Agtech Still Misses The Mark In How They Approach Farmers

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Farmers are inundated with potential products to use, but many companies are missing the mark with their offerings or with the approach or both. Brad Fruth says at Beck’s Hybrids, they’ve learned that how the product reaches farmers is just as important as what it actually delivers.

Fruth... "The other thing I think is the channel at which they come to market because people buy from people at the end of the day. And so talking about the channel, I'm not going to tell you there's a right or wrong way to do it because there's a lot of other ways to do it that people have been successful at it. But understanding that channel is very, very important. And so if I talk to somebody and they're like, Oh, well, we're going to sell this direct to farmers and. I'm going to hire a bunch of salespeople. I'm like, okay, you're going to bleed cash for like 10 years. Can you do that? Well, no. Oh, we'll make a website and people will come to our website. Like farmers aren't going through the internet looking for products to buy on their farm. The other thing is like, I don't think they realize at times like farmers take their entire annual income at one time. And sometimes I think some people lose perspective on that. And so like you're asking them to put that at risk. So oftentimes a lot of it is coaching around, you got to put yourself in the customer's shoes and they don't often understand. They think that this is transactional. Oh my word, ag is anything but transactional."

Again that’s Director of Innovation at Beck’s Hybrids, Brad Fruth.