Recently, in a sales training workshop, we were working on a cold call/prospecting role play.  Walking around and listening to the salespeople’s intro/rapport-building discussions, I kept hearing a similar comment from them. 

In almost every role-play group, the person in the farmer role would complain about the weather, Ag politics, or profitability.  The salesperson would reply with, “I know what you mean” or something similar.  It made me wonder.  How do they “know what the producer means?”  Do they really know, or is that just their quick way to connect with the farmer?  Their response did not seem genuine or confident to me.  In other words, they didn’t seem old enough or experienced enough to really know what the farmer was actually going through. 

Listen in as we discuss how oversharing your farm experience may actually be a negative or neutral rapport-building discussion