Posted by David on April 24, 2012 under Advertsing, Marketing | 
Two neighboring farmers would meet along the property line of their farms each day to have lunch together.
One of the farmers would open his lunch box each day and exclaim “cheese sandwich all I ever get is a cheese sandwich.”
Finally one day his friend suggested “Why don’t you tell your wife to pack you something else?”
To which the farmer replied “Tell my wife? I pack my own lunch.”
I talk to farmers on a daily basis who aren’t making the income they want from their small farm. They tell me how hard it is to get customers or how tough the farmers markets have become with the huge growth of both markets and farmers all trying to get the same customers.
Some of the things I commonly hear is something like:
- Money is tight folks aren’t spending as much.
- People shop at several markets and aren’t always at the one I sell at
- How do you find customers?
- How do you advertise?
- You have HOW MANY regular customers!?
- You farm full time?
While it would take a book to properly answer all these questions, I can tell you one problem I consistently see with small farmers.
They don’t make marketing the #1 priority of their farm business.
When it comes to farmers markets most rely on the market to drive traffic to their venue.
Big mistake.
There are many things that can be done to bring customers not only to the market but directly to your table. Don’t rely on someone else to do your marketing for you. I’m afraid many farmers have simply adopted the commodity farmers model of “I’ll concentrate on growing and producing the farm products and someone else can do the marketing.”
The problem with that particular model is:
- It ends up costing you more i.e. somebody wants a cut for helping you market your goods.
- You don’t have no control over your business income.
- It’s hard to establish a solid relationship with customers.
- You are not in the drivers seat when it comes to producing income when you need it.
Don’t be simply riding the trend of many people buying local or from a small farm.
What’s your plan to capture and keep as much of the business as you can while the trend lasts?
If don’t have this type of plan in place you will lose business to those who do.
As the trend grows it will be harder to differentiate your products from the guy down the road or at the other market. Prices will began to fall as more farmers come to the table.
Even if the trend continues for a long time the serious marketers will come to the surface and capture the majority of customers.
As one gentleman put it “the time to get better is when things are good.” Don’t wait until your market share is falling to get a system in place to market your farm products or worse yet think you have all kinds of time to build up your customer base.
No you can’t just farm and get rich…you have to have a strong marketing system.
Until next time…
Learn how to drastically increase your sales of any farm product by reading my latest ebook, The Secrets of Selling Your farm Products Revealed.
Posted by David on March 6, 2012 under Advertsing, Marketing |
A recession is a transference of wealth from the meek to the bold - Dan Kennedy
I love Dan’s definition of a recession. While it seems to hard to nail down the Fed says $878 billion dollars will circulate through the United States economy in 2012.
The question we have to asked ourselves is “how much of that will I capture for my business
Here’s some tips:
Check up on your attitude - W. Clement Stone said in the midst of the depression “I did know the opportunities were unlimited. For sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman—not the attitude of the prospect.”
It’s very common to have customers remark on fuel cost going up or food prices increasing or a million other topics that only accentuate the negative. Resist getting into these conversations.
Work on being a place that is positive and upbeat. Customers buy more from those types of business.
Tap Into Consumer Mentality. Match It – Customers have money. They are just more reluctant to let go of it in a down economy. Their mentality has changed. They are holding on to their money and less likely to spend it frivolously. That doesn’t mean they won’t spend it or they only want cheap food. Actually quite the contrary. Many people are looking for a way to make themselves feel better in less expensive ways.
Talk to your customers about less expensive ways to have fun, feel good, etc. An example would be offering “special breakfast package” or a farm visit they can bring the kids to see your new baby goats etc.
Coach Your Employees or Helpers about How to Talk to Customers – Part of their job is to sell and influence buying decisions not talk about their life is or how rotten the state of the economy with customers.
Customers don’t contact you or come to your farm to hear bad news. They can turn on the radio or read the newspaper if they want that. They come to you to find something they want and have a positive buying experience.
Farmers take heed: There’s enough bad news in the air, without adding fuel to the fire. When customers come to do business with you, they want to feel good. They want to feel good about buying.
Action Tip: Spend the next few weeks thinking about positive ways to present your products as well as checking up on everyone’s attitude at your farm.
Learn how to drastically increase your sales of any farm product by reading my latest ebook, The Secrets of Selling Your farm Products Revealed.
Posted by David on September 30, 2011 under Marketing |
I have never sold my farm products at a farmer’s market. I talk to farmers who do and they have been saying for some time now that business isn’t any better this year than last or some have said sales are lower for them.
Several have complained of more markets opening up in the town or city where they are a vendor and I’m sure that has had some impact.
According to the USDA 1,000 new markets opened in 2010. Divided by 50 states that is an average of 20 per state!
A New York Times Article on August 20 2011 has many farmers complaining and some actually saying they are not making money anymore at markets. Bigger cities are opening up markets too close to one another. The short of it is, many markets are becoming saturated.
Stacy Miller, executive director of the Farmers’ Market Coalition, a nonprofit organization that supports farmers’ markets, said that the growth had been a boon to most communities and that many places still lacked markets that connect residents with fresh, healthful food.
But, she acknowledges, some markets are saturated. One reason is that more community groups want to open farmers’ markets without doing “sufficient planning to ensure the demand is keeping up with the supply,” Ms. Miller said.
One farmer in the New York Times article stated his sales had been cut in half over the last five years.
According to a study by Oregon State University, 62 farmers’ markets opened in Oregon from 1998 to 2005, and 32 failed.
I sell pork, beef, and chicken and I know most every local farmers market has several meat vendors. The bulk of them are the slaughter houses/butcher shops. They have found the markets as a great way to bolster sales.
This is a sign of things to come. Sooner or later, the farmer’s market is not going to be a viable marketing venue for many small farms.
What can you do?
Start working now to establish other more profitable ways to move your products. My business continues to grow and I am confident it will continue no matter how many farmers markets open up.
Until next time…
Get my latest ebook The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed and have customers coming to you instead of competing at farmers markets for the customers who come through.
Posted by David on May 24, 2011 under Marketing |
A wise person once said this: “You either have to be first, best or different.” I couldn’t agree more when it comes to small farm direct marketing. Would you like dynamite results in your farm sales? Work on all three!
Let’s take a look at these three rules a bit closer.
Rule #1 Be The First
Always try to be the first when it counts most. You can be the first to bring a new product to the market or the first to catch a mistake on a customer’s order. Either way it’s good to be first!
Ask yourself how many times am I first? How can I be first more often? Evaluate your farm business and determine where being first matters the most. Then work to accomplish it.
Rule #2 Be The Best
Always, always strive to be the best you can be. The best source of a certain product, the best at educating customers, the best display at the farmer’s market. Whatever it is, try to be the best. Being the best you can be makes you feel better and causes potential customers to be drawn to you. I didn’t say perfect – I said best. People appreciate it when they can see you are trying to be the best in your field. They want to do business with you.
Rule #3 Be Different
I teach this constantly because it so essential to your farm. Figure out what makes you different from any other farm or farmer. Can’t think of anything? You are doomed from the start for mediocrity.
If you are no different from any other place customers can buy your products then the only thing you can focus on is being the lowest price. That is a no win situation for you AND the customer. Think about it, you will end up out of business and the customer will have to go to the farm who charged enough to stay in business.
Take a good look at these three rules and focus on them in your farm business. You’ll be glad you did and so will your customers.
Until next time…
Get David’s special FREE report “Three Key Elements of Small Farms – Building a Successful Foundation.” Click Here for your free report before your neighbor does!
Posted by David on March 15, 2011 under Marketing, Tools to Increase Farm Sales |
The mind set with which you approach your small farm sales is critical to your success. If you approach selling direct from the farm as a traditional retail operation it will require a completely different set of parameters to operate by than if you approach your business as a direct marketing endeavor.
I’ll confess right up front I am biased towards direct marketing. I posted a while back as to why I don’t sell at farmer’s markets.
To me they encapsulate the retail mindset of selling farm products. You set up and essentially wait for customers to show up to buy.
I realize that farmers can do very well at these type of venues, but I see a huge amount of risk and loss of control. Take for example the farmer’s market closes up shop. Where do all the customers go? How many of them do you have a way to contact? Do you have a relationship outside the market with them? If you answered “no” to any of those questions you will take a big hit if that ever happens. Risky and not much control over what happens I say!
Contrast that with direct marketing of your farm products. You have a large diverse group of people that you actively initiated a relationship with.
Wouldn’t you rather have a large group of customers that isn’t dependent on them getting out of bed and coming down to see you at the market?
I contend that in some ways we are training the customers who want to buy off the farm to remain in the retail mindset by how we market to them.
One of the most common questions I get is customers trying to figure out the system by which I sell products! They ask about my attendance at local farmer’s markets then about coming to the farm to purchase.
They are in the common retail mindset. I understand why. It’s the most common way to buy food. Once they experience how we market, they love it!
We encourage folks to come to the farm and visit, but discourage them from thinking it how we sell products. Farm gate sales are fine, but just as with the farmer’s market you are waiting on someone to come by and spend money.
I would have never grown my sales to level that they are so quickly by waiting on someone to stop by the farm or a farmer’s market!
That’s the retail mindset.
In speaking with farmers I think the main reason they gravitate to this type of marketing is because it’s what they know to do.
Let’s face it…the question on every bodies mind is:
Where can I find customers in significant numbers without using these venues?
Good question!
Since I have never sold at traditional farm venues I can only tell you how I’ve built my business. These steps are simple, but not always easy.
Figure out what your U.S.P. is. That’s your unique selling proposition. Why should people buy from you? Do this first. It helps you focus your efforts where they make the most impact.
Connect with I call “people of influence” to try your products. This was the second step I took when I started selling direct.
Create a system to glean referrals from your current customers. A high percentage of my new customers are from word of mouth advertisers – the best, least expensive, kind of advertising.
Have a system in place to get testimonies from your current customers and incorporate them in your materials.
Consistently use a system to identify and obtain new customers. I adapted a method from another business I owned that works like magic.
Find ways to make it easy for your customers to pay you. I collect payments automatically which makes it much easier for me and the customer to do business with my farm.
Develop a website and learn to drive traffic to it. This took tons of time and learning, but I now have a significant amount of internet customers. (a whole subject in itself -more on that another day.)
These are some of things I have done to build my farm business. I’ve never used a farmer’s market or had a wholesale account because I haven’t needed to! I believe farmer’s markets are a viable way to market your products and some of these techniques would work for them. For me, I like spending time with my family on Saturday morning.
Until next time…
PS- I explain exactly how to do this and more (minus the website information) in my latest ebook “The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed.” If you’re looking for increased sales and more customers click here to get your copy today.
Posted by David on March 10, 2011 under Marketing, Tools to Increase Farm Sales |
My last blog talked about confirmation questions. These are questions that open an interview. The next type of question we’ll look at is the New Information question.
This type of question enables you to get more details about the prospects required results.
In the confirmation question stage I asked the question; “You mentioned on the phone you were looking for 100 % grass fed beef, is that still the case?”
I can follow that up with a new information question such as:
“What’s happening in your current situation that you decided you wanted to talk to me about our beef?”
This gives the potential customer the opportunity to give you their reasons for wanting to talk to you. They might respond with something like ” Well we watched a documentary about how conventional beef is raised and we were shocked.”
Or, “A friend of ours recently had us over for a cook out and they served grass fed beef. We were impressed with the flavor and they told us some of the health benefits.”
These type questions are great for getting the information you need to find out what the potential customer’s reasons are for buying.
Many times you can start new information questions with who, what, when or where.
“What’s been happening…?”
“Could you…..?”
This is better than simply saying “tell me more.”
Asking questions should be natural and not feel to the prospect that it’s an interrogation. If that begins to happen then the prospect closes up and you can’t get a sale if you don’t know what result they are looking for.
That’s the old type of sales. The dog and pony show where you sit and recite all the features and benefits of your products. You wow them with how great your grass fed beef is and why they should buy it.
However, if the customer tells you what they want out of your grass fed beef and you can show them that it fits the bill…they sold themselves.
That’s a long term customer.
Depending on your sales ability, you can get a lot of sales and never get a long term customer. Pressure and talking up your products will get sales. But you should be looking for a long term relationship.
Long term relationships don’t start with one-sided conversations and pressure. They start with a two-sided conversation and agreement.
Use new information questions to help you find out what the customer requires to purchase from you.
You’ll find these customers buy again and again.
As the old saying goes:
Nobody likes to be sold, but everybody likes to buy.
Until next time…
Posted by David on March 2, 2011 under Marketing, Tools to Increase Farm Sales |
Since the type of “selling” I embrace means not just ramming products down my potential customer’s throat, but more of a search to find where my products might fit for them, I must be an expert interviewer…very good at asking questions…the right kind of questions, to understand the situation. I want to help the prospect make an informed decision about purchasing my farm products.
Over the next few days I’m going to outline several types of questions that must be included in every interview. Each type of question has a distinct purpose. Each are designed to get the specific information you need to determine if a sale can be made.
They have somewhat of a sequence also. For instance one question I’ll be covering is the commitment question. You wouldn’t get very far starting your interview with a question asking for a commitment! The prospect is in no position to make much of a commitment at the beginning of an interview. Except maybe to listen and answer questions!
The first question we’ll cover:
Confirmation questions.
Confirmation questions are used to make sure you have accurate information or understand what type of problem they would like to solve by purchasing your farm products.
An example of one these type questions might be:
You mentioned on the phone you were looking for 100 % grass fed beef, is that still the case?
You mentioned you want to purchase more local foods when I spoke with you at the farmers market, is that correct?
Notice you are confirming what you already know and verifying it to be correct. The prospect could answer to the first question; “Oh no we were interested in pork” The other side of a confirmation question is it can expose inaccuracies in your information.
Imagine in the first scenario you take off telling them about grass fed beef and they want to hear about pork!
Use these type questions to establish that you are all on the same page in the beginning of the interview.
Some more ways to ask confirmation questions.
Are you still looking for ways to buy more local foods?
Is pesticide use a major concern for when buying produce?
You are trying to determine what is going right now with confirmation questions. They help frame the interview around the current situation that is of interest to the prospect.
Use confirmation questions to get the interview started on the right subject and based around where the prospect is focused. There is no need to discuss things that have no interest to the prospect.
This conveys that you realize their time is valuable and you have no desire to spend time interviewing them about products they don’t want to discuss.
Practice this and watch your ability to focus on what they want to hear help you acquire new customers
Until next time….
The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed
Posted by David on February 26, 2011 under Marketing |
I have read some interesting blogs and articles lately. I was exposed to a thought that had never crossed my mind. Well maybe not a thought more like a common theme.
The theme is basically farmers talking about how customers really don’t want to buy local because if they did they the farmer would be getting more business or the business they did get wouldn’t seem so random.
They cite their own business or other farmers and food co-ops that are struggling.
It was a whole new thought to me as I have always believed customer perception is really all that matters. But I never made the connection that customers really didn’t want to buy local or direct from the farm.
My thought process has always been that there is a segment of people in my community that would buy local if they were properly exposed to the idea.
Coupled with the fact that there is a good bit of public media that is helping my cause by highlighting the loss of jobs, the suffering of many local communities, and the problems with modern agriculture and huge food companies. I figured I had a leg up on the situation when I decided to start selling direct off the farm.
The statistics I see tell me about 2 percent of America is buying local food. That is definitely a tiny portion of the population. So I know that buying local and especially direct off the farm does not have consumer acceptance.
It means I have to figure out how to locate the people on this growing edge of the 2 percent. I have to market to them and educate them as to why and how to buy off my farm.
That’s basically what I’ve done since I started selling direct off the farm. I have majored on finding this leading edge of the local, farm-fresh food, trend and marketing to them.
At the same time I have worked to develop systems that make it easier for those people to buy from my farm.
The result?
My business grows every day. I have a plan that brings customers and a plan to help keep them.
Blaming the customer for not buying from me is like the Cadillac dealership who proclaimed radio advertising doesn’t work. This dealership had advertised on the radio and had dismal results.
When the ad rep came out for a visit he told them that radio does work, but their offer wasn’t strong enough. The dealership disagreed.
So the ad rep said he would prove it if they would let him write the commercial. They agreed.
So the ad rep wrote the commercial:
Brand new Cadillac Sedan at XYZ dealership. Come get yours today only $500.
Of course the dealership threw a fit. “We can’t run that commercial we’d go broke! People would rush the dealership.”
To which the ad rep replied “It’s not that radio doesn’t work, your offer isn’t strong enough.”
How about your farm marketing?
Is your offer strong enough to induce people to do business with you?
Until next time…
The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed
Posted by David on February 18, 2011 under Marketing |
The demand for local, organic, farm fresh meat and vegetables has been on the rise for the last several years.
This means that people are actively seeking out this type product. Many “marketing type” farmers have been enjoying increasing sales every year.
According to Finding Dulcinea, In Indiana, the number of small farms increased by almost 80 percent from 2002–2007. Greg Preston, director of the Indiana Agricultural Statistics Service, told the Indy Star, “We are getting a lot of newer farmers coming in that are smaller—going into direct marketing, specialty products, organics, locally grown, this type of stuff.”
My farm has been struggling to meet the demand since shortly after we started selling direct. That is in part because I come from 25 plus years of sales and marketing experience.
But it’s also because the market for local farm food is growing and I’m enjoying the fact that people are actively looking for farms like mine.
But I’ve been around enough new and emerging markets to know that won’t always be the case.
Take for instance the big mortgage boom up to about 2008. I owned a company that used mortgage lending as a way to grow our business. We used many different mortgage companies and brokers all over the United States.
There was a mortgage broker on every corner. Many of them were so busy that they wouldn’t even talk to us about working with them. They had more business than they could handle! New mortgage companies were starting up daily.
Why?
Because it’s pretty easy to take a client who has an 8 percent mortgage and put them into a new one at say 5.5 percent. I mean how much sales and marketing does it really require?
The broker simply says “Mr. Jones we can reduce your mortgage payment by $200 a month and give you a rate that’s 2.5 percent lower than what you had.”
So for marketing all they had to do was let people know they were open for business and give some teaser rates on the radio or internet and people flocked in to refinance.
But ever so slowly I started getting phone calls from those brokers who didn’t want to work with me a couple of years before. They were seeing a slow down in the refinance craze. They didn’t necessarily say that to me but I knew what was happening.
The demand was slowing and the competition was getting fierce.
Fast forward another year and many of those shops were out of business and gone forever.
Who was left?
The companies that had focused on running a lean and mean mortgage shop and had focused on developing long term marketing strategies. They did honest business and had a long term mindset.
How does this relate to small farms?
Because sooner or later the demand is going to slow down and the competition is going to get fierce.
Take the previous quote from Dulcinia. There was a eighty percent increase in small farms in Indiana from 2002 – 2007. That means there were a whole lot more farmers supplying the market in Indiana than previous.
Now if several of those farms were near you…you noticed it!
Farmer’s markets are increasing by leaps and bounds. Farmers are seeing prices come down to be able to move their goods as they face the Wal-Mart shopping mentality.
So called “farmers” are bringing in produce from the wholesale house and selling it as local. In my area if you go to the farmer’s market to sell pork or beef, you will be competing with all the butcher shops in the area.
CSA’s are exploding all over the U.S…..
Folks – times are changing.
Don’t get me wrong competition is a good thing,
BUT IT WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU MARKET IF YOU’RE GOING TO STAY PROFITABLE AND KEEP THE DOORS OPEN.
Then add to that huge corporations are working night and day to fleece the consumer into believing that their food is really pretty much the same as what you can buy off a small farm.
Big agriculture is teaching their farmers how to relate to the public and present themselves as the only solution to the food shortage. They are talking about using Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their communities.
Grocery stores are featuring local farmers that supply them with produce.
Localharvest recently reported many CSA’s experience as high as a 40 percent turnover each year.
Losing that much business per year is unsustainable. If you have to replace that many customers per year you are swimming up stream on your way to broke.
I was talking to a farmer the other day who said he had a lady call him about grass-fed beef. By the time he got back to her (a couple of hours later) she had already found another farmer who had sold her a quarter of beef.
He got a rude awakening that he’s not the only guy in town with grass-fed beef!
In some ways small local farms supplying people with food is still in it’s infancy. But folks things are changing.
What’s your plan to stay on the cutting edge of this growth and rising competition?
- Do you have system to get new customers?
- What’s your response time when someone calls or emails you?
- How easy is it to do business with you?
- What’s your process for retaining customers and turning them into word of mouth advertisers?
Begin to find answers to these problems now before you end up losing out to the farm that does have it figured out!
Until Next time…
The Secrets of Selling Your Farm Products Revealed.
Two neighboring farmers would meet along the property line of their farms each day to have lunch together.
