|
Jesup, IA | Sitting in an airport last Thursday (my apologies in advance for the creeper photo) this guy is all worked up. Starts rattling off the names of whole bunch of herbicides and fungicides. My ears perk up.
Obviously he is some sort of sales manager for crop care products company. The recent sales numbers obviously did not meet expectations. Sounds like he is sharing his grief with somebody else in the company or the trade. Notable quotes:
"I used to just turn in my sales totals, now I have to report to my boss what I'm doing all day, every day! They pick through every number on my expense report"
"I have thirteen sales trainings to do through the end of the month. But sales are still down 30%. What in the heck is going to take to get these farmers to buy the product? I have no idea what is going on. Last year we sold this much by the prior year end."
"They're selling **his product** on XS Ag for less than I can push the product out at my wholesale. How am I supposed to compete with people dumping the product"
"We need to cut 4 sales managers to make budget, because if we don't sell some product, what else can we do?"
"We need to let Jeff the (marketing?) consultant go. He does great work, but $90,000 for three months work. There's no way we can continue to pay that."
Anyway, it just reminds me how different the world was just ten years ago. I could make good money on $3 corn. And in all the conversation above, it becomes apparent how much fat and dead wood has crept into the supply situation. How easy it has been to sell to AG and farmers in recent years. How many extra bodies are around just collect orders. Just how shallow some suppliers knowledge is of farming. How little some young sales types actually know about selling and customer service. How oblivious the trade is to $3 corn.
For heaven's sakes, the guy didn't even understand why farmers weren't buying. He thought sales training was the solution to finally getting some orders?
It also made me think about how ten years ago, I might have placed an indicative order of what I was going to need for spring over the winter, but never paid for the product until much closer to delivery or use. The grain price spike and corresponding fertilizer price spike of 2008 changed all that. That was the real turning point when everything had to be bought months and months early, tying up precious working capital and turning the table on who's money the system operated on. In the past ten years, it has clearly become the farmers.
But just overhearing this conversation gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, that in this year where I'm projecting to lose my shirt, that if I make it through to better times, I won't have to be paying or funding so much overhead, redundancy and functions that provide me little or no value in the supply chain.
But don't feel bad if the guy in the picture end up needing a new job, I need somebody to run my rock picker this spring! :-).
 (image.jpeg)
Attachments
----------------
 image.jpeg (191KB - 341 downloads)
| |
|
Making money on $3 corn. Yes, there is hope
