Ken Free and Amy Wagner are two of the hardest working folks in sales. I’ve driven here to JLPN Inc. (Salem, Oregon) on a sunny day, to see what makes them tick. Turns out that the most important lesson they teach me is to be proactive with your customers. Make the first move.

Between the two of them, Ken and Amy have 50 years of experience helping JLPN grow and produce the finest bare root and container tree seedlings and rooted cuttings. That doesn’t mean they are content to rest on their laurels. Like any good team, they are always looking for ways to improve.

Ken tells me that a lot of their material goes out of state, and a perennial challenge is scheduling multiple deliveries to different customers out of the same large truck. It used to be that they would wait for customer A to call and request a delivery, then wait for customer B to ask for a delivery, always on a different date. After that it was a matter of negotiating between the customers to arrive at a single delivery day.

Now Ken builds the truck, using physical paper that he can shuffle and move. Once the puzzle is solved, and he has a full truck, including everything for customers A and B, he’ll give them a call and propose a delivery date. This all happens well ahead of when they would have previously reached out. “The customers like it. It’s a win-win,” says Ken.

The customers no longer have to remember to schedule their deliveries. Ken and Amy do the work for them. JLPN also gets a more efficient truck load, without all the overprocessing and back and forth between customers that no one has time for in the spring.

Another way Ken and Amy are making the first move is by working with customers to roll over orders into the next year. Amy tells me her customers “get busy just like anyone else.” Rolling over orders helps customers secure product well in advance. They can always adjust later, but there are fewer panicked last-minute calls trying to order trees that are no longer available. “They really appreciate it,” says Amy.

It also helps JLPN reduce overproduction. Now they can better plan rather than produce trees with no customer in mind. Amy tells me it’s a shame to “do everything to grow [the trees], and now it’s just gone.”

Amy and Ken are more than just a good sales team. They are partners for their customers. They are thinking several moves ahead, because they know that by doing so they are helping everyone out. It’s about, “mutual respect between us and the customers,” says Amy.

So go ahead, make the first move.

From the April 2025 issue of Digger magazine | Download PDF of article