Hey {{first_name|team}},
If you sell anything to a producer, a farmer, a grower, a co-op, or the guy who sells to them, this is for you. Seed, feed, fertilizer, chemistry, iron, financing, ag tech, biologicals - doesn't matter. You carry the bag and the number, you eat more gas station lunches than you'd admit to your doctor, and it's highly likely that nobody ever taught you a true sales playbook. Somebody handed you a truck and a territory and a price sheet and said good luck.
So here's why this exists. For years I've been training sales and leadership teams across agriculture, and the same sentence keeps landing in my inbox from CEOs and sales managers:
"My people need sales training." The reps often say it too, just quieter. And most of what's out there was written by somebody who has never stood at a pickup window in December trying to talk prepay with a man who just watched the board go limit down. This newsletter is the fix. Every week I will send you one play you can run, along with how to do it. I will share a read on what's moving in the market and what it means for the conversation you're having Tuesday, a story from the field, and one thing to do before Friday. Read it, maybe laugh a little, learn something, then go sell.
Let’s be honest. You don’t need another damn email. But, you do need to get better. To play like a pro. Your team needs you to be your best. Over the course of the year, I am going to give you at least 52 ways to get better little by little - for the low low cost of the 5 minutes it will take you to read.
Make no mistake - sales is always a relationship game. It always has been. And there is a playbook for building great relationships. This is it. If someone is always knocking on price…understand that cost is but one aspect of your playbook, it is not THE play. Regardless of what someone says, it is never ONLY about price. Everything of value costs something, and being in a great relationship costs YOU nothing more than your time, intention, and willingness to give a damn - and learn how to run the relationship plays. That’s the game. Welcome to The Ag Sales Playbook.
Who's writing this
Quick note on me, then I'll get out of the way. I'm Mark Jewell. I run The Momentum Company alongside my smokin hot wife, Christine, and our epic (also smokin hot) team - where we build sales and leadership programs. We mostly work with ag teams and then coach them week after week so it sticks past the drive home. I host The Intentional Agribusiness Leader podcast, where I have interviewed north of two hundred and fifty people who actually run this industry. And I built Jericho, a sales coach who lives in your pocket and never gets tired of your questions. I still sell every week, because I don't trust anybody who teaches selling and doesn't do it.
Sales is hard. But it is also a game. You just have to get good at playing the game and try not to lose your stuff every time someone draws the sorry card and sends you back to home base.
I got my start as the biggest FFA nerd in the state of Minnesota 25 years ago, and I got inspired to teach. I have an Ag Ed Degree from the University of Minnesota - (Go Gophers) - and when you think about it, today, I basically do adult Ag Ed. This newsletter is an extension of that.
One more thing you should know about me. I like this business. I like the people in it. I poke fun at the industry, and at myself, but never at you. That's the deal. Well, maybe you, but only if you need it. ;-)
The Playbook
In future emails and podcasts I will discuss the details of the ag sales playbook - but first, you need to understand the playing field. There are 5 stages to selling and anyone that tries to give you more is over complicating it. If I can remember 5, you can remember 5 - and these are it.
1. Prospecting. Keep lead flow alive. Lead flow is the life flow. Every bit of prospecting exists to get you one thing: a discovery conversation.
2. Discovery. Find their pain, their fear, or their opportunity. Pain is the strongest motivator, fear second, opportunity a distant third. Aim every question at the pain he has today.
3. Proposal. Present the deal. Two options, three at most, with one clear deciding factor between them. Most of us lose this step by making it complicated.
4. Close. Takes care of itself when the first three are done right. Every buyer who calls me says "my people need help asking for the business." They don't. They need help doing the first three steps well enough that they feel qualified to ask.
5. Follow-up. Before the meeting, between every step, and long after the deal. When it rains, mushrooms pop up in my yard. They don't show up in a drought. But the network under the soil was there the whole time. That network is the follow-up, and the fortune is in it.
Mindset is ninety percent of this job. The skills are the ten percent you apply.
I put the five steps on a one-page card you can print and pin above your desk. It's the first of many. Every play from here on gets its own card, so a wall in your office fills up one week at a time.
Here it is, and you can print it straight off the page: The Five-Step Sales Process.
Brought to you by Jericho
This is the classroom. Jericho is the practice. You just read a play. Jericho is who you run it past before you pull into the yard, and who you debrief with when it goes sideways. Ask him who to call this morning, how to open an account without sounding like every other rep, or what you promised a customer last time. He keeps context. He never gets tired of the basics.
He will not close it for you. He will make the next right move harder to skip.
Stop practicing alone.
The Read
Since every ag newsletter seems to talk about the market, I figured I’d try to make it as relevant to you as possible. The Read has the market - and my take on what it means for you as a seller. It is impossible to cover every market and every aspect of sellers in ag - so I’ll try to spread the love. But, don’t get butt hurt if I don’t cover your special thing each week.
Here's where things sit as we go to press.
Grain first, and harvest is doing what harvest does. December corn closed Tuesday at $5.36 and three quarters, down about six cents on the day. November beans finished at $13.25 and a half. December Chicago wheat settled at $7.17 and a quarter, off nine and a half. When the combines are running, the board usually gives a little back, and it is. (Brownfield, Sept. 22)
Now the input side, because this is the number your customer is actually chewing on. Six of the eight major nutrients came down again in DTN's mid-September survey, but none of them moved much. Anhydrous sits at $938 a ton and is still 22% above a year ago. Urea is $658, UAN28 is $430, potash is $494. (DTN, Sept. 16)
Then the protein side, which is still the better story. October feeders closed at $328.02, live cattle at $218.77, lean hogs at $79.27. Two weeks ago feeders were $325.82 and hogs were $83.07, so cattle keep grinding higher while hogs have slid. (Brownfield, Sept. 22)
Here is what it means for you today, and I want you to sit with this one. Your row crop customer is watching his revenue per acre soften while his nitrogen bill stays stubborn, and that gap is the whole conversation this fall. Meanwhile the cow-calf guy down the road might be having the best year of his life (depending how well he plays the game) and the feedyard buying his calves is paying somewhere around $2,590 for a 700 pound steer before he puts a single pound on him. Same market, three completely different moods. Walk into all three offices with the same opener and you'll be wrong in two of them inside thirty seconds.
One more thing about this month specifically. Your customers are in the field, which means nobody wants a meeting and everybody is distracted. Don't fight it. Change the ask. Instead of "can we get together," try "I know you're going, so what do you want me to have ready for you when you climb out of the cab?" You'll get an answer to that one, and you'll be the guy who respected his time when it was tightest.
Run It This Week
Two things for you to do this week:
Print the five steps and pin them up where you can see them.
Hit reply and tell me the one situation you wish you had a play for. The customer who won't call back. The manager who says "just send me something." The proposal that died in committee. I read every reply, and the ones that come up most are the ones I write about first.
Next week we start at the top: Step 1, prospecting, and the script that gets you on a stranger's calendar without feeling like you're asking for a favor.
If you’d like to get it sooner, text the word “plays” to 984-282-1124, or just click this link, or scan the QR code (see how accommodating I am) - they all go to the same place. Here you’ll find our audio sales playbook - delivered to you via text message. Real audio sales training, short, hopefully not annoying, and timely.
One more thing, and you'll hear it from me every week. You are always training your customer how to treat you. The way you prospect, the way you ask questions, the way you follow up, all of it teaches him what to expect from you. Every play in this newsletter is built to help you train him toward a partnership instead of a transaction. Pick what you want to be known for.
That's the first one. If you know a rep who needs this, forward it. If you are that rep, welcome. You're in the right place.
Grow your momentum,
Mark Jewell
The Momentum Company
P.S. If you are more of the audio listener vs the reading type - you can get all of my sales training right here, audio form, texted to you in bite sized pieces (3-7 mins each) Text PLAYS to 984-282-1124 and your first one will be waiting. Or just scan this code. It will open up a text message on your phone and all you need to do is push SEND!
On a computer? Scan this with your phone and it'll open the text for you.