Scott Downey, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University — As a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue Univ., Scott Downey is coordinator of the sales and marketing degree program. He joined the university on a full time basis in 2000 after spending 15 years in the financial services industry. He is the lead author of ProSelling: A Professional Approach to Selling in Agriculture and Other Industries.

Downey teaches in many of the center’s programs. He is a frequent speaker and consultant for agribusiness industry sales teams on professional development topics like precision selling, sales management and competitive sales strategies. The discovery process he created has been adopted by Fortune 300 companies and has been presented all over the world.

Downey says employee satisfaction and developing employees is directly related to customer relationship and thus dealership profits. “Managers influence sales behaviors in short term ways (motivating salespeople, coaching, directing sales efforts, etc.) and in long term ways (offering training, hiring, developing compensation, etc.) But good managers also, well-manage,” he says.

He shares 4 activities of sales managers: setting goals, implementing plans, measuring outcomes and analyzing which activities will accomplish goals in the next round.

He stresses that sales managers need to not only measure the outcomes of the sales process, but also the factors that lead to them. “The quality of the sales efforts, the factors that drive effectiveness and the conversations salespeople have with their customers are all inputs to the sales process that managers can…