SeedSeller Academy

What Goes Up, Does Not Have to Come Down!

How creative are you? What’s happened to your level of creativity AND your level of productivity as you’ve gotten older? Have those things increased or decreased? Most people would say, as you age, the creativity is often still there, but the level of productivity declines, it’s just part of getting aging.  

People are generally pretty creative, regardless of their age. Creativity doesn’t come only from those in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, but a majority of it comes from the older crowd. If you’ve read any of the Stoics from the 14th and 15 centuries, you’d know that there aren’t many NEW ideas at all, just new applications of old ones.  And most of those Stoics, the Marcus Aurelius’ of the world for example, were pretty old when they did their best thinking and were the most creative. This includes the Michelangelo’s, Beethoven’s, and Picasso’s of the world. It’s also been shown that founders of STARTUP companies here in the U.S. are more likely to succeed if they’re 50 or over. That’s because the older people get, the more creative they become. Maya Angelou said, and I quote, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”  End quote. The ability to learn as you age doesn’t get worse…it continues all through life. Creativity should always be increasing within each one of us as we get older because creativity is a result of time and experience. And only aging can confer that. Creativity doesn’t belong only to the young. Older people have shown they can be immensely creative, and that creativity tends to increase in people as they age...  

 

Love, Hate, Good and Not Good [Start Your Week]

Richard Branson, Entrepreneur and British billionaire said, “To be highly successful in your career, you need to make four important decisions. First, decide what it is about your job that you LOVE to do? Second, list the things you are really good at in your job. Third, write down things you HATE about your job and don’t like to do. And lastly, list the parts of your job you’re not good at? 

By answering those four questions, it’s easy to recognize what you need to do to improve your job performance. Whatever you love to do, you will most likely be very good at and vice versa. That translates into success or lack thereof.

A great example of this is staying on an exercise program. Millions of people begin exercise programs every year. When they first start a new exercise regimen they love it and love the thought of improving themselves. That new level of enthusiasm is exciting and keeps them working out. Many times, they’re so motivated in the early days of the program that they overdo it. But in 95% of the cases, as time goes on, exercise becomes work, and they begin to dislike working out. In fact, they start to hate it. The more that feeling of hate is allowed to grow, the less likely they are to stay on the program. Eventually, those 95% quit working out altogether...

Change Your View On Aging [Start Your Week]

Change Your View on Aging

I’m 72 years old, but I don’t feel that old. They say you’re always the same age on the inside, so I guess that’s why I think I’m still 25. My late wife used to say to me, “When are you going to grow up and act your age?” I didn’t have an answer for her because I never wanted to grow up, and certainly didn’t want to act my age, whatever that was supposed to look like. I just wanted to stay young in my thinking and remain active, doing everything possible to keep from LOOKING old. Well, that last one is a lot harder. I’m still working on it with marginal success. 

The idea of aging has always been on my mind, especially as I grow older chronologically. It’s hard to believe how much looks change as a person ages. I look at photos of me when I was 30 years younger and say, “Wow, I have really changed.” Of course, when you lose all of your hair, you do look a lot different...

 

Eat Dirt Off the Floor [Start Your Week]

During the 1900’s in Okinawa, Gichin Funakoshi, founded modern-day Karate. He went to Japan and other parts of the world including the United States to teach what is known today as Shotokan Karate.

I spent 14 years in Shotokan Karate. Funakoshi was known for saying, and I quote, “Many times I was forced to eat the dirt off the dojo floor.” The dojo is the training room. That statement didn’t mean he actually ate dirt from the floor as punishment. It was an expression he used to say how hard he trained to perfect even the simplest techniques. He said, “Many days and nights I found myself totally exhausted, face down on the floor from training so hard, but I had to keep training on the things I wasn’t good at so I could get off the floor, better than when I went down on it.” 

Saying you eat dirt off the floor as an expression that you’re doing everything possible to achieve your goals may sound like a gallant act, but it’s actually a message of improving yourself at the most elemental level. It’s getting down in the dirt, getting your hands dirty so to speak, working in the real-world, doing the extra things most people won’t do to achieve their goals. It means picking yourself up, and continuing to train, even when you’re tired and don’t want to do it anymore. Anyone who is really good at their art, or their job has eaten dirt off the floor. We’ve all had to do things when we were tired, things that weren’t fun or easy, and often included a learning curve. It’s during that learning curve where many people give up. They don’t put forth the effort to go down to the floor and confront the obstacles, eat the dirt most of us eat every day. And when they see how successful WE are, they don’t attribute it to the fact that we ate dirt to get where we are. They think we’re just lucky....  

Crisis Brings Clarity [Start Your Week]

There’s an old saying that says, “Crisis brings Clarity.”

A crisis is defined as something that interferes with your normal pattern of living. Most often a real crisis is considered to be the result of unexpected trauma such as a major loss, illness or environmental issue that interferes with your livelihood or your life. A crisis of those magnitudes often means being dislodged from your current situation. It creates a feeling; an internal emotion that makes us anxious and confused because most crisis are so overwhelming; we can’t handle them ourselves. We feel vulnerable, unsure of ourselves and helpless. When we experience a real crisis, it becomes obvious that the usual way we handle problems doesn’t work.  

But a crisis can be both an opportunity and danger. A crisis can be dangerous if you allow the problem to overwhelm you and cause so much anxiety and pain that you become depressed, unable to do anything to solve the situation. A crisis can also be an opportunity when it causes us to open our mind and seek new ways to cope. It can cause us to think more clearly about a situation, forcing us to develop new skills, increasing our competence and making us permanently stronger. 

Every year farmers are faced with something many wouldn’t call a crisis, but I do. It’s called harvest and to me it’s more than just a challenge, it’s a crisis because it involves their entire livelihood. The challenge of raising a crop in an environment that is often almost impossible to navigate can put many farmers into crisis mode, at least mentally. They become frustrated about things they did or did not do throughout the year to help avert the crisis, especially when the crop doesn’t meet their expectations or their needs. When yield results come in, it becomes clearer to growers what they need to do to improve their crop and avert any chances of a crisis occurring the next year. Every harvest could be defined as a time of crisis for farmers. It’s the time when they’re able to have a clearer view of what to do to improve on next year’s results.  The crisis brought on by harvest definitely brings clarity...

For New Ideas, Listen to Your Body [Start Your Week]

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert, and best-selling author, was asked by Tim Ferriss, how he comes up with ideas for his comic strip, every day. Scott said, the first thing I have to do every morning is clear my mind so I can then FLOOD IT with new ideas. But clearing my mind starts first with changes within my body. He says, when you have ideas going through your brain and a good new idea enters your brain, it will create a reaction inside your body. It might make you chuckle, give you an adrenaline rush, get the endorphins flowing, or send chills up your spine.

Feeling a reaction within your body will tell you when you have an idea that others will likely react to in the same way. 

When it comes to thinking of new things to talk about with customers, have you ever made that mind—body connection? Salespeople are constantly asking me for new ideas so they can update their sales story, mailers, blogs, marketing programs and so on. When they ask me for help, I know they’re just using their brain and not listening to their body to help sort ideas. Because once they understand the feelings that occur in the body when thinking of ideas, they will see how much easier it is to identify that new and exciting idea...  

Repeatability, Your Secret to Success! [Start Your Week]

Do you know that one of the primary differences between highly successful seed sellers, and those who are not as successful is, Repeatability? 

That’s right, Repeatability.

Have you ever had a sales call that went so flawlessly, it was akin to hitting a golf ball in the sweet spot? 

Making the sale was so easy you could hardly tell what you did right to get it.  But then, the next sales call may not have gone as well. That extreme variation in results is due to lack of repeatability. The ability to do it the exact same way, every time.

However, selling shouldn’t be like most amateur golf games, where some days you’re hitting everything perfectly and other days you wished you would have stayed home. That’s the difference between amateurs and professionals. Sure, professional golfers can hit a bad shot too, but those are few and far between. That’s because they practice enough so they can rely on repeatability, that is, doing everything exactly the same way every time they address the ball, which means the shot most often goes where they want it to go, every time...

Mysteries Will Hurt You! [Start Your Week]

A lot of people like a good mystery, in a movie, a novel or a “who done it” played at parties. People who like mysteries like to see justice done and the evil doer, the guilty one, punished. Most mysteries end that way. 

A mystery is something that is unknown and often impossible to explain. That’s why they automatically grab our attention. Mysteries are often crimes, a murder, a kidnapping, or a robbery and we want to find out who the perpetrator was. That gap in information is the unknown and is what people find so attractive. Once they get that missing piece, the whole thing fits together, just like the missing piece of a puzzle, which is what a mystery really is, a puzzle. 

Not many seed sellers realize that mysteries are also an essential part of selling seed, at least they should be. If there’s no mystery in the offering to growers, no missing piece of information, there’s nothing intriguing that will get them to want to investigate more or even buy your product. If growers believe they have you and your strategy figured out at the start, there’s no mystery and they lose interest.

The only thing that holds your attention in a mystery, and a farmer’s attention when you’re trying to sell him is the fact that he has to work to figure out the unique set of values he would get when he buys from you. You created a mystery that the grower wants to solve. But today, it’s hard to find seed sellers who have any mystery in their offering whatsoever. Companies aren’t offering unique values. They’re offering new products, programs, and prices just like everyone else which aren’t intriguing at all. There’s no mystery in those offerings at all...

Stop Complaining About Reality [Start Your Week]

As the years go by I hear more and more seed sellers complaining about reality. 

That’s right, reality.

They complain about the way the marketplace is, compared to how they wish it was. They complain that farmers are too price driven and getting harder to access. That is reality. They complain that farmers are getting smarter, harder to stay ahead of.

That is reality.

They complain that farmers keep putting them off, not wanting to place an order until after harvest.

That is reality. 

Seed sellers who complain about those things don’t live in the real world. They live in a world of wishful thinking because they do nothing to change those realities....

Stop Gambling, Gambling is for Losers [Start Your Week]

According to a Wall Street Journal study, 95% of heavy gamblers lose money when they gamble. And in the same study, big losers outnumbered big winners, 128 to 1. In a larger study of over 4,200 gamblers, nearly 90% lost money. I guess that’s not a surprise to most people. Everyone knows gambling is a game of chance and the chances of coming out on the winning end are very low. But people continue to do it. Some can afford to gamble with their money, most can’t.

But gambling isn’t associated only with money.

Most people don’t know that gambling has become a common practice among salespeople, especially seed sellers.  Every day, 99% of all sales reps gamble with their future. In fact, the level of gambling by seed sellers has become so high, that it’s become an accepted method of running a sales territory. They gamble all year long with the greatest number of chances taken and the greatest number of losses occurring  during harvest season...