Fix Your Funnel

Recharge your prospect funnel by going from ABC to ABP

In the classic sales movie, Glengarry Glen Ross, we are told to: “ABC – Always be Closing”.

Some salespeople and sales managers like this advice because it sounds hard-nosed, as if you are really driving toward sales goals. True, but not a practical approach in Ag sales, as we work in long-term selling relationships that require a consultative approach. ABC will work for some, but mostly, it will get you kicked off the farm or out of the buyer’s office.

In training, I recommend two alternatives to ABC. My first is, “ABTC – Always be trial closing”. This approach allows you to continue digging for information to ensure you are a good fit before actually closing. My second alternative to ABC is: “ABP – Always be Prospecting”

Salespeople need to view their prospecting funnel as a live and fluid document. The struggle in agribusiness is that we sell into a seasonal business. Most of these seasons revolve around a crop or livestock cycle. Our farmer customers and their suppliers are busy in the spring with planting. They are mostly busy in the summer with field work: spraying, cutting hay, and working with livestock. Then, they are busy in the Fall with harvest.

Since we supply those producers with products and services, we also become very busy serving our current customers through spring, summer, and fall. Certainly, it sounds like the right thing to do, and hard to argue against spending 9 months of the year serving those who buy from us.

Yet, there are two pitfalls to this strategy that you need to be aware of.

First and foremost, prospecting is a long game. It takes time to go from a cold call to a loyal, paying customer. Prospecting is all but forgotten as we spend the majority of the year serving customers. By the time we get around to it again, we often have to start all over in our prospecting relationships. Making the process very long and difficult. This leads many salespeople to abandon their prospecting efforts altogether. That is, until their sales manager or a sales trainer comes along and reminds them how important it is to continuously build their territory. Customer attrition happens. The solution is either selling more product to current customers or signing new customers.

That is the importance of “ABP-Always be Prospecting”. Instead of looking at your prospect list or funnel as a static document, I want salespeople to look at it as a live document that is constantly flowing at various speeds.

I’m writing this in the Fall of 2025. If you sell in agribusiness, you have just endured seven of the most difficult months in sales. Commodity prices are down, input prices are up, and world politics to include trade negotiations, are at an all-time high in volatility. You and your customers have not experienced anything like this in forty to fifty years, if ever.

This makes prospecting feel fruitless and impossible to get excited about. Your funnel has disappeared into a desk or filing cabinet and become stagnant.

Take these steps today: to be different than your competition, to show up differently, and most importantly, make a difference for your prospects as well as your sales results.

Produce an actual list of prospects. If you had one, then reprint it or pull it out of the binder it’s been hiding in. I know you have it all logged in your head or on a spreadsheet somewhere. Maybe you are a star and have it in your CRM program. Print it anyway for this exercise. A hard copy gives you a different perspective than one on a screen.
Be prepared to throw away the entire list and start anew. Seven months in a volatile market can change your funnel completely. If you view the old list as stagnant and not viable, then throw it out.
Rebuild the one list into two. The first list is all of the best prospects you can think of. The second list is much shorter. The second list is the top 5 prospects on your first list who you think you can sell in the next 90 days.
Focus on the short list first.
- Build the relationship with them in the next 90 days. Where will they be? (networking events). When will they evaluate their yearly results and make decisions on the product lines you sell? Relationship building is a long game. Use all your resources and communication avenues: email, snail mail, text, and phone calls. Most importantly, stay present in their business life and stay relevant.
- Go to trade shows and networking events with the single goal of meeting these prospects outside the office or off the farm selling environment. If you don’t know where to go, get out of the office and go find a few prospects and ask them.
- Schedule a discussion to uncover ways you can help their business. Hold back from selling or presenting anything at this meeting. Listen to the podcast version of this article on how to frame up this discussion meeting.
- Follow up quickly with information related directly to this meeting.
- Move prospects through the funnel or move them out. This is the time to make decisions on prospects and fill it with moving prospects. If you run out of moving prospects, then go back and revisit some of the stagnant ones. And by moving, I mean there is a fit for you in their business, and they are still interested in discussing it.
- Repeat these steps throughout the year.

It’s hard to predict when a prospect will trust you enough to buy from you. Or, when they will tire of their current supplier and switch to you. Or, when they will view your product/services as a competitive advantage versus your competition. That’s why it’s an all-year job. Sure, you need to take care of customers properly. But it’s not 24/7 all year.

This leads me to the second pitfall in building a prospect list: Over-serving the current customer.

There is a gray area between over- and underserving current customers. Each salesperson needs to establish the correct level on their own. If you are losing too many customers or never signing a prospect, then it’s easy to see that you have a problem.

The most common problem I see with salespeople is over-serving current customers. Sometimes, it’s done as a way to provide excellent hands-on service to a relationship business. We feel good about doing more for customers than they ask. And customers love us for it. Which is ok, but it costs you the ability to grow your territory. Over-serving is also done as a way to avoid cold calls and prospecting. We can justify our actions, but ultimately, it’s just going where we feel comfortable and appreciated.

This decision process is one of the first coaching discussions I have with a salesperson when viewing their workload and territory health. They have to get their head in the right mindset before making any changes to their current priorities. Then, we set off down a path towards the best focus on prospecting versus serving current customers.