Thanks for joining us, everybody. My name is Alex Tuttle. I'm a customer success manager here at Bushel. And, before I was working at Bushel, I spent seven years of my life working at a coop elevator locally here to the Fargo area. So with that, a lot of my springtime was sitting in a spreader, spreading fertilizer, or sitting in a chemical shed, giving chemical orders to farmers and just kinda helping out wherever I could. So we all know that agribusiness moves fast. We miss sales, some lost time, and that unnecessary risk can slow things down. When quoting takes too long and customer relationships live in notebooks and payments, slow payments can delay some cash flow. It puts pressure on your team and the bottom line. So today, we're gonna be discussing how agribusinesses can streamline their workflows, quoting, customer relationship management, and payments to move faster, stay organized, and get paid easier. But before we jump in, we're gonna do some introductions. So I introduced myself. We have Andrew from Michigan Ag and Roger from Reichman Services. So if you guys could go ahead and introduce yourselves, we can get started. Yeah. Thanks, Alex. My name is Andrew Greenhoe. I work for, Michigan agricultural commodities in Middleton, Michigan. And I've been here since two thousand and fifteen, after I graduated from Michigan State University with my bachelor's. I do, chemical purchasing, chemical sales, and then also managing the agronomy side out of our Middleton and Breckenridge locations. Great. I'm Roger Fitzke. I am general manager at Reichman sales. We're based out of Toluca, Illinois. We're we're, a generic ag chemical distributors, and we distribute to dealers, like Andrew and growers in twenty three states all east of the Rockies. Strictly ag chemicals. So Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you guys being here for this. So we all know that pricing in the agribusiness world shifts pretty fast with the moving markets. How do you guys ensure your sales team has the up to date product and pricing information, especially with that crazy up and down that we see, especially lately with all the political climate going on? In our end, it's, we we have our pricing on a team site. It's not available in an app CRM. So it's a it's a bit cumbersome, but we do have calls twice a week, especially with the volatility of the tariffs. And the generic ag chemical market is one that really gets affected quite significantly. It's very volatile from that standpoint, from load to load. So we try to communicate via phone and we would like to communicate more digitally. Sure. Andrew, anything to add there? Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing is is communication. Communication between, you know, the purchasing front and the the sales front. You know, when you're trying to keep, you know, a hundred plus skews current on pricing, communication is key. You know, it's time consuming to go through and constantly change prices and try to try to update, you know, the the Salesforce on where, you know, current prices are. So I think the biggest thing is communication, but, you know, having a way to streamline that process to cut a lot of the time out to take it for you doing individual products would be helpful in my thoughts. Yeah. Definitely. Communication's huge. And speaking, like, on the communication side with creating and sending price quotes to your customers, like, what challenges have you guys faced on that side of things? Like, how do those gaps not only impact your sales, but just trust with your customer base? Well, you you have customers that, they remember the last price you told them. Now that might have been thirty or sixty days ago, and the market has moved considerably, since that time. But memorializing that those quotes and stuff, we're not we don't currently use we're just getting into the Bushel Wallet, the CRM tool. We don't currently use that. So we're so we're we're hoping that our salespeople are keeping track of those quotes and stuff. Our our Internet site does, but our salespeople sometimes do and sometimes don't keep track of those quotes. No. I I agree. I agree with Roger hundred percent. You know, the the challenge is too especially in a ag retail spending, you know, we're doing custom application, we're buying grain, we're selling chemicals. So they're they're working with multiple different people within within MAC. So it it's, you know, that that creates a challenge on on keeping up with what's been shared to them and what information that may be. So like I said, it's a CRM program, you know, they use that a lot in the grain side. But on the agronomy side, you know, that's something we haven't used a lot, but that that would be helpful in tracking that, especially when you have multiple people working with the same customer. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And we all know farmers, they expect convenience. They want things done easily just like we all do with any sort of encounter we have with any business in our lives. So, like, how things are today, like, just with the quoting process, getting a price, like, what like, there's some quick, easy improvements that you guys could see on that whole process of just kinda getting the quote out to the farmer and how they can accept it, verbalize it? Like, what would be just some quick improvements in your guys' day to day? I I guess that that depends on on the generation that you're working with. You know, the younger generation such as myself, you know, I I prefer to do things mobile. I mean, if I can pull my phone out and do it on the click of a phone, I feel like that's that's crucial time savings. Whereas, you know, some on the on the older generation, they're more apt to do phone calls or paper or email. So I think I think there is a, a difference there on that side of it for sure. So being able to accept a quote and review a quote, from a mobile device, I think that would be big. We're able to do that on our website, but you have to get into the website. It isn't as easy as just hitting our our Reichman app. We don't have that quoting tool on there yet. I know you guys are working on it. I think one thing that probably Andrew's salespeople run into. Because I know our salespeople do run into the individual that does all the procurement and pricing is, there's only so many so much time in the day where they can get a hold of an individual like Andrew who's who's given out pricing and stuff. So there's that there's that whole time time suck. It could be a couple hours before that individual gets back to our salespeople and then on back to the customer. So there is a little customer frustration there, and it's it's something that we definitely wanna, alleviate as much as possible. Yeah. Yeah. I know I've been in that situation when I worked at the elevator, dumping a truck. Somebody shows up for chemical on a Saturday, and the agronomist is not working, obviously. Well, not obviously, but Mhmm. At that specific Saturday. And then you go to the shed, you find the chemical that they need, and then you have no clue how much it costs. I mean, it's just we'll send you the bill, and they're either okay with it or they're just kinda just makes things just kinda gray for the whole customer experience on that side. So, like, speaking on that, like, in terms of, like, mobile friendly pricing, quoting tools, with the lack of that, like, are there any other solutions you guys have looked at to kinda get the price out to your sales team just when they're out and about and for any other people at the elevator that could be in that situation where they just need a quick access to a price? I mean, currently, you know, we're we're still working off, you know, email and price sheets and sending price sheets that way. But, you know, in this in this day and age, it's it's not like you're you're tied to a desk anymore. I mean, mobile voice is key to where if you had it in a in a web based platform or app platform, you know, versus going through, you know, sixty emails trying to find that one price sheet, that that that would be that would make a big difference, especially in getting the information to the grower quicker and also your Salesforce. Yeah. I mean, we're pricing moves, you know, it may not move a lot, but on truckloads of glyphosate and and that type of stuff, it's everything. So our people can see it on a team site, but, we would like to have it a little more easily accessible. One thing that we don't do is, you know, a customer can send in a quote. We get the price back to them. They can't just kinda purge through our price list and and then turn around and, you know, do something with it, take it to their retailer or something. We don't we don't flash price in in in marketing or or anything. It's it's a communication between our salespeople and the customer. Sure. Sure. And then kinda changing paths a little bit back to the quotes. Like, the lack of quotes available to your team, well, especially, like, past quotes, historical sales data, like, easily accessible. Have you noticed that as an impact to your business in terms of, like, lost sales or just slow response time to the farmer, especially if something they've ordered in the past? And if so, like, have you guys tried to remedy that in any way? Yeah. So I guess on on my end, I've I've never deleted an email or a text message, which takes up a lot of space. But I've learned being able to search those emails or text messages, you know, seems to make it more efficient to be able to find past conversations versus having to manually enter all that information and just say a CRM system. It seems to be more time consuming than just being able to search that information, you know, through a text message and email or or whatever platform it's on. And through our website, if if there's quoting that goes on through the website, that is memorialized. So you can go back and look at it. Otherwise, they're doing what Andrew said. Our salespeople are digging through text messages and emails and notes and and all of that. So Sure. Sure. It needs to be organized better for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Organization is crucial, especially, like, with a chemical quote. If there's a big order for a specific field, making sure that stuff is complete and accurate is crucial. And, like, if you guys have ever noticed, like, if somebody's developing a quote or a spray plan and you go to the chemical warehouse and, like, the paperwork just isn't complete or there's something missing, like, how do you guys double check that work to make sure nothing gets nothing gets forgotten? I mean, the the biggest thing is, is is proofreading those quotes. But an issue that that we run into, especially when you're dealing with generic chemicals, is, you know, you take any product and there could be twenty five different names for that product. So so the struggle is is is being able to have all those SKUs with that product name for somebody to go out to the shed and be able to find that product. And, so I think, you know, looking over quotes, you know, and proofreading to make sure you got the correct name for the SKU or the brand you have in the shed, you know, that's that's definitely something that's important, but also hard to keep up with not knowing what brand specific product you may have, which is a challenge, especially with generics. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew's right. I mean, we, you know, we'll have we could have five different versions of the same product And understanding what's an inventory and and those values and stuff while we're quoting, you know, having access to that information is is definitely nice to have. So, I don't remember quite the question, Alex. I would Yeah. What you Yeah. No. You Sorry. You hit it pretty good there, Roger. Alright. Thanks. Yeah. So, like, what's the complexity and everything, multiple SKUs? Like, how do you guys like, in terms of reducing errors and labor intensity in your guys' quoting process today, are there any tools or just sort of workflows business business wise workflows you guys have implemented to just try to reduce as many errors as possible? We do we do do a workflow. So, yeah, that's where I was headed. I'm sorry. We have what we call a a booking. So the booking goes back to emailed back to the salesman and the customer of what, you know, the perceived order is. So once that's okayed, and then we put it in the hopper for shipment and, and go from there. So we even like the fact that a customer pays off of the booking program, so we get our money prior to shipment. Because about half of our business is paid for before it goes out the door. And the other half of that's so that's how Yeah. We do the same same process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The bookings bookings are huge. And farmers and the sales team, they all need access to the information, not only the bookings, but the invoices, statements, etcetera. So now there's a lot of limited visibility of that data in you guys' operations. So, like, what what tools could improve accessibility to all of that financial data for your sales team and the farmer? I think being able to tie whichever quoting system you're using to your current, billing system or whatever system you're using to create sales orders, bookings, invoices, you know, having something that goes back to mobile to where you can see that information from any place because it it doesn't you you can get a phone call and be be anywhere and not tied to your computer to where you can see that information. So I I think the the having that information tied together from your mobile device versus whichever system you are using to create these bookings is is important especially for giving them that on the fly information when they want the information. Yeah. So we we kicked off starting using the the Bushel Wallet, our customers have. So they can see invoices and when they're due. There's there's a lot more communication that we wanna see happen, like notifications of when payments are due, etcetera. But Andrew's right. We have twelve salespeople probably, and twelve different ways of them getting the order into, our customer service team. And we need to consolidate that because it becomes a quite the headache of tracking. Some of the guys have to be tracked down a lot more than others as far as the organization. So I'm with Andrew, like a digital ordering tool that rolls into your ERP system, or at least alleviates a lot of that, questions that the customer service staff has would be great. But, the customer able to look up the invoices through the wallet, that that that's very helpful. The salespeople can see that same information, but we're just at the beginning stages of it. So, we really look forward to what that's gonna bring to us. Yeah. Yeah. You guys will see some see some great changes in your customer experience there. And speaking of invoices and cash flow, we all know how important cash flow is to not only farmers, but the ag retailer. How do you guys' accounts receivable ratios impact your working capital and other financial risk, And, like, what practices help you guys stay on top of it? Okay. I'll go. So we our, our average day sales outstanding is right around twelve days. We wanna get it back down to five so we can utilize our utilize that working capital to go buy more inventory. So, we are owned by a bigger corporation, and you kind of get, if your return on that invested capital from your owner, if you have a better return than the other divisions, you tend to get more more options, to to help your business. So it it's a big key to us. Plus we're spread out. We're selling people in twenty three different states. So we don't wanna be chasing people down for accounts receivables and letting stuff get extended out too far. So it it's very key for us to manage our business because, you know, that customer might be two states away from one of our sales people, and it's, you know, it's a bit of a process to track that down. And customers, they wanna pay fast. They wanna pay on time. And sometimes they forget an invoice, and it becomes very apparent in this wallet system that, you know, they're past due. So it's it's a cool tool. Yeah. I mean, pre prepay is is key. I mean, especially when you have, you have high interest cost, high cost of money. Prepay is key in managing your accounts receivable, especially with the current cost of money and slim slimmer margins on the return for the grower. You know, we we we do the prepay on most of all product that goes out of here. And then also we can, set growers up with different, you know, financing options if they're if they're looking for those those kind of options. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Farmers expect a lot of flexible payment options, checks, credit cards, lines of credit. What trends are you guys seeing in payment preferences, and, like, how is your guys' business adapting to that? Yeah. With us here, I mean, checks are still probably the largest percentage, but I would say we have a lot of, a lot of foot traffic. So, I mean, with with growers picking up grain checks, you know, we we do get a lot of foot traffic that way. So I would say checks are still the largest percentage, but I see the trend. We're gonna be headed more towards doing ACHs or ETFs, and also credit cards, you know, especially with the younger generation, versus, you know, writing writing checks and either mailing it or or dropping it off manually. So I I proceed with time, probably the check usage will go down and one up more electronic. Yeah. For us, checks take about ten to fourteen days to get to Central Illinois. It's very rural where where it's at. So that that's a that's a problem. But ACH has grown considerably, and now the wallet is is starting to get some traction. So that's nice. We do take credit cards, but, it's it's maybe a couple percent of our business. It's not a big deal, but from there, we're in the CRM chemical spot, so we don't get a tremendous amount of prepay like Andrew would for fertilizer and maybe seed. I don't know if you sell seed, Andrew, but we're we're we don't get a tremendous amount of grower prepay, but we do prepay our our, the chemical companies, the main ones that we do business with. We do massive amounts of prepay with them. Anyway so we're we're trying to get our money in as soon as possible. Right. Right. No. That's great. Well, that's all we have for today. Andrew and Raj, appreciate you guys' time. Learned a lot from you guys. Looking forward to continuing the conversations wherever they may lead. So thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.