Do You Have a Leak in Your Sales Boat? [Academy]

Do You Have a Leak in Your Sales Boat?  

Many seed sellers lose business from current customers every year that often go undetected.

When sellers don’t know they are losing customers they also don’t realized they’re starting the new sales season in the hole.  That means every unit of new sales they get will go to bringing them BACK to where they ended up the previous year. Those new sales are used to compensate for losses they endured from  customers who stopped buying. 

Too often, field sellers don’t know they’ve lost customers because they weren’t with every one of them at harvest to solidify next year’s plan and seed order for the next year.  In fact, it’s often late into the selling season before sales reps even realize some customers aren’t going to buy what they bought the previous year. Until they get back to the sales base they finished with the previous year, new sales are simply used to patch up a broken territory.

I call that having a “leak in your boat.” 

Once a sales rep determines he or she has a leak in their boat, that is they have been losing sales from current customers, they can’t just go charging out there and start calling on new customers in an attempt to fill in for what was lost. There are certain protocols sellers need to follow so they know how many sales they need to replace and how to make sure the leak is completely plugged.

First of all, like having an actual leak in boat, the first thing the Captain needs to do is make sure all of the existing passengers are ok. Likewise, sales reps need to make sure all of their current customers are solid and are going to keep buying at the same level or higher than the previous year. If the sales boat continues to leak because additional customers plan to stop buying and the rep is not aware of it, it does little good to add more sales because the goal cannot be reached due to the continued leak, or loss of sales. The leak was not stopped.

Next, once every customer is deemed as being solid, it’s essential to find out the source of the leak. That is, why did customers stop buying in the first place? If the reason isn’t found and fixed, other customers may also stop buying in the future. Once the reason for customers leaving or deciding to buy less is discovered, it can be fixed, preventing any more losses of current sales.

The last step is to attack the problem of replacing lost sales. That means putting together an aggressive prospecting plan then practicing and role-playing it over and over. That plan also needs to include strategies that make every new customer want to become a permanent customer. That means showing them how you focus on helping them raise yields and not just on trying to sell them something. 

There is so much opportunity in the marketplace to get new sales because about 30% of the seed market moves around every year looking for a new home. That’s how much farmers change their minds during and after harvest. That means many sales reps have a leak in their boat because their losses become increased sales for us. That also means sales from customers who buy less than the previous year will need to be replaced in the form of new business.  To make sales gains count, you need to make sure there is no leak in your boat while taking  the 30% free market from other companies who still have leaks in their boats and don’t even know it.

Happy Selling, 

Rod Osthus