Selling Technology to the Agri-Food Market

Some of you reading this will be looking for that silver bullet or magic potion that will turn growers and processors into instant buyers of new and innovative technologies. Sorry. Those sure-shot-easy-solutions just don’t exist.

However, the following are some suggestions and insights that might help entrepreneurs, sales and marketing people in their quest to optimize that somewhat broken value chain through the adoption of their new wares – hard and soft.

Prove Your Worth

You might be asking yourself why there isn’t a beaten and well-worn path to your door after you have articulated the value of your offerings. Or, in some cases, the ROI hasn’t actually been proven but you are wondering why your prospective customers just don’t “get it” intuitively? It is not their fault.

The best answer is that we, collectively, need more independent third party analytics as to the cost of doing business the same old way. The places to go for that kind of objective research are our institutions of higher learning. More attention to the issues of cost versus value and less to the “how” of the technology means that those folks conducting the studies should be cost accountants and economists. Academics with those skills just don’t seem to be available.

We need to find researchers who can get into the weeds and show growers and processors just how much your products and services can contribute to their bottom lines. And why continuing with antiquated practices is costing them a lot of money.

Compliance Hammer

Look to the government to help out with your sales. It is not your fault that there is increasing oversight on the part of regulators. You’re just the people with solutions to problems. This is referred to as regulatory compliance.

Pesticide reporting has driven the success of many ag tech companies over the years. Now due to high levels of Nitrogen in the groundwater in some areas of the country those same companies are positioned to help growers with new fertilizer reporting requirements.

In the case of water usage the accuracy of measuring both surface and groundwater has been severely lacking. We simply do not know how much water is being applied to a crop if it is coming out of a ditch or sent through a sprinkler system. While the measurements are better with modern irrigation methods such as micro and drip it is still a simple and inaccurate calculation of time and volume.

Let's not forget that commercial compliance is also a force that has driven buying decisions. WalMart Sustainability has had an impact on their suppliers and suppliers suppliers that requires much better documentation about the how, what, where, when, how much and more concerning our food. Who is going to tell WalMart "no"?

Technology solves most, if not all, of the problems of collecting and documenting the required data for government agencies. The IRS, EPA, State and Federal agencies, they are all demanding more and more information about the business practices employed throughout the agri-food chain. It does more than simply provide a means to comply, however, it can be used run the business of growing and processing food more efficiently.

 

Should Do and Gotta Do

All of us have a list of things that we should do. Our actions are primarily driven by a need to survive in business and if there is time and energy available after that we strive for continuous improvement. Compliance will always win out over value as a primary sales driver.