SeedSeller Academy

Launch Yourself Into a New Performance Orbit [Start Your Week]

Have you ever wanted to improve your performance, that is, get physically or mentally better?  I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to improve. I’ve made many changes over the years that I thought would make me stronger, faster, or smarter and give me an edge over other people my age. I’m not trying to outdo other people, I’m trying to outdo MYSELF.  But I believe by challenging myself in ways others aren’t willing to, I will have an automatic edge OVER EVERYONE MY AGE. The definition of an edge is having more of something than anyone else. That something is of great importance to everyone, but only a few are willing to go after it. At my age the edge usually involves, feeling better, having more energy, being better prepared, gaining extra knowledge or even living longer. The key is, whenever an opportunity to improve comes YOUR way, you need to think seriously about taking it....

Could You Be Nominated for a Grammy? [Start Your Week]

 didn’t watch the Grammy Awards a week ago, but you couldn’t miss seeing the highlights of the night broadcasted by the news channels. Dozens of artists young and old received awards for their new, and most popular songs of the year. Although I’m not into all of the different genres, I am amazed by how much creativity it takes to write a new song. Every time I hear a new one on the radio, I think to myself, how many ways are there, to take a limited number of notes, and put them in an order that creates a sound people like but have never heard. That takes creative thinking, the kind that says to the writer, I need to write a song no one has heard that speaks to the listener. In addition, I need to do it in a way that gets peoples’ attention, so they get excited about hearing that song again. It’s been shown many times that you don’t have to have a great voice to have a hit. Some Grammy winners simply talked the lyrics instead of singing them.    

My dad was a good singer. He had an amazing voice and loved to sing. But he always said, there are a lot of people who have hit records who are not good singers. They just have a style that is different from everyone else’s and one that appeals to the masses. They can take a song one artist did not make popular and make it a hit by singing in a different way. A great example of that was the song, Gentle on My Mind, first sang by Felton Jarvis but the song went nowhere because, according to people in the know, he sang it too slow. Glen Campbell took the song, speeded it up and made it a huge hit. My dad would also name people like Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, and Ray Charles who in his opinion made themselves successful by being different from everyone else. They had unique voices and their own styles of how they sang songs. He said in his estimation, they weren’t great singers as you would normally think of what makes a great singer. Great singers have an amazing range and perfect voice control. He said that many successful recording artists don’t have great voices, but they have a way of singing their songs that people love and want to hear over and over again. I guess he was right about some artists...

You’re Never Too New to Be Effective [Start Your Week]

Betty Reese said, “If you think you’re too small to be effective, you have never been in the dark with a mosquito.” Wow, that’s an experience I’m sure we’ve all had. That lone, little mosquito can be very effective when he’s focused on his mission. I keep getting calls from salespeople who are just completing their first year selling seed to farmers. Every one of them tells me their biggest problem their first year wasthat they didn’t feel qualified when calling on today’s sophisticated farmers. They felt they couldn’t tell growers anything they didn’t already know and were intimidated by their own lack of knowledge and experience when in front of them. On the surface, I guess that feeling is understandable, considering the years of experience most farmers have compared to someone who is younger or new to selling. But that makes every sales rep with that attitude worthless when it comes to their ability to help farmers.

Life Is Like a 10 Speed Bike [Start Your Week]

Charles M. Schulz said, “Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.” 

Having multiple gears on a bicycle gives the rider options when confronted with varying environments like wind, rain, hills, valleys and so on. Different size pulleys on both the pedals and rear wheel offer changeable gear ratios which determine how many times the wheels make a complete turn with each rotation of the pedal. The key is to know how to use the right combinations to make peddling easier or harder, in the case of exercise bikes, and make the bike go faster. Throughout the years, the option of having different gears on a bike change bike riding forever, making it possible to accomplish feats on a bicycle no one else ever thought possible...

Is Everyday Christmas in Your Sales Territory? [Start Your Week]

The Christmas season is my favorite time of the year, but it’s way too short. The celebration of our Savior, the sharing of good will, and time spent with family are highlights of the Christmas season. But none of those events last long enough. I enjoy them so much. They’re so meaningful and have so much impact on my life that I never want them to end. The Christmas season is just too short.

Another thing that makes Christmas special for me is the music. I can’t get enough of the Christmas music and the spirit those songs generate. From the old standards which will never go out of style, to several new ones I downloaded this year and continue to play. From Thanksgiving into early January, my entire day, every day, is accompanied by nonstop Christmas music. It makes me happy and puts me in a sharing, caring mood. I listen on-line and they try to stop me when they quit playing them.  But I don’t let that stop me. My cardio workouts each morning start with 6 different Christmas songs, 4 which are new this year. I know that sounds weird, but it makes me happy and puts me in a great state of mind.

Don’t Be the Victim! [Start Your Week]

Billionaire Mark Cuban says, “Once you’re a salesperson and know how to sell, there is nothing you can’t do."

Do you believe that? You’re in sales, is that the way you think? When you know how to sell, you can get almost anything you want, anytime you want. So instead of becoming the victim of obstacles that are placed in front of you and having your progress come to a halt, true salespeople use creative thinking to keep them moving forward toward their goals. They know that almost nothing can stop them because THEY are in control.

When you understand obstacles are just part of life and you know how to handle them, you never lose. It never works trying to find someone or something to blame. The key is to know how to stop playing the victim and that’s starts with knowing you have the power to control how you react to any negative situation....

Do Something That Sucks Everyday [Start Your Week]

Do Something That Sucks Everyday

How many of you made New Year’s Resolutions for 2023? If you did, I bet ALL of them involved changes that would make your life better if they became reality. But I’m also willing to bet that the route you need to take to make those changes into reality will suck. 

For example, if you pledged to quit smoking, it’s going to require a lot of will power and struggles to break that addiction, which means achieving that goal is going to suck. If your goal is to lose weight, it means changing your lifestyle, eating habits and level of exercise which is going to suck. If you decided to get in shape, that means starting an exercise program and sticking with it which is going to be painful and will suck. We all know that if the process of accomplishing all of those things didn’t suck, we would already be doing them...

Who’s Your Training Partner [Start Your Week]

How much time do you spend practicing and role playing your job? How much time do you spend practicing before making a sales call? I’m not talking about just going over it in your mind before you make contact with a prospect. I’m talking about practicing the entire call with someone so when you actually make the call, you’re in control and it takes you where you want it to go.

I realize that practice of any kind can seem to be a drag sometimes. But what if there was a way that would make you want to practice harder than ever before? What if there was a way to help you make more progress than ever before? And what if there was a way to always make you look forward to practicing?  Well, there is a way to have all of those things and that is to have a training partner. Someone who has the same goals as you, someone who is not afraid to critique and be critiqued and is will to commit to pushing you and being pushed...

Most Sales Reps Are Lousy Teachers [Start Your Week]

Most Sales Reps Are Lousy Teachers

How do you learn? Do you learn by someone telling you how to do something, or from sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher, or do you learn best by DOING?

Ben Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. 

Everything you’ve learned, you probably learned by doing, that is, interacting with your environment so you can put the knowledge you’ve been given to work.

Studies have shown that students who went through active learning, that is, got physically involved in putting the subject matter to use, saw much higher test scores and improvement rates. Another study found that students who did not engage in hands-on learning were 1.5 times more likely to fail a course than students who did active learning.

Hands on learning involves physical activity. It involves being aware of your body positions and movements through your muscles and joints. It’s getting students physically involved in moving their whole body, not just their mind, so they can more easily process and learn new, and sometimes difficult information. This learning by doing style provides students with instant feedback so they know what they need to keep doing, what they need to improve, and what they need to stop doing altogether. Hands-on movements can be as small as taking notes, drawing a diagram, painting a picture, or much larger actions that are athletic related. The key is, you learn best by physically doing what you have been taught.

Too many sales reps are lousy teachers because they never get physical with themselves, or with customers. They try to teach customers by just telling them what they want them to do, but never ask them to actually do it. Therefore, customers never really learn what’s being taught...

How to Ensure Every Day is a Success [Start Your Week]

How Do You Ensure Every Day is a Success?

Well, that’s not always easy, especially when bad things happen to you or one of your close friends. At that point you may find yourself not focusing on how to make that day a success, but instead asking yourself, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That’s the title of an outstanding book by Harold S Kushner, a Rabbi who lost his young son to cancer several years ago. This week caused me to reference his thoughts to make sense of a major loss in our community.

This weekend the son of our former head football coach here at BOLD High Schools died of cancer. He was 37 years old. He had beaten the cancer as a teenager and went on to play quarter back for he father, the 8th winningest football coach in Minnesota history. Ironically, the treatment they used to kill the cancer before, was what caused the cancer to return, taking his life and leaving a wife and young kids behind. He was a high school football coach himself at an area school who everyone loved and respected. His name was Trevor Solem. He was a great young man who was dealt a bad hand.

It’s hard to make sense of  those kinds of things that happen to good people. Some people blame God for not stepping in and changing the situation. We all pray for those kinds of miracles.

But according to Kushner, what we need to realize is that God is not responsible for things that happen to us…he does not control your life or my life. He allows choice, he allows things to happen as they do in nature, and it can’t be explained why bad things happen to good people...