What Can You Learn About Sales from a Farmer?

The parallels and differences between selling and farming are an interesting study. One huge similarity is the presence of storytelling. Farmers have historically been creative in communicating with their community by sharing true life stories because the farm teaches them about all aspects of life at an early age. They eat what they grow; they eat what they kill. They encounter many challenges along the way, some unexpected, and it takes some problem solving to fix those situations, machinery and tend to the crops and animals. Are you starting to sense the parallels? The phrase “eat what you kill” is a common saying in our sales world when referring to the need to “make it happen” if you want to be paid. Farmers are typically pretty good hunters and outdoorsmen, they live outside.

In today’s world, you can’t have an aversion to technology if you are going to be profitable at farming, and you have to have a good business sense because small farms are no longer profitable. It takes hundreds of acres to make a decent living. The tractors and tillers and harvesting machines cost BIG dollars and are very high tech these days. It takes a lot of different skills to be a good farmer. Sound familiar, sales folk? 

Now before, I can’t resist, I get into the “meat and potatoes" of this article (that was SO bad) allow me to harken back to the fact that farmers usually have plenty of stories to tell. Mr. and Mrs. Sales Professional, you should too! Stories fire up chemicals and regions in one's brain, growing context and assisting you in being memorable. If you aren’t making enough business friends and selling enough prospects, one reason is that you need to be more interesting and memorable. Stories do that. Shucks, (farmers used to say that) in the world of marketing and sales, being memorable is invaluable. People who employ social media in an ethical and honorable way tell success stories that help them achieve a positive, high profile. I would call that good fertilizer, wouldn’t you? 

Let’s draw some comparisons between growing a sale and growing a crop, and I’ll make sure to note where the stories and interesting content is important: The first thing a seed needs is fertile ground that has been properly tilled and contains good nutrients. That is also the first thing a sales prospect needs: a place to take root because its interest can grow. The fertile ground is often your website. If it is well organized, informational and easy to navigate, it can be fertile ground where a relationship can grow. Effective lead generation can be the same, a place where an interested person ends up and can find information about your company, testimonials, and resources to help them learn about what you sell. Fertile ground allows a prospective seedling to reach its first tenuous roots down into your world. If you have a credible first impression and then portray yourself as a friendly and dependable place to get information about what you sell, you have provided soft, tilled, nutrient rich soil in which a prospect can grow.   

What do we have thus far? First the nutrient rich soil, then the cultivation (tilling), 

then the seed. When you get a prospect, you need them to land in a well prepared place full of information about what it is they are looking for so they can be fed. We are using this correlation in an effort to draw a word picture between a sales pro and a prospect. A more broad word picture could be drawn about the market as a whole with the field being the market place, but for the sake of this study we are working “one lead at a time”, which is appropriate since luxury marketing items and services are typically sold one at a time.   

Some crops grow faster than others, such as prospects do on their way to becoming a customer, but it is not a secret that the crop and the prospect need to be watered and fertilized to grow. This is where content in your follow up and social media presence come in. To grow a prospect they need to be nurtured like an important crop. Oh, some have already been primed before they get to you and enter your world ready to be harvested but most often than not, you are the planter and the grower and the harvester. This means that like a farmer, you need to do certain things in adequate amounts to grow your suspects into prospects and your prospects into friends. Friends??? Yes, friends. Right after you establish credibility you need to go to work on the relationship because before you sell anything you must sell confidence and trust. People trust their friends, and friends buy more often than surface relationship customers which is why on our website home page “front and center” we state this slogan unapologetically: “The Company With the Most Friends Wins!” 

The greatest sales professionals I’ve ever had the privilege to watch work, could become friends with a total stranger in record time. Why? Because they fertilized and watered the encounter before they got into product details. Remember what Teddy Roosevelt said? “No one cares what you know until they know that you care.” They made sure that a modicum of trust was in place before they proceeded prematurely. They also closed at phenomenally higher rates than those who didn’t fertilize and water the prospect as well. “Many times if you get in a hurry you slow down your success”… let that one sink in. Legendary basketball coach John Wooden was quoted as saying, "Go fast, but don’t be in a hurry.”    

I’m not making this article specifically about my “5 Steps to Selling Success” method but suffice it to say that that article is based upon the same foundational principle a farmer knows he must pay attention to: the chronological order of things.  There is a (to everything turn, turn, turn) time of the season to prep the land, a time to seed, a necessary amount of water/irrigation needed, a time to fertilize, and a time for pest control. The old saying where I come from in the cornfields of Indiana about how the corn should grow to show the proper progress was “Knee high by the 4th of July.” That meant the farmer could celebrate progress along the way, much the way a sales professional can when a client visits the showroom for a second time… it promises a good harvest. 

The tools are different. A sales pro doesn’t have barns, silos, tractors and livestock. They have phones, websites, lead generation campaigns, CRM’s, networking opportunities, social media platforms and CTA’s but they do have their specific tools of the trade.

Two HUGE lessons a sales professional can learn from farmers are these attributes: patience and self-discipline. They have a method for each individual crop and so should you. They know that doing things prematurely can ruin a harvest, so being patient and having multiple things in the ground to harvest at different times prepares them for success. Translation: get and keep a healthy pipeline! Yes, the occasional “lay down” will occur and someone “sight unseen” will walk in and make a sizable purchase without you having to work the field for an extended period of time, but realize that those are “few and far between” and you will dry up and blow away before you make a good living on the anomalies in life.   

Here’s a story that may help you put selling gestation periods in context:

A little girl wanted a big watermelon so she visited the nearby farmer. She picked out a large one and handed the farmer her 30 cents. The farmer informed her that 30 cents would only buy her a small green one and pointed to one still in the field she could have for the money she had to offer. “The one you picked sells for $3.00,” he informed her. Cheerfully, the little girl handed over her 30 cents and the farmer was surprised that she wasn’t disappointed but soon found out why. ”Here’s thirty cents sir, but please protect that little green one and leave it in the field. I’ll be back for it in a month.” By waiting until it had been tended to, watered, and grew some more, she knew could have the one she wanted.  

There is a lot about life and selling that can be learned from the farm. I spent my childhood summers and many weekends learning how to work hard and take care of things on my grandparents' farms. By the time I was twelve, I had little bumps in my arms and could stack a hay wagon 12 bales high with the bigger kids. There was a method to doing that successfully too and it definitely had to do with chronological order and watching for snakes that could get baled up out of the hay field. So, being thoughtful and careful came in handy too. As sales pros we have snakes, but if we’re careful and pay attention to our method, we can stack sales up as high as a wagon full of hay.  

Here are some fun farm quotes for the sake of, well, remembering where they came from, and for the simple wisdom therein:

“Make hay while the sun is shining.”

“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

“The grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s greener where you water it.”

“Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.”

and finally…

“While we try to teach our children all about life, the farm teaches us what life is all about.”