Are a farmer’s purchasing decisions impacted by emotions?

I was talking with someone the other day who was comparing B2B with B2C marketing, and about how B2B marketing is all rational and fact-based, while consumer marketing is more emotion-based. I read once that all decisions are emotional, and we use facts to justify our emotional purchases. I don’t know if all that is true, but I do know that while farming is a business, farmers are human, and they have emotional purchase drivers – they just look a lot like logical ones.

Here’s a few I’ve noticed:

PRIDE: Pride comes from success, success comes from doing things right and making good decisions. Do you remember pride in your messages? Think “So God made a farmer,” for a message that appeals to pride.

FEAR: Farmer’s often don’t make changes because of fear – the fear of losing everything over one bad decision. Every decision is risky, so how do you reduce fear and risk in your marketing approach? Extended warranties are a great example of a way to reduce fear and stimulate purchases, probably at a very low cost to the manufacturer.

GRIEF: Losses make for fast decisions. If one grain bin burns up today, tomorrow all the others have heat monitors.

SUSPICION: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.That’s why smart farmers demand proof that claims are true. Alleviate suspicion with third-party, replicated, real-world studies, not just lab reports.

CONFIDENCE: Repeated successful experiences make farmers confident in their suppliers and their choices. Continually doing the right thing for your farmer customers is the way to create trust, which leads to confidence. I hear from some sales reps that farmers give them a hard time at first, but then they realize it was a process to see if the farmer could be confident that what they told them was true. Building confidence is huge in becoming the supplier of choice.

SATISFACTION: At the end of the day, at the end of the season, at the end of a year, satisfaction is the emotion all of us want to feel. How does your product or service create satisfaction?

And here’s another look at “So God made a farmer,” because Paul Harvey is still the best.