Making Strategic Sales Decisions in Agriculture

Most go-to-market strategy advice #agriculture companies receive is terrible. Because it’s largely based on a logical fallacy. Most companies believe that when people see the widget we’ve built, they’ll immediately understand how cool it is technically and how valuable it is financially. But most people don’t. They don’t get why you're selling this thing. They don’t get why they should care. And they really don’t know why they need to give you money for it...until you give them a new framework with which to see their problem. Most of the go-to-market brain trust will push you down the road to competitive analysis, market research, and other tactics designed for mature markets. - But what did the market research say about tractors in 1870? - Or what was the competitive analysis on Roundup Ready soybeans in the late 80’s? - What was the market saying about auto-steer in the 90’s? The problem with traditional go-to-market approaches is they uncounciously assume you are: - Competing for market share. - In an existing category. - With a “better” product. They can't help you build a concept that no one’s ever heard of before. They can’t work with you when the customer doesn't have a line item for your product or service. They can't help you redefine the problem in the customer’s mind. And research tells us that in technology categories, the category king normally takes about 76% of the market capitalization. Because no one remembers the also-ran, they only remember the first. So if your go-to-market is not built to design a new category of your own, then you’ll be letting someone else define the problem, prescribe the solution and set the value for the outcome you deliver. A bad plan for success. Instead, you need to build your go-to-market to have the conversation with your customer on the terms you establish You need to move the thinking in the industry from where it is today to where you want it to be. This should impact the way you price your product, the way you promote your company, and the methods you use to place your solution in front of the target customer. - Stop robbing your future valuation in the name of scaling the distribution of users. Upselling later is harder than it looks today. - Stop softening your market differentiation by selling through an existing distribution network. The channel usually won’t save you unless their is market pull for your product downstream. - Stop hiring sales people and expecting that they’ll be ready to “just sell.” Early sales depend on organizational learning and renaissance team members who are willing to take the time to educate the customer. Remember, there is nothing more important to the future value of your company than the way you build your #gtm today. Start investing in your story as if it matters. Start designing your category. Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers. #agribusiness #marketing

One Visit, No Trust: Why Seasonal Sales Fail in Agriculture #©VamsiKrishnaC Visiting a farmer once and expecting a sale is like calling it a friendship after a single meeting; it won’t stick. Too many agri-input sales teams show up only during the sales season, deliver a pitch, close what they can, and vanish. That one-off approach kills conversion, not because the product is bad, but because trust, credibility and relationship-building never had a chance to grow. Why this fails: #©VamsiKrishnaC → Farmers judge you over time ; across sowing, crop stages and harvest. A single meeting gives no proof → No post-sale support means perceived risk rises: “What if it fails? Who will help?” → Timing is wrong - farmers are busy at peak season and won’t make considered decisions on a single visit → Word of mouth matters in villages. A trusted, recurring advisor will drive referrals; a one-timer won’t Practical steps sales teams can start today: #©VamsiKrishnaC <> Treat sales as advisory: plan touchpoints across the crop cycle (pre-sowing, early growth, mid-season, harvest). <> Follow up quickly after purchase - check germination, usage, issues within 7–14 days. <> Run small demo plots or farmer trials and invite neighbours; results speak louder than pitches. <> Use simple CRM notes: record last contact, farmer concerns, outcomes to avoid “one-visit amnesia.” <> Build a local support loop: dealer + agronomist + trusted farmer testimonials. <> Make year-round value offers (advice, reminders, inputs timing) so you’re a partner, not a seasonal caller. If you want real, sustainable conversions, stop treating farmers like seasonal customers and start treating them like long-term partners. Their trust is earned, not sold. Have you seen teams win by changing to year-round engagement?    #AgriSalesAdvisory #FarmerEngagementFirst

Generic sales training from traditional business schools fails for agribusinesses. It actively makes salespeople worse. Here's why. Scott Downey, Zanliang Meng, and I just published the LARGEST-EVER comparative study of agribusiness salespeople. We measured how they actually spend their time against sales professionals across manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and other industries. Agribusiness salespeople spend significantly more time on relationship-building, information-gathering, and post-sale service than their peers. They spend considerably less time closing (9.3% vs. 12.8% in other industries). These gaps are structural features of selling to farms. When your customer's purchase decision is tied to planting season, commodity prices, and a production cycle that plays out over an entire year, aggressive closing is absolutely the wrong approach. Which is why I think generic sales training imported from other industries actively makes them WORSE. Contrary to popular belief, agribusiness isn't a rural variant of B2B commerce. It operates on its own logic and performance drivers. I call it B2F (business-to-farm selling) because it deserves its own frameworks, metrics, and research tradition. We have 80 years of agribusiness education at Purdue Agriculture. We've built something real here in the Purdue University Center for Food and Agricultural Business. We're not just borrowing from someone else. Full study open access in the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing: https://lnkd.in/gavTEcBq

Farmers do not buy technology. The farms that digitalize are solving a specific operational problem that happens to require technology. The farms that actually digitize are not doing it because they want the technology. They wanted to know their cost per hectare by the week the input decision is made. They wanted to stop the recurring argument about why the produce quality went bad with a high grade B percentage. They wanted one fact-based answer instead of a hunch or four conflicting spreadsheets. Technology was what made that possible, but it was not the thing they set out to acquire. This distinction matters at an industry level, not just at the farm level. Input companies and technology vendors that lead with the feature set lose the conversation before it starts, because the buyer is not evaluating the feature. The buyer is evaluating whether the specific operational problem they have been dealing with for three seasons finally gets resolved. I think this is the most important thing missing from how most agtech companies position themselves: the operational outcome has to be named first, specifically, and without hedging. The moment you open with what the platform does instead of what the operation needs, you have already told the buyer you are thinking about your product rather than their problem. This is not a messaging critique. It is a structural observation about how enterprise buying decisions in agriculture actually work. The companies that have strong results in this space are the ones that understood early that the conversation is about the solution for the problem, not the tool. The tool is the means. The solution is the context. And the context is what the buyer trusts or does not trust. #agriculture #technology #agtech #agritech #digitalization #digitalagriculture

We once entered a market because the problem was obvious. And that was exactly where we made the mistake. The region faced water scarcity. Our solution was built to help with water efficiency. On paper, it looked like a strong match. The problem exists. Solution exists. Demand should follow. But the market taught us something important. In agriculture, a visible problem does not automatically create a buying decision. Because farmers are not only evaluating the problem. They are evaluating: What crop are they growing? How much are they willing to invest this season? What return do they expect? What risk can they afford? So even when a solution helps, adoption may still remain slow if the economics do not fit their reality. That experience changed how we think about expansion. Now, before asking, “Is there a problem here?” We ask: Is the problem urgent enough? Is the ROI clear enough? Is the timing right enough? Because in agriculture, solving a problem is only half the equation. The other half is whether the market is ready to pay for that solution.

Sales reps in Ag don’t fail because they lack knowledge. They fail when they can’t translate it into a conversation their customer actually cares about. After 15 years selling into the ag sector, here’s what I know for sure: Confidence beats competence every time — farmers and ag buyers can smell uncertainty through the phone. Clarity wins over complexity — if your message needs a glossary, you’ve already lost them. Adaptability isn’t a soft skill, it’s a sales skill — meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. Trust comes before the transaction — in Ag, relationships aren’t optional, they’re the currency. Closing isn’t pushy, it’s respectful — asking for the order gives buyers permission to say yes (or no). This industry doesn’t need more information. It needs more understanding, connection and conversations that land. If you want to lift your sales performance in 2026, start here: Make it simple. Make it clear. Make it human. Then ask for the order.

Stop Launching in Midwest Corn One of the first conversations many ag companies have when developing a new biological product goes something like this: “Hey market analyst, can you pull the data on where the highest concentration of X growers are in the United States?” “Great. Now give me the total addressable market by region.” Perfect. Now we have the map. And what do most companies do next? They circle the biggest market and say: “If we can capture even 10–15% of that acreage, that’s real money.” On paper, the math is mathing. In reality, it’s the exact same strategy almost everyone else is using. In agriculture, the largest total addressable markets are also the most saturated markets. It has the most competitors, the most noise, and established brands willing to do anything to maintain their market share. And if you’re a young biological company, or even a new product within an established company, you are entering that market with two disadvantages: 1. You have no brand awareness. 2. And you have no proof of traction. So what happens? Your product gets lost. Not because the science is bad. Not because the product doesn’t work. But because you launched into the loudest, most competitive environment possible. Biological products don’t win by being everywhere. They win by being right somewhere. That means finding the intersection of: • the pain point your biology actually solves • the crop system where that pain point is real • the geography where growers are actively looking for help Start there. Win that region. Build proof. Build confidence. Let your testimonials cluster where the product actually performs. (Cassidy Johnston just wrote a few excellent pieces on what good testimonials look like). Then expand. Because chasing the biggest acreage first isn’t strategy. It’s noise and a waste of resources. And in biologicals, a one-size-fits-all product is a one-size-fits-none. ------- 👋 Hi, I’m Whitney Rottman, founder of Wildflower Ventures. I train sales teams and sales leaders to sell biological products using a biology-based playbook. I turn complex microbial science into simple, defensible sales stories that actually hold up in the field.

Growing up on a livestock and vegetable seed production farm in the Karoo, I learned early that inventory on paper and reality in the field are rarely the same thing. One rainstorm, one disease outbreak, one shift in germination results, and the picture changes quickly. That is why I connected with this Seed World piece. In seed, inventory is never just a warehouse number. It is seed still standing in the field, seed moving through processing, seed waiting on quality results, and seed already committed to farmers planning their next season. I have seen firsthand how difficult those decisions can be. Sell too aggressively and you risk breaking trust with customers. Hold back too much and you miss opportunities farmers are counting on you to deliver. For me, this is where better data integration and stronger visibility across the value chain really matter. Not to remove uncertainty completely, because agriculture will always have variability, but to help teams make more confident decisions together. At the end of the day, farmers remember the companies that deliver consistently when it matters most.