Ag Sales Professional's Podcast by Greg Martinelli

A sales career is built on self-balancing your time For an effective sales career, you need to be self-balancing.  In every sales role, there is a constant pull of your time and energy between two opposites.  For example: “Do I……. Focus on my current customers or focus on prospecting.  The hunter-farmer decision Focus on the strategic few customers or treat every customer equally. Make s...

What to do at those critical moments of doubt Every salesperson at any moment can run into a wall of doubt on any sales call.  Even the most experienced have moments of doubt.  Don’t let bravado or stoic expressions fool you.  We all have it. Confidence does not necessarily eliminate doubt.  Confidence can mean that you know your products.  You know how to recommend them o...

Do the Sales Two-Step to get there Anyone can build their sales territory into a great empire of profitability for themselves, their company, and their customers.  In my early days of sales, I sometimes needed to repeat the mantra, “Build the empire one step at a time” or simply, Build it”.   Starting out in sales can seem an impossible journey.  You see accomplished veteran salespe...

How to go from Warm Selling to Cold Calling For too many salespeople, there is a constant struggle that goes on in their mind.  That struggle is between spending their time in the rewarding world of warm selling versus the unknown world of cold calling/prospecting.  Warm selling means meeting customers who are happy to see us and want our help. Cold calling is rolling up on a farm and me...

 to help navigate your sales process When calling on a prospect, most salespeople make one small error.  They know exactly what they want to accomplish on that sales call.  It usually includes introducing themselves to the prospect, telling them about their company, and the products they sell. While there is nothing wrong with that sales call strategy, there is one missing piece of information.  I...

How to deliver a believable and convincing presentation Before you deliver any sales presentation, you need to own it first.  And by own it, I mean make it yours.  When we deliver a sales presentation to a customer, we want them to believe it and be convinced to take action after we are done.  Usually, that action is to buy from us.  To believe, customers must see that you believe in both the pres...

How to navigate the risks and opportunities when selling to farmers and Ag buyers Volatility is great for Ag salespeople, If they recognize the opportunity. If they can sort through the noise. Volatility is bad for Ag salespeople, If they fail to recognize the risk. If they ignore it and don’t get in front of it. As salespeople, we love selling into a booming market.  However, in 35 years in agrib...

No salesperson or company is too good to ignore competition To sell into a crowded market, you must study your competition.  All competition. Even those competitors who seem too distant to ever become a real threat. In sales training sessions, I promote the idea that both a company and each individual salesperson must keep an eye on their competition.  Most agree, but once in a while, th...

Recently, in a sales training workshop, we were working on a cold call/prospecting role play.  Walking around and listening to the salespeople’s intro/rapport-building discussions, I kept hearing a similar comment from them.  In almost every role-play group, the person in the farmer role would complain about the weather, Ag politics, or profitability.  The salesperson would reply with , “I know wh...

I spend a lot of time training salespeople on how to ask questions.  Good questions, great questions, high-value questions, open-ended questions, and so on. It is the top-selling skill needed to accomplish everything when selling, when cold calling, to determine a customer’s needs, to close a sale, to develop relationships, to solve customer problems, etc.    However, I have failed to spend enough...