We’re Not There Yet But We Know Where We’re Going

This is the first blog in a new thought leadership series from the team at Traction Ag. We’re opening up the hood to share what we’re working on—and how we’re building a better business to serve farmers more effectively. The posts in this series will come from different voices from across the company, giving you a look at how we’re evolving Traction: from the way we support customers, to how we design the product and bring it to market.

Our goal is simple: build something that truly helps farmers succeed, and do it in a way that’s focused, sustainable, and grounded in what works—not just what looks good in a slide deck. Whether you’re a customer, a partner, someone looking to become a partner or someone building in agtech, we hope this gives you a transparent view into how we’re thinking—and where we’re going next.

Building and selling software to farmers is really hard

We just wrapped selling season for our accounting product at Traction Ag, and it was enlightening.

Not in the “we’ve cracked the code” sense, but more like, “we’ve confirmed the code, and are working on cracking it.”

Looking at the history (ie last 10 years) of agtech, there have really been three sales models that have been used:

1. Boots on the ground
2. SaaS-style inside sales
3. Reseller/channel sales

I’m not going to do a full evaluation of these different approaches, but anyone who has been in the ag space can point to plenty of examples of each. Traction went with door #2. We started with a version of a traditional SaaS approach: trial based, picked up by a phone-based sales team, personalized onboarding, and exceptional support. And it truly worked for us.

We were scrappy, and landed those first 10 customers. Then 50. Then 100. Then 500. And it was somewhere between 100 and 500 that the model started to groan. Not externally to our customers so much, but it really put a lot of burden on our team.

The strategies that fuel early growth—flexibility, brute force, “yes” to everything—start to falter as you scale.

You begin to see it in onboarding challenges, support queues, and those once-rare edge cases becoming daily occurrences. Our team affectionately describes the period from harvest to plant as “the marathon sprint”. Now that farmers are getting back in the field, we get a brief opportunity to take a breath. But then it’s back to work, building the structure that will allow us to support the volume of farms we intend to work with over the coming years.

Our Guiding Principle Hasn't Changed

At Traction Ag, our purpose is straightforward: help farmers thrive by simplifying the tracking, organization, and management of their financials.

This principle guides every decision we make across marketing, sales, onboarding, product, and support.

It’s allowed us to build a reputation for having the best support and team in the industry. This capability is at our core. We can never lose this, even more than a differentiator, it’s our superpower.

But we also recognize that we can’t continue growing by simply adding more people. It’s not sustainable for us or our customers. Anyone in ag no doubt has examples they can point to of a company who gains initial traction in the market, grows costs too aggressively, and ends up folding.

This not only hurts the company, but it also hurts the farmer. They trust their data and critical aspects of their business to a tech company, and then that company is no longer there for them.

The skepticism farmers have for new software companies is well earned. The reality is that for us to be able to accomplish our purpose, we have to be around. Building a sustainable company and growing responsibly matters.

So, how do we become scalable enough to get to 5,000, 10,000, or 100,000 customers without losing what makes us strong?

We don’t have all the answers yet, and there isn’t a simple blueprint to follow in this space. But we know the right questions to ask, we’re learning quickly, and building with purpose.

Our THREE Big Bets

One of my favorite expressions is “strategy is about tradeoffs.” Lots of ideas are great in a vacuum. But business isn’t conducted in a vacuum, and you can’t do everything. So if you have 100 pennies, where do you put them?

1. Partnerships as a Scalable Channel

When a farmer is looking for a new product, they start with the people they already work with and trust. These people are retailers, CPAs, agronomy advisors, technology partners etc.

We’re building systems to support these trusted partners, and have been providing integrations with technology partners like Climate FieldView™, John Deere and Plaid for some time now.

This year we are rolling out retail/ co-op partnerships that allow expense data from our partner to flow directly into our customers’ accounting system. We launched our first public integration with FS/GROWMARK in March, and have another one set to launch later this summer.

Next up, we’re launching a program to collaborate with accountants and CPAs to bring our product to market, a concept we have been testing for a while and are excited to move forward with.

Partners reach out to work with us not because they are looking for another product in their bag to go sell (we don’t have any direct reseller partners). They reach out because their lives are better if their farmer customers have an easier time tracking and managing their financials, and that’s exactly what we do.

2. Add Self-Service Functionality Throughout the Customer Journey

There are times when our customers simply need to talk to us. Support issues, additional questions about how to do something in the product… these are great conversations and we love them.

But there are other things – access to educational content, learning how to set up their account, managing payment methods, where customers crave self service. They want the ability to solve their own issues without friction and handholding. We’ll still be here when they need us, but we’re investing in systems, education, and automation that make the product easier to use at scale.

It’s about putting the farmer first and giving them a choice – we’re here to help if you want to talk with us, and we provide the resources and capabilities to do it yourself if that’s what you prefer.

3. The Creation of a Strategic Accounts Team to Support our Most Complex Customers

Beyond our Accounting capabilities, Traction Ag has acquired multiple businesses over the past few years (Granular and Conservis). These customers continue to get a tremendous amount of value from the product, but also require a very different service model than our customers using our Accounting products.  

To make sure we are providing the most value to these customers and ensure these accounts are long-term growth drivers, we will fully dedicate the appropriate resources for long term success.

A Simple Yet Powerful Belief

If the right type of customer has the right product set up correctly and knows how to use it, they’ll see the value and a good chunk will choose to purchase.

At the core of our strategy is a simple hypothesis:

So, our model isn’t about “selling” harder. Not everyone is a fit for our product, and the people that are might not be ready to buy. If we have to chase them and drag them across the finish line to become customers, three things are now true:

1. That customer just became really expensive to acquire
2. That customer likely did not have a great experience purchasing the product
3. That customer is very likely to churn next year

All of those things break our business model. We need farmers to buy, but we also need them to buy again and ideally tell their friends.

If we go back to our hypothesis, what do we need to focus on to be successful?

• Getting the product into the hands of the right customers
• Helping them get set up fast
• Ensuring they are equipped to use it

A perfect example of “simple, not easy”.

What's Next in the Series

In the upcoming posts, we’ll delve into:

• Who we’re building for (and how we focus our efforts there)
• How we get the product into their hands (without cold calls and spam)
• How we help them succeed faster and with less friction

We’re not perfect, but we’re committed. And we’re building something farmers can rely on for the long haul. If you’re navigating the challenges of scaling in agtech, or curious about our journey, follow Traction Ag on LinkedIn. We’ll share our insights, missteps, and progress as we strive to build a go-to-market engine that truly serves our customers.