Do You Know How to Win? [Academy]

Do you know how to win?

It’s obvious that some of you do and many of you don’t.  If you’re still using weigh wagons, side-by-side comparisons, and test plots to see if you won, you not only don’t know how to win, but if you lose, you put the responsibility for losing in the wrong place.

It’s harvest season, the time when salespeople go nuts trying to figure out if their varieties won or not. Well just to be clear, the winners in the seed game aren’t the seed reps, their companies, or their varieties. The real heroes, the only winners are the farmers who work hard to maximize yield and profit on their farms regardless of whose seed they planted. If your variety happened to be at the top in a particular field, you’re not the winner, the farmer is because he’s responsible for the result, not you or your variety. You’re just the winner by association with the true winner being the farmer. 

Varieties can’t produce to their maximum potential on their own, they need to be protected from the more than 1000 variables that detract from that potential and that’s the farmer’s job. Farmers need maximum yields to win and those maximum yields come from following certain protocols that direct them toward their goals. So stop trying to take the credit when your varieties do well on customers’ farms.

Do farmers need to rely on their seed rep for advice on which varieties to plant and how maximize their performance by following special protocols?

Of course.

But none of those protocols involve including weigh wagons, test plots or side by sides in the production strategy.

The real, yield building protocols are the Top 5 Factors to produce a Top Crop and when they’re properly employed the farmer is the hero.

He’s the one who executed them.

The bottom line is, stop thinking that you and your varieties are the hero when things go right and put the credit where it’s deserved, on the customer. Give your customers the kudos they deserve and watch them want to give you a repeat performance.

The more you remind customers who follow the Top 5 Factors of the great job they’re doing, the more they will continue to improve their game. Show them as important as varieties are, you’re not relying on them to get you to where you want to go but focusing on helping the farmer every way you can. You need to remember the grower’s participation in the final result and continue to teach them how to win. When you consider the negative impact customers can have on your variety’s performance when protocols aren’t followed, you will stop putting varieties in farmers’ hands and letting them do as they please with them. Instead, you will get them to follow a calculated set of protocols that will ensure achievement of their goals and so they become the winners.

Once you do that, both you and the farmer win.   

There were a lot of surprises this fall, some good and some not so good. The good surprises came in the form of unexpected high yields despite the very dry summer. But the most important thing is to realize there are only two entities competing for the chance to win every year, one is the farmer and the other is the 1000 variables. When farmers follow protocols to the letter and invest everything the have into their crop and win…they are the true winners. Congratulate them and not yourself or the variety. But when things don’t go as planned and the crop was not as good as expected, the winner was the 1000 variables. Sometimes they are so overwhelming there is nothing a farmer can do to overcome their degree of impact. So if the farmer followed the protocols and did everything he could, he was not the loser either. Some things you just can’t control. Recognize how often your customers are the true winners when your varieties perform well and watch them want to repeat their efforts to win again.

Happy Selling, I’m Rod Osthus