Three things decide whether a business lasts, and together they make a simple agribusiness growth strategy. We call them soil, seed and network. None of them is a secret. The challenge is that most companies are strong in one, decent in another, and quietly neglecting the third.
Soil, seed and network
Soil is the product. Good soil is the price of entry. Without a quality product nothing else grows, and in our experience most agribusinesses are strongest here. Seed is the story. Between two similar products, a clear story often decides who gets chosen. Good soil with no seed grows weeds: plenty of capacity, nothing anyone remembers. Network is your contacts and your funnel. The buyers, partners and relationships that keep the crop moving. This is the one most companies leave in people's phones.
What is at risk
When the product is strong but the story is missing, you compete on price, however good the work is. When the story is clear but the network lives in a few contact lists, the business is rented, not owned. People change jobs, move on and retire, and the relationships go with them. A business built that way can't easily scale, because it can't easily be passed on.
The frustration is easy to recognise: a strong product, a solid reputation, and still a feeling that growth depends on a handful of people, and that those people can't be everywhere.
And if nothing changes?
The business keeps doing what it has always done, and that may be a perfectly good living. But it grows only as fast as its best people can stretch, and it carries a risk that is hard to see from the inside: the day one of those people steps away, part of the harvest steps away with them.
What we think you should do
Take ten minutes with your team and do this honestly.
- Score each of the three from 1 to 5. Soil, seed, network. Disagreements between team members are useful information.
- Work on the weakest one first. It is usually the seed or the network, rarely the soil.
- For the network, start a simple shared record: who they are, how you met, when you last spoke, what happens next. It isn't glamorous, but it turns a personal asset into a company asset.
Product first, story second, network third. Then the harvest repeats, season after season.
Let’s talk about your next season.
Bring us the challenge. We’ll start by listening.
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