Ask most salespeople what selling looks like and they’ll describe a transaction: a customer visit, a proposal, an order. That’s fair and part of it. But it’s only a small part. The transaction is only the visible part of selling. The conversations that determine whether that customer comes back next year usually happen long before anyone is ready to buy.
Focus on the buyer, not what they’re buying
Sit down with a producer when there isn’t a purchasing decision hanging over the conversation, and you’ll hear things you’d never hear mid-negotiation. You’ll learn how a product held up once conditions turned against them in July. Which service call actually mattered. Which one felt like a waste of everyone’s time. You may hear about how they’re dealing with unreliable labor or what change they’ve been quietly considering on the technology side of their business.
Those conversations rarely happen when price is on the table. It comes out when the discussion is centered on the producers’ business and how things connect across their production activities, people, assets and strategy. When you’re genuinely curious about them and their operation instead of trying to sell something, you collect information that make every future sales conversation more valuable.
Help them become better decision makers
Producers are busy people running complicated operations. By the time the transaction rolls around again, they’ve usually forgotten the specific frustrations they experienced months earlier. If you had that conversation with them, you could bring it back up. Something as simple as, “last fall you mentioned timing was costing you more than the product itself. Is that still true?” immediately shifts the conversation away from price and back to what matters most to them.
It only works, though, if you were paying attention back when there was nothing to sell.
Plan for conversations that aren’t sales calls
Here’s where a lot of reps miss an easy win. Most salespeople spend their prep time getting ready to present value or handle a price objection when a deal is on the table. Far fewer prepare for the conversations where nothing’s on the table. That’s backwards. An off-season visit is one of the few meetings where you control the agenda.
Instead of showing up with a script or presentation, arrive with thoughtful questions that reflect what you already know about the operation.
- How did last year’s labor changes actually play out?
- What has changed now that grain prices have shifted?
- What new challenges are showing up this season?
A few sharp, tailored questions demonstrate that you’ve been paying attention. They also build trust in ways no sales presentation can.
Create humble partnerships
If the goal is to be a partner and not just a vendor, at some point you have to take off your solutions-expert hat and learn things you didn’t know. Being an expert puts you a step above the conversation, the person with the answer but who only really cares about a specific problem. A partner sits next to the conversation, not above it. A partner has an equal share in mutual success.
Being a partner means talking about things well outside your product line. How a production problem is really a labor problem in disguise. How a piece of equipment decision connects to the bigger financial picture. How willing they are to try something new this year versus play it safe. It means asking how the two of you might tackle something together, instead of asking what you can sell them to fix it. A vendor delivers a solution. A partner helps figure out what the problem actually is first.
Transactions are important. Relationships matter more.
None of this is a knock on transactions. Closing the sale is how the producer gets your product and how you get paid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In the middle of a deal, talking price, terms and product is exactly what should be happening.
But relationships that survive a rough year, price shock, or competitor’s aggressive quote doesn’t get built in that moment. It gets built earlier, when nothing’s on the line and the conversation can go wherever both partners need it to go.
Not every productive conversation ends with an order or solves an immediate problem. It’s productive even when it’s just about something the other person genuinely cares about. Get good at having those conversations, and the transactions tend to take care of themselves.
