The four levels of value.

Hey {{first_name|team}},

For five weeks I've handed you a play and the words to run it. Appointment setting. Overcoming objections. Discovery. Asking what else. This week there's no script. This week is about what all those plays are for.

I tell every room I train that this job is ninety percent mindset and ten percent skill. The plays are the ten. The ninety is what you believe you're there to do when you pull into the yard, and I can tell you from a lot of years of watching reps that most of them are aiming at the wrong thing. They're trying to make the sale. The ones who build a book of business that holds up when the market turns are trying to build something else, and it's the top of a ladder I draw on a flip chart in every training I do.

There are four levels of value you can bring to a customer, and every account you have sits on one of them right now. From the bottom up:

The two in the middle are where most of you live, so that's where we're going to spend our time.

Write down the entire list of things your customers basically expect of you. In other words - you must do this to just be in the game:

The customer is paying for all of that whether they say so or not, and none of it earns you a thing. Miss one and you're back to transactional.

Now, list the things that really set you apart. The special sauce. The stuff that your marketing department froths over. The fence around your best accounts that keeps the competition on the other side.

Of all the things on that second list, the ones that are helping you beat your competition right now, which of them could your competition NOT copy?

The answer is none.

What is value add today will become expected in the market, and eventually it becomes transactional. Every kid in America expects a sucker when they're done getting their hair cut. At one point that was one barber's really special value add.

Think about how gas stations have evolved. They used to be a tire shop with a pump out front. Usually filthy, and you surely did not expect a spotless restroom. Maybe a bag of chips and two-day-old coffee, if you were lucky. Then in the early 2000s along came Kwik Trip out of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and they upped the game. They took the gas station from a third world experience to a true convenience store with real options, and they invested in their people. I interviewed their director of organizational development in 2011 for an essay in my graduate program, and it was fascinating to me how intentional they'd been about developing people. They had four people on the bench for every store manager job. That year they had 1100 applicants for less than 100 openings — and they are just a gas station. That's intentional leadership right there, a totally different level. Kwik Trip has done very well for itself.

But look at the dominant gas station brands now. QuikTrip, Casey's, Sheetz. A very similar, upscale, well-managed experience at every one of them. What was for a season value added at Kwik Trip, has become expected.

And it doesn't stop there, because humans can't simply accept the pinnacle of gas station supremacy. We have a new king of the fueling-cars-and-humans hill, and it's Buc-ee's. A true monstrosity of retail. The Disney of America's highways. Lines just to get in backing out onto the interstate, hundreds of pumps, fresh barbecue, merch everywhere. I'll be honest, my wife and I can't stand the crowds and we avoid them at all costs, but if you're up for standing in line 100 people deep, to check out with your Buc-ee's t-shirt, some drinks, and a brisket sandwich, more power to you. The Buc-ee's value add is currently unmatched.

But make no mistake, it is all value add. Everything you see there will lose its luster, it will get copied some way, somehow, and it will become expected. A new king will rise.

The only way to avoid this is to get into true partnership with a customer. Partnership means you need me and I need you, and we agree to be married, in a sense. Those relationships are hard to get, and you can't get there with every customer. But the entire sales process we teach through these newsletters, from setting the appointment to discovery to asking what else, is designed to give you the best chance at being a partner with your customers over time.

That's the mindset part. The rep who's thinking about this month's number is working at value add at best, and value add has a shelf life. The rep who walks in believing their job is to build a partnership is running a different race, and the sales come along behind that. You are always training your customer how to treat you. Decide which level you want to be treated at, and then act like it.

Monday's close, October 26: December corn finished at $4.55/bu, down 1¢, and it's now sitting right on top of $4.50. November soybeans took the big hit at $12.41¼/bu, down 15¼¢. December Chicago wheat was $6.16/bu, down 9¢. Cattle keep holding up, with December live cattle at $231.20/cwt, up 7¢, and November feeders at $348.55/cwt, up 42¢. December lean hogs slipped to $64.67/cwt, down 90¢, and November Class III milk closed at $18.01/cwt, up 16¢. December crude is still over a hundred at $102.34 a barrel. These are futures, not the bid at your customer's elevator or sale barn. Source: Brownfield Ag News, October 26 closing report.

The bean drop came out of Brazil. Lula won the election over the weekend, the real sold off, and a cheaper real makes Brazilian beans cheaper for China, which is the buyer everybody's been counting on. China has been taking U.S. beans almost every day for two weeks, and last week's inspections were 91 million bushels with China at the top of the list, so the demand is there for now. The worry is what happens to it. Corn exports are running 8 percent behind last year, and wheat is down 35 percent. Source: Total Farm Marketing daily summary, October 26.

What it means for you this week: a fifteen-cent day in beans is the kind of news your customer reads before you ever pull in the yard, and it's exactly the kind of day that shows a customer which level you're really at. Your customer is going to be sour about it. You don't have to be. Your job isn't to fix the Brazilian real. It's to be the one person they talk to this week who isn't rattled, who knows where their numbers sit, and who can help them make a good decision about 2027 inside a market nobody can control. That's level three work on a level one kind of day, and it's how you earn level four.

This week the tape is mine again, and it's the one I'd rather not show you.

Six years ago I had a seven-figure business built on one thing: our trainers and coaches in a room, in front of ag sales and leadership teams, for a day at a time. There were seven of us, and it worked. Then COVID came and there were no rooms. Not fewer rooms, no rooms. Inside of a few months I watched the revenue go, most of the team go, and a good share of my own confidence go right out behind them. For a while there I had nothing in the pipeline and a family that still needed to eat, and I remember exactly what that felt like on a Tuesday morning with nobody to call.

What got me back wasn't a new script. It was the handful of customers who'd been at partnership level with me before any of it happened. They didn't need a room. They called to ask how I was doing, and then they asked what I could do for their people over a screen, and a few of them bought before I had anything built to sell. That's what level four is worth. Every transactional account I had, vanished the same week the rooms did, and I never heard from most of them again. The partnerships carried me through, and they're the base I rebuilt on.

I didn't understand how much of my business was sitting at level one until a bad year showed me. I'd rather you figured it out before yours does.

Three things:

If you want help figuring out what added value looks like for one specific account, tell Jericho about the account. He'll ask you the questions and help you find the one thing to bring them this week. And if you'd rather hear this one in my voice, it's in the Playbook in audio texted straight to your phone like a podcast built just for you.

This week's printable is the four levels on one page, with the exercise and the play. Download it here, print it, and keep it where you'll see it before the first call of the day. Last week's card, What else?, is up now too. The rest of the set is here:

If you lead a team and your reps are stuck at level one and two with accounts that should be partnerships by now, that's a mindset problem, and it's the thing I'm best at fixing in a room. Grab some time with me and tell me what you're seeing. No slide deck, just a real conversation about your people.

And if you're planning a 2027 sales meeting, dealer event, or annual conference, I'm booking speaking dates now. Send me a note and let's talk about what your people need to hear.

Go run the play. Be safe out there this harvest, and aim for the top of the ladder.

Grow your momentum,

Mark Jewell
The Momentum Company

P.S. Many of you are opting in to get the Playbook in audio. It's a series sent to your phone by text one morning at a time, and each one gives you a play you can run that same day. Text PLAYS to 984-282-1124 and your first one will be waiting. And if there's a rep on your team who needs this, send them the signup link.