Podcast – Greg Martinelli

Developing your salespeople even when budgets are tight

Last week’s blog and podcast were focused on selling to farmers during a recession.  If you haven’t read or listened to it, please do so and then come back for this week’s discussion.  It will make more sense.  Selling to Farmers in a Recession

Today, we are shifting the focus from selling to the development of your salespeople and sales team during this recession.  Over the last month, I’ve had several companies tell me they are holding off on sales training and investments into their sales team’s development.  “We’re holding off on any discretionary spending at this point, until we see how the year turns out,” they say.

However, you still have the difficult challenge of selling to farmers during the most difficult time to sell. 

Listen in as we discuss a new training program designed for the Ag recession.

Ag Recession Sales Training Program

3 M’s on how to sell when it’s worse than just tough times!

Over the past decade, considerable attention has been devoted to the topic of selling during challenging economic times.  I’ve focused my topics and training on selling in Ag and to farmers during those tough times. 

However, today’s market is different than those times.  Today, we are faced with something unseen in our work history: a worldwide tariff war.  And during a time in history when the world trade has never been more intertwined. 

Our products are being manufactured, processed, mined, and resold back and forth across borders at the highest rate in history.

For every agribusiness, they should be looking at this as a recession or simply, more than just tough times.  In 1980, we learned from the Russian wheat embargo that trade wars can disrupt a market forever. 

What will happen to your business, your sales territory, or your customers after this war settles down?  What can you do as a sales organization or individual salesperson?

Three M’s of selling in Ag:  Move – Modify – Maneuver

1.  Move: “Get out of the headlights.”

2. Modify: “Get them a different product.”

3. Maneuver: “Outflank the market.”

Listen in as we cover the three M’s in more depth to help you sell more confidently in a recession!

Salespeople fulfill the critical role as the quarterback of their company

During sales training workshops, I like to bring new and unique views of our role as salespeople.  One view that really brings a unique perspective is the concept of the quarterback on a football team. 

The approach used to explain this concept is better understood with the modified company organization chart below. 

When you truly consider the purpose and economic driver of your company, everything centers on acquiring and serving the customer. 

As the salesperson, just like a quarterback, it is your role to assess the field of play quickly and then deploy your best sales approach.

Listen in as we discuss the rest of the quarterback analogy and the five quick steps to becoming a better quarterback (salesperson) for your team!

How to overcome the biggest challenge to selling biologicals

After reading through a recent survey conducted by Crop Life Magazine on selling biologicals, I think it’s important to understand a key element from that survey.  While the survey focuses on crop producers, you could easily adapt this to selling certain livestock products as well.  Animal health and supplement products fit into a similar category:  direct-fed microbials, essential oils, etc.

Insight:  Trust in product performance 40-50%

This is the most significant insight from the survey.  The number one reason given was that producers don’t believe the products actually work. That seems to be the biggest hurdle facing anyone out there trying to sell biologicals.  Producers have to believe in them.  But first, sales reps have to believe in them. 

Listen in as we discuss how to use a process to build trust in your biological products and more importantly in your relationship with your producers!

Dustin Toberman from Omni Ag Consulting joins me in a discussion about storytelling skills and how they help during the job interview process. Dustin spent the last 25 years in the grain business as an originator, merchant, and leader. He now runs Omni Ag Consulting, which is a consulting service to help both job candidates find the right career fit and agribusinesses find the ideal candidate.

Today, Dustin joins me on the podcast to discuss how a candidate can stand out and be remembered through the use of storytelling skills. Over the years, I have written and spoken on this topic as a means to help you sell. Stories help our customers understand how they might gain when buying our products. They help the customer remember as stories have a much higher retention rate in our mind.

Below are some key moments and the topics we covered in our discussion. Click on the audio line below to listen in!

Key discussion times and topics:

• 06:05 – How a candidate can stand out and be remembered following an interview
  • The recruiter’s dilemma – too many resumes to remember
  • The power of storytelling

Dustin Toberman contact info:

Website: https://omni-ag.com/

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 314-277-3918

“Can you send me an email and tell me what you did last week?”

is not a bad question

Preface:  This is not a political commentary despite using a political reference.  This is all about accountability and improving your sales results.

“If you are working as hard as you possibly can toward growing your sales and taking care of customers, then responding to an email like this shouldn’t phase you a bit.  I would gladly fill it out and hope that someone calls me to let me know how I can do it better.”   Greg Martinelli

The question itself is not bad, not unfair, and not micro-management……unless

• It depends on the manager asking

Listen in as we discuss how this question can be used as a salesperson and sales leader for positive results!

Which is better to focus on,

a producer’s needs or their wants?

The short answer is Both!

As farm profitability tightens up, so does the farmer’s wallet.  Their first reaction will be to reduce spending across the board.

Your company’s reaction:

Your company feels the brunt of this as your P&L statement begins to take a hit.  Gross sales and gross margin are down.  Yet, overhead hasn’t changed.  So, your agribusiness company has its own choices. 

Your reaction as a salesperson: You compile more data.  You develop more ROI calculations

Your customer’s reaction: They consider your comments but decide to go with a lower upfront or out-of-pocket cost.  Why?  Because that is what they “Want”.

Listen in as we discuss the 4 ways you can help your company, your customers, and yourself in the next 12-18 months

One with your top 5 and one with your manager

After working with agribusiness sales teams from East to West Coast and from Texas to Alberta, I can tell you that every salesperson will benefit from having these two conversations right now.  The outcome will help you focus your selling efforts on the two most important areas: your company and your best customers.

Conversation #1:  Go meet with your top 5

Conversation #2: Go meet with your manager

Listen in as we discuss the importance of these two conversations you need to have to shape the rest of your selling year!

A needed selling skill when selling through tough economic times on the farm

Last week, we went over the fact that farmers shop harder during tough times.  This week, I want to also remind salespeople that in tough times producers will reduce all expenses with their vendors.  You are going to experience more “No” responses in your closing questions than you did previously.

That fear of rejection (no) is still one of the strongest emotions that salespeople have.  So fearful, many salespeople will find any excuse not to cold call or prospect.  Just the act of turning the steering wheel and driving down the farmers driveway seems impossible. 

Listen in as we go over how you can rethink your view of the dreaded “No” and a quick response to help you get closer to a “Yes”

That’s both good news and bad news for the Ag sales professional

If you haven’t guessed the theme for the last two months of my articles,

it’s “Selling to farmers in tough economic times”.

The focus has been and will continue to be about why this is a good time to be in sales.  I want to bring you as many positive reasons why this downturn is so critical for your sales career.  More importantly, why it is so important for your customer relationships.

Today’s message is an easy one to understand and will help you stay motivated to keep selling.

“Farmers shop harder during tough times”

Listen in as we discuss the Good and Bad News side of tough times and how an Ag Sales Professional can turn this into an opportunity!