Training the Last Mile: What Enterprise L&D Can Learn from Selling Technical Products to Farmers

00:00:01 Fabricio Peres

I'm Fabricio and I have about 20 years experience in agriculture.

00:00:12 Fabricio Peres

I work for almost the entire time in a leader of the sector.

00:00:14 Fabricio Peres

And my roles during this period have been about working with farmers, changing behaviours of farmers in the most diverse ways.

00:00:25 Fabricio Peres

from a commercial point of view, but also from a sustainability point of view, improving practices, safety practices, and so on.

00:00:33 Fabricio Peres

And that's where L&D learning and development have been very important to my role.

00:00:39 Fabricio Peres

I'm not an expert on the topic, but this particular agenda has been very, very relevant for my performance and for my agenda in the company, because it was about working with farmers, engaging with farmers, changing behaviour, right?

00:00:54 Fabricio Peres

Today I work as an advisor and consultant for companies, agribusiness companies that want to sell in Brazil.

00:01:02 Fabricio Peres

So international companies that have clearly Brazil as a next geography to enter and to operate.

00:01:09 Fabricio Peres

But it's a very complex geography.

00:01:12 Fabricio Peres

That's where I support them in order to understand the market, understand the possibilities, design the strategies and operate.

00:01:22 Fabricio Peres

Once they enter into the market and start to sell.

00:01:25 Fabricio Peres

And of course, working with farmers is the most relevant part of that because it's about these farmers getting to know these new organization, the products, the solutions that this company has to offer, and then yeah, adopting those technologies.

00:01:43 RK Prasad

So that was before that is after.

00:01:49 RK Prasad

Syngenta's experience, right?

00:01:52 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:01:52 Fabricio Peres

So this work I have been doing in the past one and a half years, that's the time that I left Syngenta.

00:02:00 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, that's it.

00:02:02 Fabricio Peres

But also within Syngenta, there was very much my responsibility.

00:02:08 Fabricio Peres

Of course, when you are in the country, because I joined the company, the organization in the country, in Brazil.

00:02:15 Fabricio Peres

So I took local leadership roles.

00:02:19 Fabricio Peres

And then that evolved to regional roles for Latin America as a whole.

00:02:24 Fabricio Peres

And then in the past, so like 8 years ago, I moved to Basel with the company to take a global responsibility.

00:02:32 Fabricio Peres

So, and of course, I mean, when it comes to working with farmers, changing behaviors, as you change the geography and the scope of that, the approach needs also to adapt.

00:02:44 RK Prasad

Absolutely, absolutely.

00:02:47 RK Prasad

So I suppose you are currently in Brazil?

00:02:53 Fabricio Peres

No, I am still in Brazil.

00:02:54 Fabricio Peres

I am still in Switzerland.

00:02:56 RK Prasad

OK, you are still in Brazil.

00:02:57 RK Prasad

OK, so in your experience, have you worked with farmers outside Switzerland in your global role?

00:03:08 Fabricio Peres

I mean, not just Switzerland, I mean Brazil, of course, but the whole Latin America.

00:03:14 Fabricio Peres

With Argentinian farmers, Colombian farmers, Mexican farmers, Chilean farmers, Paraguayan farmers, then also with African farmers at my global role with that company, farmers in Asia, Thailand, India as well, China.

00:03:36 Fabricio Peres

So yeah, I mean, I had the opportunity and the privilege.

00:03:40 Fabricio Peres

To experience different geographies, different environments, different completely different farming contexts and challenges.

00:03:50 RK Prasad

Right.

00:03:50 RK Prasad

And also how much for like countries like China and India, how closely the farming community is woven into the society and the ancient practices.

00:04:08 RK Prasad

Which still go on in some parts of the country.

00:04:11 RK Prasad

I think that must have been very, very interesting when you work with not just there.

00:04:17 Fabricio Peres

I mean, Africa is also very interesting as well in that sense because the community, the cooperatives, the associations, they have a very important role in those environments, not just to better organize the farmers, right, but also to strengthen their voices.

00:04:37 Fabricio Peres

when it comes to negotiation of terms, bringing their products to the market.

00:04:43 Fabricio Peres

And that's where you're about bringing that closer to the society, right?

00:04:50 RK Prasad

So you have market yards where the middlemen will auction by their staff, at least in India, it happens.

00:05:01 RK Prasad

I find this personally very interesting because I started my career in it.

00:05:05 RK Prasad

In an agro firm and yeah, it was a government organization and it used to sell urea and phosphate and some kind of micro nutrient.

00:05:25 RK Prasad

And then after that, after a very long gap again, I went back to the agro industry.

00:05:30 RK Prasad

This time it was a private firm.

00:05:34 RK Prasad

And they were also selling more or less that, but they were also selling what was called named Farm Boone, which is more like a mixture which was customised to the farmers land depending on the soil testing.

00:05:49 RK Prasad

Yeah, and also organic fertilizer called, I think Flower Power or something like that.

00:06:00 RK Prasad

They used to make it out of the bagasse from the sugar plants.

00:06:05 RK Prasad

So that is very and I was the training manager there.

00:06:10 RK Prasad

So I can completely relate to the challenges when it comes to behavioral changes at the farmers level.

00:06:18 Fabricio Peres

Very good.

00:06:19 RK Prasad

Most of them are hereditary, you know, their great grandfather, grandfather, you know.

00:06:27 RK Prasad

Anyway, that is very interesting.

00:06:28 RK Prasad

So I again, once again, I think that you are a trained agronomist.

00:06:36 Fabricio Peres

No, my academic background is business, business management and business economics.

00:06:43 Fabricio Peres

But I learned agronomy during this 20 years, right?

00:06:48 RK Prasad

My God, that is that is a business management professional getting into such a technical thing.

00:06:56 RK Prasad

Yeah, I mean people study for 1010 years to understand agronomy and genetics and plant biology, all the pests and herb herbs and all these things.

00:07:11 RK Prasad

So how did you, how did you come into agriculture of all things?

00:07:19 Fabricio Peres

So before joining the company I was.

00:07:24 Fabricio Peres

I was a management consultant.

00:07:25 Fabricio Peres

So I started my career in consulting.

00:07:29 Fabricio Peres

I worked in consulting for like almost a decade.

00:07:33 Fabricio Peres

And I mean, as a consultant, I was working for a big, big for company, right?

00:07:39 RK Prasad

Okay.

00:07:40 Fabricio Peres

And then I joined a boutique management consulting firm.

00:07:45 Fabricio Peres

And as a consultant, I mean, that was the beauty.

00:07:47 Fabricio Peres

I mean, especially in the beginning of of the career, you you you are exposed to so many different topics.

00:07:53 Fabricio Peres

so many different industries.

00:07:55 Fabricio Peres

So just to give some examples, in the beginning of my career in consulting, I worked with mostly with telecommunication in the telecommunication industry, but also banking, retail, consumer goods, and this in terms of industries.

00:08:10 Fabricio Peres

And then in terms of topics, I had the chance to work with finance, so Sarbanes Oxley and this kind of things.

00:08:20 Fabricio Peres

So IT.

00:08:21 Fabricio Peres

Engineering in the telecommunication to understand all the engineering aspects of the communication, right?

00:08:28 Fabricio Peres

Commercial marketing, human resources as well, not learning and development, but it was more in terms of organizational setup, right?

00:08:40 RK Prasad

And design and performance management.

00:08:43 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:08:44 Fabricio Peres

One of my first projects was a consolidation of a telecom company in Brazil.

00:08:50 Fabricio Peres

So they were entering in Brazil and they were acquiring different small companies in Brazil.

00:08:56 Fabricio Peres

It was a new regulation about the licensing of the telecommunications in Brazil.

00:09:01 Fabricio Peres

So this company, international company, was entering and buying these different operators.

00:09:07 Fabricio Peres

And the project was about.

00:09:09 Fabricio Peres

Consolidating all of that in terms of organizational setup, but also infrastructure.

00:09:16 Fabricio Peres

And then you went through all the process of capabilities, mapping, understanding where the company would go.

00:09:22 Fabricio Peres

So connecting that to the strategic plan of the company.

00:09:25 Fabricio Peres

It was a very nice project, but super challenging because we had to do all the design and start implementation with HR actually in like 6 months.

00:09:35 Fabricio Peres

So it was really tough.

00:09:37 Fabricio Peres

But you know.

00:09:39 Fabricio Peres

That's the beauty because when you have experience with different industries, you understand also the timing because for me it was a shock.

00:09:45 Fabricio Peres

I was in telecommunication.

00:09:47 Fabricio Peres

It was really short term.

00:09:49 Fabricio Peres

For example, strategic plan in that industry was a 3 years plan.

00:09:54 Fabricio Peres

Then I moved to agriculture, right?

00:09:56 Fabricio Peres

And then in agriculture, the long term plan was 15 years and the short term plan was 3 years.

00:10:05 RK Prasad

You know, not 3 months.

00:10:08 Fabricio Peres

Wow.

00:10:08 RK Prasad

So, but I think as you rightly said, I totally agree because you have, you know, tasted or rather experienced so many different industries, different priorities, different customers, different technologies.

00:10:25 RK Prasad

When you entered agriculture, probably you must have got some very creative ideas.

00:10:33 RK Prasad

As compared to a person who has always been in agriculture.

00:10:38 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, that's true.

00:10:39 Fabricio Peres

So just to conclude, and then one of the projects, project partner that I was working, the consulting, moved to the company that I was invited to join later and then he invited me to take the role.

00:10:50 Fabricio Peres

So RK, that's true because when I joined the company, there was a huge transformation process happening.

00:10:58 Fabricio Peres

They were changing the whole strategy of the company.

00:11:02 Fabricio Peres

to integrate different business units like crop protection, seeds, trying to become a solutions company, right?

00:11:10 Fabricio Peres

Integrated crop solutions.

00:11:12 Fabricio Peres

And then they were also developing services to incorporate all of that.

00:11:18 Fabricio Peres

So it was an integrated strategy approach.

00:11:22 Fabricio Peres

And in the company it was before, in the telecommunication company, they were in the convergence stage.

00:11:30 Fabricio Peres

What is that?

00:11:31 Fabricio Peres

So

00:11:32 Fabricio Peres

I don't know if, I mean, you recall that.

00:11:34 Fabricio Peres

So in the telecommunication, you first started with the voice, right?

00:11:39 Fabricio Peres

Then they incorporated the text.

00:11:41 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, right.

00:11:42 RK Prasad

And then the pictures.

00:11:43 Fabricio Peres

Part messages and then came the Internet.

00:11:46 Fabricio Peres

So all this convergence.

00:11:47 Fabricio Peres

So you could make lots of parallels in that.

00:11:50 RK Prasad

Right?

00:11:52 RK Prasad

Correct.

00:11:53 RK Prasad

So I'm sure you saw agriculture with a different set of eyes.

00:12:00 RK Prasad

And you could see bring in similarities, synergies, and synthesise all that knowledge you had, which is, I think, great.

00:12:13 RK Prasad

It also shows that you are a fantastically fast learner.

00:12:21 Fabricio Peres

Well, I mean, I had to develop that, right?

00:12:24 Fabricio Peres

I mean, when you move from topic to topic in such a short term.

00:12:28 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:12:30 Fabricio Peres

Such a short term, you can't of develop that, right?

00:12:33 RK Prasad

Right.

00:12:34 RK Prasad

Okay, now you have worked with different economies and different agricultural environments.

00:12:43 RK Prasad

So your focus of bringing better practices would always meet with some challenges of adoption.

00:12:53 RK Prasad

Yeah, both at the practitioner level, that is at the farmer.

00:13:00 RK Prasad

And maybe even at the dealer level, the other associates in the supply chain, yeah, as well as the marketing representatives or agronomists who are a part of the system.

00:13:18 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:13:20 RK Prasad

So there is always a very big challenge for something new, something better.

00:13:27 RK Prasad

And you get that resistance.

00:13:28 RK Prasad

So can you talk a little bit about the challenges and misconceptions of this, especially in the rural setup or the farming community setup?

00:13:40 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:13:43 Fabricio Peres

So in my currently, as I said, I have been working with international companies to enter Brazil, right?

00:13:50 Fabricio Peres

And the.

00:13:52 Fabricio Peres

And I think that's very applicable to learning and development at all because the biggest misconception I see is about assuming that the farmers, they don't know, right?

00:14:02 Fabricio Peres

They don't know.

00:14:03 Fabricio Peres

And then and then these companies, organizations, some of them, they entering the market or it doesn't need to be an international company, can also be a local one.

00:14:13 Fabricio Peres

They enter in the market, trying to push all the knowledge, hey, this is how you need to do, this is why it's better and so on and so forth.

00:14:22 Fabricio Peres

But the farmer, when he's listening to that in a fraction of minutes, he already mapped the whole thing and he understood because he experienced that on a daily basis.

00:14:34 Fabricio Peres

And then it's not about and then the conversation needs to shift.

00:14:38 Fabricio Peres

If the company needs to be successful in that interaction, in that behavioral change objective,

00:14:46 Fabricio Peres

It needs to shift from a pushing to a learning, to a hearing point of view.

00:14:51 Fabricio Peres

So what are your challenges?

00:14:52 Fabricio Peres

How do you see that?

00:14:53 Fabricio Peres

Have you ever experienced that?

00:14:55 Fabricio Peres

How can we make difference?

00:14:56 Fabricio Peres

What are the trade offs that you face?

00:14:58 Fabricio Peres

How can we address those trade offs in order to minimise your risks?

00:15:03 Fabricio Peres

So this is very important because it's not about knowledge, it's about the risks, it's about the changes, the trade offs.

00:15:11 Fabricio Peres

So there are many other elements well beyond the knowledge itself.

00:15:17 Fabricio Peres

And actually, companies, they need to focus on the knowledge, but the bottleneck is not there.

00:15:22 Fabricio Peres

Actually, that is given, they know.

00:15:24 Fabricio Peres

I'm going to give you another example.

00:15:26 Fabricio Peres

I was also responsible for stewardship, okay, stewardship of crop protection products.

00:15:32 Fabricio Peres

So crop protection products, they are very sensitive product products because they require special conditions in order to....

00:15:44 Fabricio Peres

Be safe in order to be effective, right?

00:15:47 Fabricio Peres

So for example, a farmer or an operator they need to wear PPE, correct?

00:15:53 Fabricio Peres

Right?

00:15:54 Fabricio Peres

Because if you get if the product gets in contact with the eyes, if they inhalate and so on, it might have problems depending on the product, right?

00:16:04 Fabricio Peres

Correct.

00:16:05 Fabricio Peres

Even you have all the.

00:16:07 Fabricio Peres

The safety requirements in terms of reducing the dose rates and all of that, I mean, that's not objective of the product, right?

00:16:15 Fabricio Peres

And farmers, they know they need to wear PPE.

00:16:18 Fabricio Peres

So then for a long time, the company was focusing on the trainings, right?

00:16:24 Fabricio Peres

Hey, let's explain, let's raise the awareness of the importance of wearing PPEs because it can be harmful for you.

00:16:35 Fabricio Peres

In the short term, in the long run and all of that, and you need to read the label like this and so on and so forth.

00:16:43 Fabricio Peres

So the focus was entirely on the knowledge, but it was not that when you ask the farmer why you don't use, do you know?

00:16:49 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, of course I need, I know, of course I know.

00:16:53 Fabricio Peres

But why don't you use?

00:16:55 Fabricio Peres

Come on 40 degrees, all these helmets here.

00:16:59 Fabricio Peres

I mean, come on.

00:17:01 RK Prasad

I will be sweating my sweating to death inside and we.

00:17:04 Fabricio Peres

Need to be in the field for the whole day.

00:17:06 Fabricio Peres

So it is not, it is not practical.

00:17:09 Fabricio Peres

So then the whole industry was focusing on the knowledge when the problem was elsewhere.

00:17:18 Fabricio Peres

And you could go deeper.

00:17:21 Fabricio Peres

There were other situations that it was because of the neighbors because I mean if my neighbors they see me dressed like that.

00:17:28 Fabricio Peres

Yes, they will be scared.

00:17:30 Fabricio Peres

They will be scared.

00:17:32 Fabricio Peres

And then my whole community will start to blame me because of any kind of problem that might happen in the field.

00:17:38 Fabricio Peres

So then I don't wear it because if I wear that, they will say, hey, they are spraying.

00:17:44 Fabricio Peres

This is the guy.

00:17:46 Fabricio Peres

So there are many different aspects in all the geographies was about access, for instance.

00:17:53 Fabricio Peres

So the farmer.

00:17:55 Fabricio Peres

Wanted to use the PPE but could not afford it, so didn't have enough money to buy that or would have a very old one that was completely, you know, not in the good conditions to wear and to protect.

00:18:11 Fabricio Peres

Or he could not find the PPE in the shops.

00:18:15 Fabricio Peres

I mean, when we had the COVID, we could find the masks, remember.

00:18:22 Fabricio Peres

It was.

00:18:23 Fabricio Peres

He went on shortage of masks because everybody wanted to buy the masks.

00:18:28 Fabricio Peres

And then all of a sudden you had masks everywhere, customised masks and so on and so forth.

00:18:33 Fabricio Peres

So that's the point, you know, focusing too much on the knowledge when the knowledge many, many times is not a bottleneck.

00:18:44 RK Prasad

I mean, I'm being very, very honest with you.

00:18:48 RK Prasad

Most of my career I was in learning.

00:18:52 RK Prasad

And most of the time we focus on knowledge.

00:18:57 RK Prasad

This is the first time I heard a totally different kind of perspective.

00:19:02 RK Prasad

So let us go a little deeper if you don't mind.

00:19:05 RK Prasad

So you will find out a that do they have the knowledge?

00:19:11 RK Prasad

Most of the time they do have knowledge or at least they know that they don't know that knowledge but they know that there is a knowledge.

00:19:20 RK Prasad

Why don't they use it for other reasons?

00:19:25 RK Prasad

Okay, let us say you found out the other reasons.

00:19:30 RK Prasad

What would be your next step?

00:19:34 Fabricio Peres

That's a very good point as well.

00:19:37 Fabricio Peres

The technology or knowledge or product, I even say the product is not a solution, is not an offer.

00:19:49 Fabricio Peres

What do I mean by that?

00:19:51 Fabricio Peres

If you take a technology, let's take a software.

00:19:55 Fabricio Peres

If you just say, hey, use this software, that's not enough.

00:20:02 Fabricio Peres

You need to explain me how I use it.

00:20:04 Fabricio Peres

You need to, you need to pack that in a subscription mode.

00:20:09 Fabricio Peres

You need to all the terms they make part of this offer.

00:20:15 Fabricio Peres

Right.

00:20:15 Fabricio Peres

So the technology and the product alone is not enough.

00:20:19 Fabricio Peres

So in the case of PPE, for example, we had to work with the technology, with the clothes and PPEs themselves to develop that.

00:20:31 Fabricio Peres

We also had to do behavioural work with the farmer, with their families, you know.

00:20:39 Fabricio Peres

So for example, there was one program that we were working with the kids of the farmer.

00:20:45 Fabricio Peres

So then the kids would go to the parents and say, hey, you must wear PPE because that is dangerous.

00:20:50 Fabricio Peres

I learned that this is hard.

00:20:53 Fabricio Peres

This can be harmful for you.

00:20:54 Fabricio Peres

If you hear that from your kids, you will accept you change behaviour because you want to be perceived as an example.

00:21:02 Fabricio Peres

So you change behaviour, right?

00:21:05 Fabricio Peres

So if you hear from a company is different than.

00:21:09 Fabricio Peres

Hearing from your closed ones, even neighbors, in the case of the farmers, the neighbors, they play a very important role.

00:21:15 Fabricio Peres

So all of that needs to be incorporated into what I call the solution.

00:21:21 Fabricio Peres

So right approach, how you approach the terms, how you get access to that, you know, so understanding all these bottlenecks, you need to find solutions for each one of them and encapsulate them all together.

00:21:35 Fabricio Peres

And that becomes a solution.

00:21:37 Fabricio Peres

Not approaching that is yes.

00:21:41 RK Prasad

Wow.

00:21:44 RK Prasad

But when you when I heard this, it is the long but effective way of doing it.

00:21:52 RK Prasad

So people choose the short conduct a training program.

00:21:58 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:21:59 RK Prasad

So you are first establishing credibility.

00:22:05 RK Prasad

You are really finding out what are the other issues and problems around this particular requirement, and then you are also identifying who should be the voice to tell this person.

00:22:23 RK Prasad

As you said, maybe his children, who knows, maybe his wife who has neighbors and then.

00:22:34 RK Prasad

You identify all these issues, come up with solutions, then bundle them together and present it to the farmer.

00:22:44 RK Prasad

Yeah, I'm sure it must have been very, very effective.

00:22:47 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, you know, you mentioned something about the short term, right?

00:22:51 Fabricio Peres

That's true.

00:22:52 Fabricio Peres

When you design the solution, you need to design in a way that is a long term solution, not a short term.

00:23:00 Fabricio Peres

That will bring next step that is an even bigger problem.

00:23:05 Fabricio Peres

However, you need when you put yourself in the shoe of the target, right of the farmer, of the employees, you need to fear short term issues.

00:23:22 Fabricio Peres

Because farmers, they care on what's going to happen on Monday.

00:23:28 Fabricio Peres

Correct.

00:23:29 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:23:31 Fabricio Peres

And if you design your solution thinking on the problem for the next year, you will not be effective.

00:23:38 RK Prasad

So lose him.

00:23:40 Fabricio Peres

Solution needs to be designed that is effective in the long run.

00:23:44 Fabricio Peres

But the problem you are addressing is a short term problem for the farmer.

00:23:49 Fabricio Peres

Yes, otherwise it will not, it will not be sustainable in the long run.

00:23:54 RK Prasad

So yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

00:23:58 Fabricio Peres

Back to the example of the product and technology is not about saving the planet, right?

00:24:05 Fabricio Peres

It is not about saving the planet.

00:24:08 Fabricio Peres

It is about how can I reduce your cost of fertilizers today?

00:24:15 Fabricio Peres

With the war, with everything that's happening, the prices, they are super high.

00:24:20 Fabricio Peres

So it's not about saving the planet and reducing the emissions and fertilizer.

00:24:24 Fabricio Peres

No, it's about reducing your costs today.

00:24:27 Fabricio Peres

You see that.

00:24:28 Fabricio Peres

So at the end of the day, you want to reduce emissions.

00:24:32 Fabricio Peres

Fertilizers, they are a big part of that.

00:24:36 Fabricio Peres

But the way you present that, the solution, the value proposition is based on the short term economics of the farmer.

00:24:45 Fabricio Peres

If you talk about planet, he will not be, he will not be effective.

00:24:49 RK Prasad

He will be lost.

00:24:50 RK Prasad

I mean, he'll just not take you seriously in the first place.

00:24:55 RK Prasad

But tell me, is it not sometimes difficult to align the short term benefit which you are going to present to him with the long term solution?

00:25:08 RK Prasad

For example, let us take the same example.

00:25:10 RK Prasad

Let us say our long term solution is.

00:25:14 RK Prasad

You know, as you were saying, stewardship of the farmer, the soil, the climate, the economies.

00:25:24 RK Prasad

OK, now you are looking at that.

00:25:27 RK Prasad

But today he wants a cheaper fertilizer.

00:25:33 RK Prasad

Sometimes, don't you think that it will be very difficult for you to align them as the first steps to go into the long term?

00:25:42 Fabricio Peres

Absolutely.

00:25:43 Fabricio Peres

You need to think on the 2 dimensions.

00:25:46 Fabricio Peres

You can either improve the outputs and the outcomes or you can reduce the risks.

00:25:52 Fabricio Peres

So in some cases, the benefits they are misaligned.

00:25:58 Fabricio Peres

So you have the long term, you have the long term benefits, but you don't have the short term benefits.

00:26:06 Fabricio Peres

in the example I just gave, right?

00:26:07 Fabricio Peres

The long term is about saving the planet, but you also have the short term because the prices of the fertilizers, they are high and so on and so far.

00:26:15 Fabricio Peres

Imagine that the fertilizers prices, they are down and they are super cheap.

00:26:19 Fabricio Peres

So you have a misalignment of benefits because that is not present in the short term, right?

00:26:26 Fabricio Peres

But then you need to think on this is not the main.

00:26:31 Fabricio Peres

This is not the only reason you might have other reasons.

00:26:35 Fabricio Peres

You might also have the risks of the change.

00:26:39 Fabricio Peres

So if I do the change that you are telling me to do and it fails, who takes the blame?

00:26:46 Fabricio Peres

Who takes the full risk?

00:26:49 Fabricio Peres

If it's the farmer, he will not take that.

00:26:52 Fabricio Peres

If it's an employee that needs to change a behavior and then that new behavior brings him to a bad situation in the short term.

00:27:03 Fabricio Peres

Is he going to be blamed by that or that will be absorbed by the organization, by the manager, by the L&D, by somebody else, by the leadership?

00:27:14 Fabricio Peres

If that risk are shared, it's a different thing.

00:27:18 Fabricio Peres

So all in all, to say that benefit in long term, short term is one variable, but you have other variables, the risks if it fails, the terms.

00:27:28 Fabricio Peres

So how you pack all the different elements.

00:27:32 Fabricio Peres

Are you providing the right tools for the farmer to change that behaviour?

00:27:37 Fabricio Peres

Can he have access to credit if he needs to buy a different machinery to do that, to do direct seeding seeding, right?

00:27:47 Fabricio Peres

So are you thinking about the whole structure?

00:27:50 Fabricio Peres

So there are different elements.

00:27:51 Fabricio Peres

Benefit is one, but they also have the risk sharing risk.

00:27:54 RK Prasad

Term cost cost accessibility.

00:27:59 RK Prasad

There's so many things.

00:28:01 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:28:01 RK Prasad

So it is more a holistic solution than just selling some product.

00:28:07 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:28:09 Fabricio Peres

Sorry.

00:28:09 RK Prasad

Yeah.

00:28:09 RK Prasad

You were saying something.

00:28:10 RK Prasad

Sorry.

00:28:11 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:28:11 Fabricio Peres

And also the incentives, right?

00:28:13 Fabricio Peres

I mean, when you think about L&D in an organization, what are the incentives for that particular behavioral change, right?

00:28:23 Fabricio Peres

If you don't have the right incentives, the right KPIs for the employee.

00:28:30 Fabricio Peres

And again.

00:28:31 Fabricio Peres

What happens on Monday is the most important thing because the employee or the farmer do not take the decision on the same day, right?

00:28:42 Fabricio Peres

I mean, an employee that is doing a training will not be expected, will not make the decision on the behavior during the training.

00:28:50 Fabricio Peres

We'll do that in the next week when he faces an issue in the work that he needs to take some of the tools and some of the learnings to apply that.

00:29:00 Fabricio Peres

So the decision, there is a timing misalignment on the moment that you provide that and the moment that the decision needs to be made.

00:29:10 Fabricio Peres

And this misalignment is very, very clear in the farmer with the farmer.

00:29:15 Fabricio Peres

Right.

00:29:17 RK Prasad

Now, that brings me to a kind of situation like if you take the employee now we.

00:29:29 RK Prasad

Don't find, how should I put it?

00:29:33 RK Prasad

If you train the employee or help him learn in the short term and long term, can we do it in isolation and expect him to go into the system as compared to the same thing as a farmer, his wife, his neighbor, his kids?

00:29:57 RK Prasad

How do you do that?

00:29:59 Fabricio Peres

Absolutely not.

00:30:00 Fabricio Peres

I mean, this reminds me of the pilots, right?

00:30:04 Fabricio Peres

The pilot.

00:30:05 Fabricio Peres

Yeah.

00:30:06 Fabricio Peres

Because the pilot for me is exactly what you're saying.

00:30:08 Fabricio Peres

I mean, what is a pilot?

00:30:11 Fabricio Peres

You put the product or the technology or the training in the most favorable conditions.

00:30:18 Fabricio Peres

So you want to you, your intention is to test if the product works or not.

00:30:26 Fabricio Peres

Right.

00:30:26 Fabricio Peres

If the training is effective or not.

00:30:28 Fabricio Peres

So then you isolate all the other variables, you put in the best scenario, right?

00:30:34 Fabricio Peres

Leaders promoting the training or right budget allocated for that, right?

00:30:41 Fabricio Peres

For this new product, this new technology in the hands of the farmer.

00:30:45 Fabricio Peres

Now you're gonna do regenerative agriculture, you're gonna do cover cropping.

00:30:50 Fabricio Peres

Here are the seeds.

00:30:51 Fabricio Peres

Plant the seeds.

00:30:52 Fabricio Peres

I provide you the seeds.

00:30:54 Fabricio Peres

Let's organize a plot in your field and you do that.

00:30:58 Fabricio Peres

So you make everything perfect and then you say, hey, it worked.

00:31:04 Fabricio Peres

The cover crops, they improved the soil health a lot.

00:31:08 Fabricio Peres

That's great.

00:31:09 Fabricio Peres

We can go commercial.

00:31:10 Fabricio Peres

And then in the first season, you break because it's not like that in the real world.

00:31:16 Fabricio Peres

So all the other people, they are not, they are not perfect.

00:31:21 Fabricio Peres

Exactly.

00:31:22 Fabricio Peres

And they and they sometimes.

00:31:25 Fabricio Peres

Other so that's what you're saying, and then you say so then you fail because you isolate everything and then you think in one part of right.

00:31:34 RK Prasad

It is like in science, in lets say in chemistry, we say laboratory conditions, okay, we say pressure and temperature being constant.

00:31:48 Fabricio Peres

Yes, right.

00:31:49 Fabricio Peres

In Portuguese, yeah.

00:31:53 Fabricio Peres

Normal conditions of temperature and pressure.

00:31:56 RK Prasad

Pressure or when you go to buy an automobile, a car and you ask him what is the mileage per litre per gallon, he will say 40 kilometres under test conditions.

00:32:13 Fabricio Peres

And then you buy the car and then you go for 50.

00:32:19 RK Prasad

That's the whole thing.

00:32:20 RK Prasad

Now how do we?

00:32:22 RK Prasad

How do we solve this problem?

00:32:24 RK Prasad

Because I train a guy, he goes there, his boss will tell him, don't tell me all this new nonsense.

00:32:32 RK Prasad

This is how it works.

00:32:33 RK Prasad

You better work that.

00:32:36 Fabricio Peres

You know, you should not design your solution based on the promoters, right?

00:32:51 Fabricio Peres

So.

00:32:52 Fabricio Peres

In this case, you should not design when everything is right.

00:32:56 Fabricio Peres

You should design in the real conditions, right?

00:33:03 Fabricio Peres

So you should make sure that it resonates with the more skeptical ones, because if they buy into that, if the solution works in that context, the promoters will come for free.

00:33:20 Fabricio Peres

No.

00:33:20 Fabricio Peres

So designing the solution for training for a product going into the market, you know, you need to think about all of that.

00:33:31 Fabricio Peres

Recently, I've been working with a company that is going to Brazil.

00:33:35 Fabricio Peres

They have a software and then they were saying, you know, I mean, this software, we are already deploying this software.

00:33:44 Fabricio Peres

In Asia, in North America, in Europe.

00:33:46 Fabricio Peres

So let's just go to Brazil.

00:33:49 Fabricio Peres

We present that to the farmers and then it's clear.

00:33:53 Fabricio Peres

So it's a it's a it's a software that measures the carbon emissions, right?

00:34:01 Fabricio Peres

The footprint of the farm.

00:34:04 Fabricio Peres

And by measuring that, you can identify if there was a carbon reduction emission reduction.

00:34:11 Fabricio Peres

And then the company can trade that for credits, right?

00:34:15 Fabricio Peres

So that's right.

00:34:16 Fabricio Peres

So I measure and the improvements I can sell that.

00:34:21 Fabricio Peres

That's clear, right?

00:34:22 RK Prasad

But then we sounds straight.

00:34:24 Fabricio Peres

But then we went to Brazil and then we were talking and then I told the company, hey, look, let's hear, let's listen to the guys.

00:34:35 Fabricio Peres

Let's not just present.

00:34:36 Fabricio Peres

Hey, that's it.

00:34:37 Fabricio Peres

And so on.

00:34:38 Fabricio Peres

That's the benefit.

00:34:39 Fabricio Peres

No.

00:34:40 Fabricio Peres

Let's explain the objective.

00:34:43 Fabricio Peres

What do we want to achieve?

00:34:44 Fabricio Peres

So we want a solution that can help the farmer to capture more value out of the improvement of the practices that they are doing.

00:34:52 Fabricio Peres

So and so far, right?

00:34:53 Fabricio Peres

That's the outcome that we want to achieve together.

00:34:56 Fabricio Peres

Don't present the solution yet.

00:35:00 Fabricio Peres

Let's validate.

00:35:01 Fabricio Peres

Let's it, let's listen to them.

00:35:03 Fabricio Peres

And then we had a few meetings with different farmers, distributors, agronomists.

00:35:09 Fabricio Peres

And then at the end of the day, we said, we need to redesign the whole thing because the market is in a completely different level.

00:35:17 Fabricio Peres

The complexities there, they are very different than in other places.

00:35:21 Fabricio Peres

The practices that they are doing, they are different.

00:35:23 Fabricio Peres

They are thinking in the system.

00:35:24 Fabricio Peres

They are not thinking in the planting activity, you know.

00:35:30 Fabricio Peres

So that was a very good example in that sense, you know.

00:35:36 RK Prasad

Wonderful.

00:35:36 RK Prasad

So let us let us shift to an organizational environment where we need to train the sales team.

00:35:52 RK Prasad

Let's say we want to equip them to sell better, give better value to the farmers.

00:35:59 RK Prasad

Now these are homogeneous group of people.

00:36:05 RK Prasad

Maybe a little senior, maybe a little junior, but more or less the same responsibilities.

00:36:10 RK Prasad

And do you recommend that we also bring in the managers?

00:36:17 Fabricio Peres

I think that's not the right question.

00:36:20 Fabricio Peres

The right question should be ask them, ask the ones that are gonna get that and ask them.

00:36:32 Fabricio Peres

Because you might need to rethink on the whole structure of the training.

00:36:36 Fabricio Peres

They know.

00:36:37 Fabricio Peres

They know.

00:36:38 Fabricio Peres

I've been working with sales reps for a long time in the company.

00:36:41 Fabricio Peres

I mean, when I was responsible for stewardship, for sustainability, I had to do all these trainings with them and so on.

00:36:49 Fabricio Peres

And it was a really, really interesting, especially in my journey because I was coming from the country and then going to global and designing global trainings.

00:37:00 Fabricio Peres

You know, when I was in local, the global was saying, hey, this is the training.

00:37:05 Fabricio Peres

I would look at the training and say, nice, but nobody will understand at the end of the day what they need to do on tomorrow.

00:37:16 Fabricio Peres

And then I would go to the guys and say, look, this is the objective, the company, we have this agenda, we need to improve this outcome.

00:37:27 Fabricio Peres

What's the best way to do that?

00:37:29 Fabricio Peres

What do you need for that to happen?

00:37:32 Fabricio Peres

Are you lacking knowledge, any specific knowledge or knowledge is not the issue, is the incentive and so on.

00:37:41 Fabricio Peres

And then the guys, they have the answers, they knew the answers.

00:37:45 Fabricio Peres

That's their job.

00:37:46 Fabricio Peres

They are on a daily basis doing these things, you know.

00:37:49 Fabricio Peres

So of course, in some cases they didn't have the knowledge.

00:37:54 Fabricio Peres

I mean, in the case that I experienced, they didn't have the knowledge.

00:38:00 Fabricio Peres

As I mean, they thought they didn't have the knowledge, but the time we started to explain what was that, they said, okay, that's so just connecting the dots, it was enough to for them to realize that they knew that they had the knowledge.

00:38:13 RK Prasad

Wow.

00:38:14 Fabricio Peres

So typically these guys they know.

00:38:17 Fabricio Peres

So I think it's more about going and asking the why and how to these guys.

00:38:24 Fabricio Peres

The managers, of course, they are important because at the end of the day, they are the ones who need to give the incentives and share the risks.

00:38:32 Fabricio Peres

I was saying before, if that fails, if the guy changes behaviour and doesn't deliver the objectives that the manager set up, who is going to take the blame?

00:38:42 Fabricio Peres

Right.

00:38:42 Fabricio Peres

If there's is backing up, fine.

00:38:46 Fabricio Peres

So of course, the managers, they need to be involved, but you need to be very clear on.

00:38:53 Fabricio Peres

What's their role in the process, right?

00:38:57 Fabricio Peres

So it's not just, it's not about, hey, you need to do this training because then it becomes a compliance thing, correct?

00:39:05 RK Prasad

They will do it, but nothing happens and they will curse you for it, you know, exactly.

00:39:13 Fabricio Peres

And the other thing is, I'm gonna repeat that for the 3rd time.

00:39:16 Fabricio Peres

Please fix the Monday, fix the Monday on Monday.

00:39:22 Fabricio Peres

If it fails, is the manager going to blame the guy?

00:39:28 RK Prasad

Wow, I want to describe to you a very live problem which one of my customers is facing.

00:39:36 RK Prasad

OK, this is a company which is into water purification.

00:39:43 RK Prasad

So they sell their equipment and software and products to.

00:39:51 RK Prasad

Factories which use water.

00:39:54 RK Prasad

Now this particular vice president, he is in charge of digital products.

00:40:01 RK Prasad

Basically, they collect information of the processes from the customers, process it and sells it back as some kind of service.

00:40:12 RK Prasad

OK, that is a high level thing.

00:40:15 RK Prasad

Now he has, I mean the company has a large number of sales people who are highly qualified and fairly senior people.

00:40:26 RK Prasad

Now when this guy who is in charge of revenues from the software, these guys don't bother, OK.

00:40:39 RK Prasad

They don't try to go and educate the customer to say that he the customer will benefit from the software.

00:40:47 RK Prasad

So the whole chain is jammed and this person is highly frustrated.

00:40:53 RK Prasad

So if you were in my position, what will you tell him?

00:40:58 Fabricio Peres

As the customer, I mean, I don't know.

00:41:03 Fabricio Peres

I mean, that's a very high level description, right?

00:41:06 RK Prasad

But I know.

00:41:08 Fabricio Peres

Typically, what I see in this kind of situations that solution is not getting traction, and then the whole organization starts to be frustrated because targets are not being met.

00:41:22 Fabricio Peres

And then who to blame?

00:41:23 Fabricio Peres

Is that is the sales director, is the sales team, or is the strategic?

00:41:32 Fabricio Peres

I mean, at the end of the day.

00:41:35 Fabricio Peres

You need to ask the customer and companies tend to focus so much internally and not externally.

00:41:42 Fabricio Peres

And are they, are they addressing an issue, a challenge that their customer is facing?

00:41:49 Fabricio Peres

If they are, how they are packing the solution?

00:41:52 Fabricio Peres

So people tend to think about the sales process when the problem is might not be the process, the problem might be the solution.

00:42:05 Fabricio Peres

How they are packing everything and not the technology.

00:42:09 Fabricio Peres

Technology is one element of the solution, as I described in the video.

00:42:13 RK Prasad

Yes.

00:42:14 Fabricio Peres

So how they are packing all of that, right?

00:42:18 Fabricio Peres

And very often the bottleneck is there.

00:42:23 Fabricio Peres

I mean, with highly senior team and so on.

00:42:27 Fabricio Peres

I mean, I would, I would challenge if the sales process is the issue, maybe they have a solution issue.

00:42:35 Fabricio Peres

They are not packing the technology in a way that the clients.

00:42:40 Fabricio Peres

I'm not saying the product is bad.

00:42:42 Fabricio Peres

That's not what I'm saying.

00:42:43 Fabricio Peres

The product is one element, the conditions, the terms.

00:42:47 Fabricio Peres

I'm going to give an.

00:42:48 Fabricio Peres

Yeah, the risks.

00:42:50 Fabricio Peres

I'm going to give an example.

00:42:51 Fabricio Peres

I mean, we, there was a very good product in the portfolio, right?

00:42:59 Fabricio Peres

And it was doing everything that competitors were doing and more.

00:43:05 Fabricio Peres

And we were presenting to the farmer the more, right?

00:43:09 Fabricio Peres

It was a huge vigor.

00:43:11 Fabricio Peres

So your plant will be, will have an increased vigor.

00:43:15 Fabricio Peres

The farmer turned to us and said, I understand that nobody's doing that.

00:43:21 Fabricio Peres

But is this killing the pest that I have in soil?

00:43:25 Fabricio Peres

It was, but we were selling something different, something else, what they had, what they wanted or another situation.

00:43:35 Fabricio Peres

We had the best portfolio, the best coverage.

00:43:38 Fabricio Peres

We had every but the terms that we were asking the farmer to pay was you don't need to pay now in the beginning of the season.

00:43:47 Fabricio Peres

You can because it was for coffee.

00:43:50 Fabricio Peres

It's a different cycle than soybean and so on.

00:43:54 Fabricio Peres

You can pay us in October.

00:43:58 Fabricio Peres

So beginning of the year, you can pay in October for us was hey look we are giving.

00:44:04 Fabricio Peres

a big time for them to pay.

00:44:08 Fabricio Peres

They were not paying.

00:44:10 Fabricio Peres

They were not paying.

00:44:10 Fabricio Peres

And then we were saying, hey, we are failing.

00:44:13 Fabricio Peres

I mean, and then our market share was going down and everything else.

00:44:16 Fabricio Peres

Why is that?

00:44:17 Fabricio Peres

October was the worst month for the farmers to pay.

00:44:21 Fabricio Peres

Why?

00:44:21 Fabricio Peres

Because it was right after harvest, the prices, they were super low.

00:44:26 Fabricio Peres

They didn't have the cash because they were they were not selling the crops because they knew we was in the valley.

00:44:34 Fabricio Peres

So they were holding that to sell in a better price conditions.

00:44:38 Fabricio Peres

So then they were not capitalised, right?

00:44:40 Fabricio Peres

We were getting the money.

00:44:44 Fabricio Peres

OK, so we were asking them cash.

00:44:48 Fabricio Peres

In a very bad moment, we traded that.

00:44:53 Fabricio Peres

Lets get your crop, we trade your crop.

00:44:59 Fabricio Peres

So it was a benefit for the farmer because instead of paying cash.

00:45:03 Fabricio Peres

could give part of their production, we could capture the whole premium price.

00:45:10 Fabricio Peres

Then you unlock the whole thing from a 3rd or 4th player.

00:45:16 Fabricio Peres

We became the leaders.

00:45:19 RK Prasad

I can imagine.

00:45:20 RK Prasad

I can imagine because you went straight for the win win kind of solution.

00:45:26 RK Prasad

But that you can....

00:45:27 Fabricio Peres

Then the problem, not the product.

00:45:30 Fabricio Peres

The product was exactly the same.

00:45:33 Fabricio Peres

of selling, the engagement with the farmer, all the selling process was exactly the same.

00:45:40 Fabricio Peres

What changed was the offer, the solution that we were bringing to the farmer, the whole pack, right?

00:45:49 Fabricio Peres

Thinking, as you said, not in individual parts, but the whole system behind.

00:45:53 Fabricio Peres

So it's the crop is the terms, if the is the issue, is the past.

00:45:59 Fabricio Peres

So it's the whole thing.

00:46:02 Fabricio Peres

And then let's try to address that.

00:46:04 Fabricio Peres

And then we unlock.

00:46:06 RK Prasad

Wow, this is really, really valuable, Fabricio, really valuable, even for me personally, because we also sell our services to customers.

00:46:20 RK Prasad

And this is highly educative.

00:46:21 RK Prasad

And I would really encourage our sales and marketing people to really, you know, and even our operations people to listen to what you have said.

00:46:31 RK Prasad

So yeah, it is a wonderful podcast, one of my best I have done.

00:46:35 RK Prasad

I really, really enjoyed speaking with you.

00:46:38 Fabricio Peres

No, it was very nice from my side.

00:46:40 Fabricio Peres

Thank you very much for that.

00:46:42 RK Prasad

Thank you.

00:46:42 RK Prasad

Thank you.