sales

Improving your sales results with just one measurement

Most of us have heard the old carpenter saying, “Measure Twice, Cut once”.  It’s a reminder to double-check our measuring and marks when doing a home repair project.  This is a great rule of thumb.  I know it saved me numerous times over the last 40 years of DIY home repairs.

When selling, I want you to consider a slight modification to that old saying, “Measure once, Sell twice as much.”

When working with sales teams, too often, I run across sales managers and salespeople who don’t really measure any vital information to help them sell.  None!  When I ask them what their measure of success is, most will tell me total sales dollars for the company or local business unit.  While that’s certainly important for the overall business, it doesn’t tell me what each salesperson is doing.  If they do measure something, they might measure the number of sales calls.  Again, this tells us very little about what the salesperson is doing. 

What this really means is that our salespeople are driving blindly into their territory.  They jump in their truck, head out into their territory, sell hard all day long, and get the results they get!

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  They truly don’t know why it worked or why it didn’t work. 

When it works, we might take credit for the success.  We must be good at sales!  We might shine the credit spotlight on our teammates.  We might even give credit to good luck. 

When it doesn’t work, we may assume that we aren’t as good a salesperson as we thought we were.  We might blame pricing, product performance, or the economy. 

Either way, the results are difficult to repeat if you are not measuring actions.  For example, if you made seven sales calls one day and only one the next, did you get better results on either day?  It’s hard to tell and even harder to attribute.  In general, I’d assume being in front of more customers is better.  However, that’s not a great way to measure. 

One of the main reasons a salesperson or their manager needs to measure is to remove the randomness from the salesperson’s results and hone in on repeatable actions that grow sales!

They are different for every company, territory, and salesperson.  Why? Because every one of them have different territories, with different challenges, and a different set of selling strengths/weaknesses.

Here are my overall favorite data points and questions to set up measurements:

The answers to these questions help to establish key measurements to help you measure your sales performance.  They also allow you to make small, daily adjustments to your actions.  Those consistent, small, daily actions lead to long term sales results.

Improve your sales results with just one measurement

Most of us have heard the old carpenter saying, “Measure Twice, Cut once”.  It’s a reminder to double-check our measuring and marks when doing a home repair project.  This is a great rule of thumb.  I know it saved me numerous times over the last 40 years of DIY home repairs.

When selling, I want you to consider a slight modification to that old saying, “Measure once, Sell twice as much.”

Listen in as I review those measurable areas to help you sell more!

Interview with Colson Steber from Ag Access on the importance of market data

I’m convinced that every salesperson out there can improve the management of their sales, their customers, and prospects with better data. Especially data from farmers.

Today, I’m joined by Colson Steber from Ag Access. Coslon is co-CEO and Co-owner of Ag Access. They have a database of over 100,000 farmers and agribusiness contacts, which they survey annually. They work with all the major Ag manufacturers, Tractor companies, and cooperatives.

They also work with most of the Ag research companies in a contract role to gather on-farm data. As Colson describes it, if you received data on farmer activities, then it’s highly likely that Ag Access was involved in gathering it.

Key Interview Times

Ag Access info:

Website:  https://ag-access.com/

Listen in as Colson Steber (Ag Access) and I discuss the world of Ag data collection and why it’s important to all levels in the company, especially the Ag Salesperson

Use them on your next sales call to expand your customer relationship

Ever get stuck in a rut with a customer?  Maybe you have talked about everything you can talk about and sold them everything you think you can sell them.

What about prospects?  Ever call on a prospect several times and feel like you are getting no further into the sales process with them?

If so, listen in as we discuss three questions to dig a bit deeper into their business to see if you can change your sales approach and add more value to their business.

Interview with Jim Miller

Jim Miller joins me today on the podcast and webcast to discuss the importance of prioritizing prospects to focus your limited time on the most important prospects who offer the greatest chance to sell.

Jim grew up on an Idaho farm and has spent his career in agribusiness to include many years in sales and sales leadership. Currently, teaching a course on Ag Sales at the University of Idaho, Jim brings his knowledge and experience of selling to farmers, producers, and Ag buyers to the next generation of agribusiness employees.

Jim stops by today to share an important tool he has used for many years to manage a prospect funnel. With large geographies and hundreds or thousands of prospects, an Ag Sales Professional must have some way to focus their limited time and reduce drive time to be more effective.

Jim shares the Prospect Priority Index Calculator and how it has helped him focus on the most important prospects.

Or listen as a podcast