Date: November 12, 2026
By Tim Hassinger, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board, Intelinair
The prepay meeting is where a retailer shows a grower what its advice is worth. What worked this season? What should we do differently? Where will next year’s dollars earn the most?
Price will always be part of that conversation. Data from the grower’s own fields gives the retail team firmer ground for explaining its recommendations and the return it expects from them.
Many retailers are dealing with sales team turnover. They’re hiring talented people, some without an agricultural background. If those new employees get the grower’s field history and time to prepare with the agronomy team, they walk into the meeting with something to stand on.
In my view, having data behind your position in a prepay discussion is more important today than I have ever seen it. The season review belongs in that discussion.
Start with the decisions
A good season review ties the season’s results to the decisions the grower and agronomist are facing. A field performance summary gives context; the next question is what to do about it.
At Intelinair, building season LookBack reports with our retail partners has taught us to tie every finding to a decision: planting timing, disease management, nitrogen applications, hybrid placement, seeding rates.
Putting the available imagery, weather, and field records together helps set priorities. What should the grower keep doing? What should change, and on which acres? Where the records support it, what will it cost and what is the estimated return?
It also helps to say what kind of finding each one is. A yield gap from yield maps is measured. A financial estimate is modeled. The cause is the agronomist’s interpretation. Acknowledging what the records can’t answer can build confidence in the rest of the review.
Understand the result before changing the recommendation
In one review, several poorly drained soybean fields yielded 10 to 15 bushels per acre less than the rest of the operation. Most of those acres were planted to a variety that performs best in the region on well-drained ground.
Without that context, the grower might decide to drop the variety across the farm. With the field conditions and results side by side, the agronomist has a sharper question to work on: how did drainage, variety placement and a wet season combine on those particular fields?
The yield gap and the crop stress are measured. Explaining the cause and deciding what to recommend is still the agronomist’s job. The answer may be to move that variety off the poorly drained acres and keep it on the rest of the farm.
Recognize what is already working
Another review covered an operation that had a good year. Much of the value came from confirming which practices to keep.
Where hybrid records were available, placement matched the soils. In one soybean field, the areas with lower emergence ended up yielding more than the rest of the field. That finding gave the team useful context when considering next year’s approach to stand management.
The review also flagged nutrient-deficient areas. The recommendation was to keep better nitrogen application records and check those fields before the in-season pass. Weeds affected very few acres, so targeted scouting made more sense than changing the herbicide program.
Telling a grower what is working, or where they can spend less, can be worth as much as recommending something new. When a new product is on the table, the grower should know what it costs, what evidence supports the expected response and how much uncertainty is involved. An untreated check strip can show whether it paid on that farm.
Work with the records available
A grower doesn’t need to have used a digital platform all season to get a review. Historical imagery, weather data, and whatever planting, application and harvest records exist can be pulled together after the fact. The review can start with partial harvest data and be updated as yield maps come in.
The records set the scope. Without hybrid information, there’s no placement analysis; without application records, a treatment is hard to assess. Those gaps are worth naming, because they show the grower what to start recording next season. Growers trust a review that is upfront about what is known and what isn’t known yet.
Prepare as a team
Going through the findings together before grower meetings gives the retail team time to check them against what it knows about those fields and agree on the recommendations it can stand behind.
For a new salesperson, that prep work provides field history, a list of questions to ask and a starting point with the agronomist. And when people change jobs, a written record of the operation keeps the relationship from starting over.
The goal is a meeting where the grower knows which recommendations count most for that operation and how to tell next fall whether they paid off.
That’s the prepay conversation I want our retail partners to have. The retailer can show what its advice is worth, and the grower has a sound reason to commit next year’s dollars.
Tim Hassinger is CEO and Chairman of Indianapolis based Intelinair.
