Picture this: You’re a farmer shopping for seed at your local ag retailer. You’re planning to get the same seed you always buy, but then you notice the other options.
They all promise higher yields, but how can you be sure that’s true? What if the new seed requires an unfamiliar crop management process? What if it doesn’t deliver the promised yield? But what if it does? How do you know if it’s worth the risk?
With commodity prices down and the success of the entire growing season riding on a few key purchasing decisions, farmers can’t always risk trying something new.
That makes your job as a retailer — to move more products — challenging. But there is a highly effective way to make certain products stand out in a crowded aisle: Crop Plan Warranty.
Crop Plan Warranty is a sales acceleration tool that removes the risk of trying a new product for growers, so they can confidently purchase yield-boosting products. And it’s a form of pay-for-performance marketing, meaning your return on investment (ROI) is guaranteed.
How Crop Plan Warranty Works
You first choose which products or bundles of products to warranty, based on your sales goals. A farmer would then purchase a covered product from you.
If that product doesn’t produce the promised yield improvement, the farmer receives a warranty payment. Even in this situation, it’s a win — you profited from the initial sale, but the farmer didn’t lose money by trying something new.
Here’s one example of what that looks like in the real world: Brady Cromer, area sales manager for Nexus Cooperative, was looking for a way to move his on-hand inventory. He created a branded, bundled service of products he wanted to move and layered on a Crop Plan Warranty.
By adding the warranty, Cromer communicated that he was so confident in the product that he was putting his own money behind it. This served to both increase brand affinity (“this retailer has our back”) and reduce financial risk (“worst-case scenario, we’ll still get paid”).
The result: Cromer moved the targeted products, and farmers bought their inputs with confidence.
How Crop Plan Warranty Guarantees ROI
What makes Crop Plan Warranty so valuable to retailers is its guaranteed ROI. It requires no upfront investment on your part. You don’t pay for the warranty until the product is purchased.
In other words, it’s your best possible marketing spend.
Cromer was guaranteed ROI because he didn’t have to pay for the Crop Plan Warranty until a customer purchased his product bundle. If they declined his offer, he didn’t lose any money. If they accepted, he still made profit because the warranty cost didn’t exceed his margins.
Crop Plan Warranty is customizable to the products you want to move. You decide what’s covered, in what quantity, who qualifies, and the payout amount — which typically ranges from $15 to $50 per acre — to determine your premium. Growers Edge will guide you through these decisions to make sure they align with your business goals.
We also provide the tools and support your team needs to make Crop Plan Warranty a success. We create white-labeled marketing materials, so your program has your store’s branding. We appoint a dedicated customer success manager to help you along the way, and we train your staff on sales and implementation.
Crop Plan Warranty is a turnkey program, where Growers Edge handles all the details:
- Grower Enrollment
- Field Identification
- Claims Submission
- Warranty Reviews
- Yield Discrepancy Verification
- Warranty Payments
We collect the yield data and the crop insurance information to determine whether a warranty is due. If it is, we handle the payout — you don’t have to fund any payments.
Crop Plan Warranty is pay-for-performance marketing. You’ll help your customers fund their purchases, so you can both reap the rewards.
Use Crop Plan Warranty to Drive Sales of Products You Want to Move
People are generally resistant to change. Studies have shown that 50 to 90 percent of new products fail because consumers resist new things.
Crop Plan Warranty works because it targets this aversion to change. By guaranteeing a payout if the product doesn’t perform as expected, you’re removing the grower’s risk of trying a new or unfamiliar input that could increase their yields.
This makes Crop Plan Warranty a great tool for incentivizing growers to buy specific high-margin products or increasing sales of specialty, optional, or newly introduced products.
You can also use Crop Plan Warranty like Cromer did, and leverage the warranty to drive sales of targeted products — in his case, of on-hand products that weren’t selling as quickly as he’d hoped.
Use Crop Plan Warranty to Gain Wallet Share
Another strategy is to use Crop Plan Warranty to gain wallet share by incentivizing growers to buy all key products from you. You can drive big-ticket bundle purchases like seed, fertilizer, and fungicide.
Imagine that one of your customers buys fungicide and fertilizer from you, but they buy seed and herbicide from a major national retailer. You could offer the customer a package deal of seed, fungicide, herbicide, and fertilizer, and offer a warranty as incentive to buy this bundle of products from you.
The warranty might cost you $15 per acre, but you’d be profiting $75 per acre by selling the extra products. If the customer declines your offer, there’s no penalty to you — you haven’t paid for the warranty yet.
Encourage Sales of Innovative Products With Crop Plan Warranty
We’ve seen our manufacturer and retailer clients find success with Crop Plan Warranty. One retailer even found that farmers who bought products protected by a warranty spent 30 percent more at their store than in the previous year.
But you don’t have to take our word for it.
A study by The Nature Conservancy found that yield insurance encouraged farmers to adopt new practices and empowered agronomists to sell these practices. Offering a warranty may be the last thing you have to say to close a sale.
Plus, Crop Plan Warranty helps farmers try innovative products that will set them up for a bountiful season, risk-free.
Reach out to discuss how Crop Plan Warranty can help get your products in the hands of growers who need them and guarantee your ROI.