Effort Trumps Intelligence [Academy]

Effort Trumps Intelligence

Dr. Lewis Terman, developer of the IQ test and SAT college entrance exam said and I quote, “The No.1 factor to success is not intelligence, it’s effort.” 

In 1921, Dr. Terman began a program he called the "Genetic Studies of Genius, a study that set out to investigate whether very young students with higher IQ’s were eventually more successful later in life than students of the same age who had lower IQ’s. What he found was that his high IQ students (which he referred to as "Termites") tended to be healthier, taller, and more socially adapted than the lower IQ kids, but not always more successful as adults.

Terman found that while many of his high IQ subjects were very successful, not all of them did that well, in fact most of them turned out to be no more successful than the students who had average IQs. He found that some of the common traits the more successful students had regardless of their IQs were self-confidence, perseverance, and goal achievement both as young children and as adults. Therefore he concluded that the No.1 factor to success was not intelligence, it was effort. 

The study is still going on today, carried out by other psychologists, and has become the longest-running study of this kind in history.

Dr. Terman’s conclusion applies to all of us who sell seed. Over the past 50 years in the seed business, I’ve worked with hundreds if not thousands of seed sellers. I’ve found no correlation between how intelligent sellers were and how successful they were selling seed. Though my study is not scientific, it comes from close observation and in many cases first-hand experience, witnessing sales results of certain reps over time. The conclusion I came to over and over was that those who put in the time and effort were the ones who sold the most seed. Not ground a ground breaking idea is it.

I found this true when interviewing and hiring dealers too. Some dealer candidates were very intelligent. You could tell from the looks of their farming operations, by what they read and how they talked they were smart people. Other prospects had sloppy operations, weren’t well spoken and much less impressive. So since I couldn’t tell who would become a successful seed dealer and who wouldn’t, I created a method of testing their willingness to put forth effort to make a dealership work. I created a few requirements that everyone had to meet if they wanted to sell seed for me. For example, if the prospective dealer was a farmer, the first requirement was he needed to plant 90% of my products on his farm the first year knowing he was already buying everything from my competition. But I knew he couldn’t be successful if he was still planting more seed from my competitor than he was from me while trying to sell my seed. After all, you can’t drive John Deere and sell Case I-H. 

The second requirement was the prospective dealer needed to sell 20 new customers his first year and third, he needed to attend a full day of new dealer training within 2 weeks after being signed. What I found was that regardless of how smart or not so smart the candidates appeared, the ones who were most successful were the ones who worked hardest to meet the requirements. Again, not rocket science but I was always surprised which ones made the cut. I had really smart, sharp farmers with beautiful facilities become stars, and others with the same backgrounds fail. I had not so impressive farmers become star dealers and others who failed. The strategy worked. The ones who put forth the effort succeeded. 

As a seed seller, you already know the primary reason you’re successful and the primary reason you aren’t having greater success. It’s lack of effort on your part. The more time and effort you put into selling, the more you sell. 

Where do you need to apply more effort selling seed this year. Where have you been slacking off? How much more could you sell if you put forth more effort and how much effort would it really take to sell more? 

Over the years I’ve shown salespeople that increasing sales effort by just 10%, increases sales 70-80%. That’s a pretty good return on investment. So let me take a guess. The one thing you want to invest more time and effort in is getting more new customers. In other words, you need to put more effort into prospecting, spending more time growing your customer base. I know that because almost every seed seller needs to spend more time prospecting. Unless every farmer in your territory is planting 100% of your seed, you never run out of prospects. That’s because there are two kinds of prospects, people who have never bought seed from you and those who are buying less than 50% of their needs from you, we call non-customers. 

I know you are all intelligent because you can’t be in this marketplace today if you’re not. I also know, the only thing you lack is more effort. Put in extra effort this year and watch your sales soar. Remember, just 10% more effort which is only two days a month will return a 70-80% increase in sales. That’s a great return on your investment.

Happy Selling,

Rod