Care personally while being direct

Early 2020, just before COVID-19 brought everything to a halt, we were unloading our first consignment of Ungraded onions procured from Nashik in Hyderabad.

The process of grading these onion and re-bagging them was in full swing. We had the supply ready to be sold but no demand to sell. Our team set out to meet the retailers, caterers and wholesalers to pitch why they should source Onion through us. The produce was onion , everyone we meet needs them but no one wants to shift from their current vendor, mandi or trader to us. Everyone asked us about the price alone.

We took samples to show that upto 95% of onions in a bag will be of same grade. They didn’t want to believe. We were at it for a week and only few bags were sold. The last one was to a caterer in the opposite end of city. I did that delivery since everyone left for the weekend having tired themselves selling the value of grade to buyers.

I was the founder, I hired a team to help sell graded produce model and they were getting some wins which I assumed was because they were just getting started. I was not part of the sale but that delivery introduced me the customer and his appreciation for graded produce, it was non existent.

So, for a week we were selling but people were buying onions not our model. Within the next 2 day, there was a national lockdown and we paused operations. I hunkered in and distracted myself with participating in a Hackathon and doing tons on reading on why grading is not prevalent in produce markets.

The problem of opening a bag and then finding ungraded onion was clearly a problem in economical sense. Yet the retailer is solely focused on price of the buying the produce and not the produce itself.

"A lot of visible problems that you can't seem to solve are secretly solutions you don't want to admit to adopting to problems you don't want to admit to having." - David  Maclver. 

They don’t treat ungraded onions as problem because they are not willing to admit that they buy from a specific wholesale/trader because they offer credit to them. Each of the bags a retailer purchases is on credit. They only pay the previous purchase when they go out for the next purchase. The trader or wholesaler is financing the retailers business. The financing is interest free albeit the retailers always buys from the trader or wholesaler.

The way we passed this hurdle once we resumed operations was by showing that we care very deeply about their business and for them to make more money, they need to source better. Offering them the graded bag in the morning and returning in the night to collect money in order for them to sell the produce and pay us.

Eventually with adoption we were able to bring down the logistics costs and sidestep from the process of selling produce. We enabled them to procure graded produce from the farmers in production regions and we charged them for logistics of it.

This week while I was reading the Radical Candor book, I also remembered our approach to selling. There were times when I would be radically candid with retailers that what they are doing is bullshit and if they want to be serious in business , they need to change things. Its not produce that they buy from us , it’s the model of procuring grade wise.

The book is centred around managing people but I think the 2x2 is reflective of how we sell as well. On one axis, it’s the measure of caring personally and on the other it is challenging directly.

I have been obnoxiously aggressive when selling to retailers when my patience waned and I pushed back aggressively because they are wrong and it is hurting their business. I have been empathetic to a fault when we were desperate to win in early days. And I had been hyperbolic in projecting the competency and being manipulatively insincere when the scale was non-existent. In my defence, I was hustling.

To recap, when presented with a customer who is not willing to solve the problem because they don’t want to admit to the main problem. It’s best to approach with Radical Candour and offer remedies that would help them address the problem with you.

It’s a similar story on the other side as well. Farmers in India want to solve for higher revenue of their harvested produce. This allows them to save face and blame fate when rates become volatile and they are on the loosing side. The problem they are unwilling to accept is that most of their harvested produce is not of highest grade which is why they don’t want to sell grade wise.

When we started grading produce at the farm, the problem became evident. Few bailed once they saw limited quantity of premium grade their harvested produce yielded. But most of them realised what was wrong and started addressing the problem with better post harvesting of produce. We were direct with them when we convinced them this is in the end good for them and we showed care because we didn’t reject their produce, just paid a different price for each grade unlike everyone else. It worked tremendously well.

Surprisingly whether selling to retailers in the past or enterprises at present, this approach has faired well so far for yours truly. I catch myself when I am wavering from Radical Candour.

Round up

I have been thinking about use of Generative AI in agriculture from India perspective. So far people are still figuring how to deploy them.

The focus is largely on how do we serve farmers better with Generative AI.

I believe AI should be exclusively deployed in back office work. Companies like Subjimandi.app would hire developers and designers to invest in app building for running a produce store. AI with claude code should be enough to build all tech required.

This reduces the cost of serving the farmer. You still deploy a huge ground force to engage them but organising and co-ordinating them could be executed by Agents.

Every company will be an AI company if you go by the marketing. Very few companies will focus on their core value proposition and use AI to accelerate it efficacy or efficiency. Rest will incorporate AI in only narrative and run with the latest rhetoric around them.

I am looking at this unfold from the sidelines.

Links that resonated

Not Knowing

Vaughn Tan wrote a summary page combining all his writing around the topic of not knowing. Its an interesting frame that I am going to use more often as the adoption of AI technology evolves.

There is no product

A thought provoking piece about advent of AI projects and the future of SaaS products. The round up is riff on this post.

Sign off

I was thinking about sales for most of the time while reading the book Radical Candour. The way I describe the book - 2x2 communicating framework, 3x3 subjective assessment grid and a loop of activities for decision making .

I completed 2 books so far. I set a lofty goal to hit this year and I am glad that I am making some progress on this.

This week was a good reminder that they are effectively two roles in software business, selling or building software. I am slowly transitioning from exlusively building to selling exclusively. Right now, I am doing both and it has been tiring and fun.

Signing off till next time,

Vivek, tired of shovelling snow this winter