Pipeline Management for Agriculture: Sell Against the Sowing Window, Not the Quarter

In most businesses a deal that slips a month is still a deal. In agriculture it frequently is not. A seed variety sold after the sowing window has passed has no purchase, a crop protection product applied late does not work, and a piece of equipment delivered after harvest sits idle until the following year.

This makes the ordinary pipeline field, the expected close date, close to useless. The date that matters is the window, and it is set by weather and crop cycle rather than by anyone's forecast. A board built around windows behaves completely differently from one built around months.

A farmer opportunity is a seasonal purchase driven by acreage, crop plan and a demonstration. A dealer opportunity is a channel relationship with a target, a credit limit, an outstanding balance and a stocking decision. They share nothing except the product.

Keeping them on separate boards is not a technicality. It stops a large dealer stocking order from drowning out fifty farmer enquiries in the same report, and it lets each board carry the fields it actually needs: acreage and crop on one, credit and target on the other.

Field demonstrations consume staff days, product, travel and often food for attendees. They are also the single most persuasive selling activity available in agri inputs. What almost never happens is a record of who attended and what they bought afterwards.

Once demos are logged as events with attendance and outcome, demo to booking conversion becomes a report. It usually shows sharp differences between territories and between products, and it is the fastest way to move demonstration effort from habit to evidence for the next season.

In peak season a dealer will ask for stock while still carrying an outstanding balance, and the field officer, whose target depends on the booking, is the worst placed person to refuse. Making outstanding exposure visible on the opportunity moves the decision to where it belongs.

Windows closing within three weeks, with a delivery commitment against each. Demos scheduled but not conducted. Quotations awaiting decision. Dealer credit blocking bookings. Bookings by delivery week against depot stock. In peak season, run it twice a week and keep it to twenty minutes.

This does not manage stock, dispatch, invoicing, subsidy claims or any agronomic advice, and it offers no recommendation about any crop or product. It is the commercial layer: who enquired, what was demonstrated, what was booked, and whether it reached the farmer inside the window.

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