1 min read

Defending Your Bid

Philip Luce Apr 8, 2025

Value Proposition

Your grain bid expresses your opinion of your own value to the people you are buying from. Pushing the bid a few cents seems like a small concession, but a few cents is a significant percentage of your margin and giving up margin is not a strategy for success in the grain business.

The race to being the best bid is a race that everyone loses.

Your bid is an expression of your value - how do you define that value and who do you need to defend it to?

First, you have to be valuable. None of this works if you are indistinguishable from every other grain buyer.

What are you doing that other buyers aren't doing, or what are you doing better/faster/more efficiently/in a more friendly way than everyone else?

You must have value and be able to articulate it clearly so that you can defend it when necessary.

Now, who does it need defended to?

1. Yourself
You will not be able to convince anyone else of something you don't believe. To have a prayer of making anyone else see your value, you must see it yourself.

2. Your team
Depending on your role this may mean a team that you are leading, people you are working alongside, or people up the chain of command from you. Everyone on the team needs to understand your company's value, believe in it, and be ready to stand up for it when necessary.

These two things can go a long way toward making item three unnecessary. When you and your team believe in your value, it's amazing how much less often others question it - because you are making the value abundantly clear in how you conduct every part of the business. Value speaks for itself.

There will be times, though, when item three is necessary.

3. The people you are buying from
Most of the work here is done before the conversation ever starts. It's all too easy to concede margin in the moment if you aren't prepared. This is where everything above comes in. Feel good about what you are worth and be ready to explain what your value above and beyond your bid adds to the grower's business. Above all, don't feel bad about the fact that your business exists to generate a profit. The better you are doing financially, the better things you can do to help your customers and community.