When you grow. We grow.

• Marketing to Farm Businesses
• Strategic Agri-Marketing
• Selling to Farm Businesses

• The role of marketing in determining and meeting buyer needs
• How to attract new customers and retain existing ones
• How to analyze and select profitable growth opportunities
• How farm businesses make purchasing decisions and how this can be used in building marketing programs
• Practical approaches to segmenting markets and selecting high potential targets
• How products and services can be designed to create value for targeted customers
• How to manage products and services through their product life cycles from market introduction to growth and maturity
• Effective approaches to establishing profitable pricing strategies
• How to build integrated marketing communication programs using a broad range of promotional techniques
• Easy-to-use, yet powerful approaches to determining the financial success of marketing plans
• How the market environment in agriculture is changing and the implications of this for developing marketing plans
• How to build a marketing plan for a local, regional or national market
• Participants learn the fundamentals of marketing and market planning, and then using case studies, they learn to apply these concepts to current agricultural marketing situations. This approach has been proven to increase the ability of participants to make real-life decisions pertaining to their own businesses.

• How to segment markets using approaches such as demographic, psychographic and benefit segmentation
• Effective targeting strategies that provide real focus to a marketing strategy
• Procedures for developing and introducing profitable new products
• Approaches for developing and managing strong brands
• Strategies for managing products and services through their life cycles
• How to analyze competition and develop proactive and reactive competitive strategies 
• How to measure and use price elasticity in developing pricing strategies
• How and when to use cost-oriented pricing, demand-oriented pricing and competitive pricing
• How to design/redesign distribution systems (marketing channels) that are cost-effective and meet the needs of targeted customers
• Effective procedures for dealing with management issues in distribution systems such as compensating and motivating channel members, measuring performance, and dealing with channel conflict
• The components of an integrated communication program and how they should be blended to achieve reach and frequency goals
• Techniques to model marketing decision situations that will enable managers to estimate the likely outcome of various strategies before implementation 
• Participants learn concepts related to marketing strategy, and then using case studies, they apply these concepts to current agricultural marketing situations. This approach has been proven to increase the ability of participants to make real-life decisions pertaining to their own business. Although there is not an educational requirement to take this course, it is taught at the same level as most MBA marketing courses.

• How farm businesses make purchasing decisions and how this can be used in developing effective sales strategies
• What constitutes effective communications and how salespeople can improve their presenting and listening skills
• How to read nonverbal communications and use this in interacting with customers
• The different type of customers in the market and how sales approaches should change for each type
• Various approaches to prospecting for new customers and how to establish priority for these prospects
• How to develop a sales strategy for each customer and a call plan for each sales call
• Methods that can be used to open a sales call
• Methods salespeople can use to discover the broad range of needs a buy is attempting to meet
• How to effectively present the features, advantages and benefits of products and services to address specific buyer needs
• Approaches to deal with buyer concerns
• Successful approaches to close sales
• How to deal with complaints
• Strategies to provide effective after-sales service
• Strategies to increase the amount of business done with current customers
• Participants learn concepts relating to the fundamentals of selling, and then using multi-media case studies, they learn to apply these concepts to current agricultural selling situations. In addition, after completing this course, participants may participate in a follow-up course (Thinking it Through: Creating Customer Specific Value) which focuses on the application of concepts to a selling situation relating to their own work environment.
• This course is designed for new salespeople, salespeople who have not been formally trained in the fundamentals of selling, and experienced salespeople looking to refresh their skills.