By Julie Murphree, Arizona Farm Bureau
Most business professionals in the retail business will quickly identify with how readily customers tell you what you?re doing wrong. ?Customers are quick to inform you what you?re not doing right,? says Joe Johnston, owner of Agritopia, a multi-use development designed to merge a developed community around an urban farm.
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The Johnston family?s Agritopia project is located in the Town of Gilbert, Arizona on a farm owned by the Johnston family.
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Brothers Paul and Joe Johnston have created a rural oasis in the suburbs all because they listen to their customers.
And while traditional marketing has used focus panels, customer surveys and other tools for decades to learn about what customers want, many feel direct market farmers and ranchers have an advantage. ?You have an opportunity to show genuine interest in your customers,? says Johnston. ?When you?re providing healthy and tasty food for others you?re getting to the heart of the matter. People connect with you because they feel you have their best interests at heart.?
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Gary and Sharla Mortimer of Ash Creek Ranch and Mortimer Family Farms take their relationships with their customers serious. Their customer relationships have grown out of an obvious commitment to consumers of their natural beef and produce grown on Mortimer Family Farms by relating on a one-on-one basis. ?Our customers have helped us reshape our business through their heavy dose of feed-back,? adds Sharla.? ?When we started selling natural beef we sold quarters of the beef, and based the price on hanging weight.? While this is standard for our industry the general public don?t understand these procedures and it often left them wondering what they were going to get and when.? Also many of our potential customers did not want large quantities of beef.? We altered our business plan by providing smaller packages at set prices.? This also allows us to have meat on hand and ready to pick-up or deliver at any time.?
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Direct market farmers and ranchers working closely with customers give valuable advice. Agritopia?s Johnston has some specific tips.
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- Attempt to look at the business from the customer?s point of view. ?Especially if your product is sold directly to the consumer, what do they really want,? says Johnston.
- If you?re not a people person, hire someone that is. ?As traditional commodity farmers, we were completely disconnected from the customer. Transition to the direct market can be a big transition,? says Johnston.
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For Johnston and other farmers and ranchers, the experience in the direct market arena is rewarding. Though challenged to work more closely with competing needs of customers, those connected first-hand know the financial and social rewards can be numerous. ?All we really have in life is our relationships with others anyway,? says Johnston.
For more about customer service and the Johnston and Mortimer families, you?ll need to download your own copy of A Farmer?s Guide to Marketing the Direct-Market Farm.
Plus, this book will provide all sorts of marketing advice for the direct-market farmer, regardless of whether your farm or ranch is small, medium or large!
- Posted in : General,Supply Chain
- Author : freshair
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