Put Your Overalls On: Good Selling Is Like Good Farming

If you're a farmer and you want a good crop in August, what must you do? One thing I learned growing up in Indiana was that farmers plan months ahead: soil improvement, tilling, and seeding are all done in the spring. The farmer does the bulk of the work on the front end. He manages, nurtures, and tends on the front end and then waits for everything to grow to harvest.

For salespeople, the sales cycle is the growing season. If the salesperson can plant enough seeds, nurture and tend those seeds, plan for possible damage, he or she can harvest the crop at the end of the growing season without cramming. Cramming has never worked on the farm, and it produces poor results in sales as well. Like good farmers, Sales Superstars plant in advance, but unlike farmers, they must keep planting new crops every month to keep a continual harvest all year-round.

Sales Superstars focus on two things if they want to use the farm as their model: (1) the number of qualified prospects in the sales funnel and (2) their status in the funnel. How many have you got, how would you grade them, and what are the chances that you can close each prospect?

If the number of qualified prospects is low, they must plant some more seeds-find new prospects to fill the funnel. If grading their prospects in the sales funnel reveals one or more that are shaky, then a plan must be developed to strengthen the situation and move those prospects closer to obtaining a commitment. Just as the farmer must eliminate the weeds, the Sales Superstar must eliminate any factors that slow the harvesting of business in her sales funnel.

Sales executives and managers often forget to behave like farmers too. Because American corporations have a prevalent short-term focus on what needs to be harvested this month, many managers and executives deceive themselves (usually unintentionally) about their sales prospects, sales funnels, and sales forecasts.

Let's face it-salespeople hate to do forecasts, and so when they see their manager coming, they give them the old "hot-air pump" forecast. The "hot-air pump" forecast is all inflated with nothing but HOT prospects-those that have a "90% chance" of closing. This is the way salespeople keep their managers off their backs for another 30 days. These forecasts are rarely close to accurate.

Sales managers then massage the forecast and change it by some percentage factor they developed, and then they turn it over to senior management. Usually, by the time it reaches the top levels, it is so far off that it has been a huge waste of time and resources. It also creates a lot of unnecessary stress.

So how can sales managers and senior executives behave more like farmers and get better sales results? They must plan longer term, remembering that more emphasis is always needed on sowing than on reaping. A few changes are necessary for this implementation:

- First-line managers must shift from pressuring their people about closing business this month to helping them build a quality funnel.
- Senior management must shift from pressuring field managers to close business this month to encouraging them to build and accurately report quality funnel activity.
- Compensation should be in place to motivate managers to manage the process.
- The funnel must be graded consistently and accurately across the entire sales organization.
- Senior management must review the funnel on a regular basis and conduct quality assurance.

Honest prospect and funnel appraisal by salespeople, sales managers, and top executives results in proactive selling, greater sales, and a lot less anxiety. Salespeople, sales managers, and senior executives will all gain a competitive edge if they'll put their "overalls" on and begin to approach selling the same way farmers approach planting.


Put Your Overalls On: Good Selling Is Like Good Farming - To learn more about this author, visit George Ludwig's Website.

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Related Businesses - Evan Elite Authors

Dave Kurlan Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

George Ludwig George Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website

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