The Power of Having a Team Behind Your Farm
Building a successful Farm shouldn’t be a solo effort. In this episode, Ryan Grace shares how a dedicated Success Team provides the strategy and support needed to grow with confidence. Learn how expert guidance can help you move from a basic setup to a thriving, professional business.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
-
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door, and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door is a software built for farmers to run their business, selling local food direct. We've helped thousands of farms in all 50 states and have had millions of buyers purchase on the platform.
We love helping [00:01:00] farmers and being part of their journey, and I'm so excited today to invite Ryan Grace from Barn2Door's Success team, who literally talks to an average of eight farms a day, five days a week, and has been with us for years.
Ryan Grace: Thanks, Janelle. It's great to be here.
Janelle Maiocco: Kind of crazy. I'm excited to glean all of your expertise having talked to so many farms across the country.
Ryan Grace: I know, I was trying to think, in prep for this, how many farms in total I've been able to talk to over the years. So it's, it's quite a lot.
Janelle Maiocco: It's kind of awesome, right? And just helping them move the needle on their business is so important and we feel very fortunate at Barn2Door to be participating in that and along with them in their journey.
I always say farmers they're running a farm full-time and they're running a business full-time and both need to be successful, and so we're over the moon to help farmers make sure that the business side of their farm is successful and that's why we're here. I think it's really interesting, one of the things I want to talk about today is there are software solutions out there, platforms like ours who help small businesses or medium or even large businesses have a system in place to run their [00:02:00] business effectively, right? So there's software in place to make sure they can manage orders, inventory, have an online store, sell in person, manage customer communications, finances, et cetera.
Like that's what we do. And there are solutions out there that most are not built for farmers. A few are. Ours is, and many if not most, have very little support or access to a success team or a success department. We've heard many stories from farmers, you know, they're lucky to find an 800 number and then they're talking to somebody who knows nothing about farming, and it's just a frustrating experience for them.
And so when farmers come to us, the software, the system that they sign up for, we help them get on that and learn to use it so they can save themselves a ton of time. But there's also the human element of we are here around the clock to help them be successful and very invested in their success and we're here for them to access us at any time.
And so what that means is, instead of an AI bot and an 800 number, or no help at all, or do it yourself, we have a support team where they can submit tickets. We have real time [00:03:00] chat for farmers. We have daily office hours, twice a day. We have office hours with other farmers where they can connect in real time.
And then today's topic is literally talking about our entire success department, who's daily goal and everything that they do is everything to do with helping farmers have success in their business. So can you explain just the form of our success department.
Ryan Grace: Absolutely.
It's also one of the things that drew me to Barn2Door. I think when you look at any kind of purchase, I think we all have experienced when you buy something and you're left, just to figure out how to use it on your own, how frustrating that can be. So having a team that's dedicated to making sure that that transition is smooth.
So whether you've been farming and you've had this business and you've been doing it for years or you're just getting started, both of those take a little bit of an adjustment, in switching to a new system. So having a team that's dedicated to walking you through that process, and cares about your success, gets excited with your success is really important.
So it's been a privilege being a part of that team. But, the way it works is we set you up when you first get started with one of the onboarding managers. And their [00:04:00] goal is really just to get you selling as fast as possible. So how can we get your store in a position where you can start taking sales day one?
so we'll get you set up that way, get your account information in there, teach you how the platform works. So we'll educate you on the different tabs and just make sure you feel comfortable with the navigation within the store, getting your inventory up there.
And so that's more of the onboarding process is just getting you started, getting you comfortable moving into the account management side of things where I get to work is your go to market strategy. So now you have things set up. You have a beautiful website in the works. You have a beautiful e-commerce, very easy to use platform.
How do we send customers to that platform? How do we help you sell? How do we help you market and brand yourself? So that's what we focus on. On the account management side of things, and it's really fun being able to work with so many different farms all across the country because we get such good intel on what works well, what bundle boxes are highly successful. What are some of the best ways to set your store up to help your conversion rates, to get you more sales and increase your [00:05:00] average order value?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I think the neat part of, and again, so Ryan, just as a reminder, is a farm account manager. And our success department includes a fleet of onboarding managers.
So every farmer gets their own one-on-one onboarding manager as they're getting set up. And then Ryan is an account manager so once the farmers totally set up, they've got their online store set up, their inventory live, and we'll get into a little bit more of that. Once they're set up and ready to go and know where the bells and whistles are, then you get an account manager who can help you basically understand best practices, for pricing, packaging for your store. Develop strategies together to gain more customers. They've literally, like I said, talked to hundreds and hundreds of farms all across the country. Plus our platform, because we've worked with thousands of farms across the country, we can literally see the data in terms of, Hey, if you bundle it this way or if you do it this way, et cetera, et cetera, we can make sure that you're making even more money. Right? And so we get you set up with the onboarding manager, you know, can take a couple of weeks at the [00:06:00] beginning. There's also office hours in case you wanna double down and go faster.
And then account managers can come and look at your business with you and help find ways for you to save time, make more money, automate more of the marketing, so that you are set up for success and your farm business is set up for success. and frankly, all the while looking like a pro.
And so Ryan, today I was hoping to break that down for farmers so that if they're thinking like, what is a success team? You know, like I don't even, that's just so strange to think about a success team is literally about our farmer success and what does it mean in terms of those things that we care about, is helping farmers make more money?
We call it Ditch the Office work. So we help 'em automate a number of meaningful things in their business and then really look like a pro, because if you have a brand that people can trust locally, and it's easy to use your store and you get beautiful. order reminders and things like that, you really look like a brand they can trust, right?
And so all of this together creates that success. So let's talk a little bit about making more money. When a farmer comes to us and they're just [00:07:00] onboarding, they just are getting started with us, really the first thing our success team is gonna help them do is get their bank information in.
Get their POS set up, that's a point of sale. So that's for the online stores, so easily can swipe credit cards or take cash in person, and then make sure, hey, do you need to worry about taxes or QuickBooks integration, like anything that you need for your farm, they make sure that you get that set up.
And then Ryan, probably one of your favorites is MailChimp, right? In the onboarding, it's like, Hey, let's get you set up so that it's really easy to send farm branded newsletters to customers whether it's once a month or more often. And we get them started with that in onboarding.
But that's the fun for somebody like Ryan is you're like, I'm set up now, I need to learn how to use it. And that's where Ryan comes in.
Ryan Grace: Yeah, we do a lot of coaching, and we have a pretty vast background in marketing. Not just with email marketing. We definitely push using the email marketing that is such a great asset to your company.
so growing that list early and often is really gonna set you up well. You can be very targeted in how you're sending those newsletters, but also [00:08:00] social media as well. We're well versed in helping you use the Meta Business Suite to make sure that you're making the best use of your time. Our design team puts together an incredible, marketing toolkit every month that has great farming content, for you that's professionally designed to, again, make you look like that pro because buyers do take that into consideration.
They need to know that you got your stuff in order, that it's professional looking and that's gonna build that trust with your buyers.
Janelle Maiocco: You know, let's give an example too, of just basic setup. Like if a farmer comes to you and says they're a produce operation and they have a CSA, right?
So maybe they come to us already with a subscription that they want. There's other farms that don't come to us with subscriptions for beef or something different. . We start them with, Hey, put a couple bundle boxes in, even if it's not a subscription.
Because we know those sell right? Do small, medium, and large . Now all of a sudden there's a whole other group of customers that are gonna buy from you because you have three different sizes of bundle boxes and you just made it easier for them to click and buy. and so you, shrunk the time that it takes for them to purchase.
In produce [00:09:00] CSA, they might come to us with subscriptions so we can get that set up, but ways to make them more money. Explain Ryan, if they came to you, you might start to talk to them about something like add-ons and how that works, or how do we expand your, footprint, give examples of how, if you're working with a CSA farmer or a produce farm, what are ways that you would encourage that farmer potentially to make more money?
Ryan Grace: Yeah, a lot of it definitely with diversifying your offerings. So, being in tune with your customer base, knowing what your customer base is also looking for. And so we do this with value added items. So when they're getting their CSA sending that automatic order reminder that goes the week before. Reminding them, don't forget, we have this additional product that you can add to your cart.
We have canned tomatoes that are seasonal this week that you can add to the CSA. Or maybe you want more broccoli or you want more kale or more lettuce, being able to add that onto your box that you're getting on a weekly or biweekly basis. In addition to that, it's looking for other local producers that you could potentially partner with.
So if you're doing the [00:10:00] produce, maybe there's a local, bee farmer that you can partner with to add in their honey. Maybe there is a local Bakery that you can partner with to do some sourdough, to do some baked goods in addition to your CSA. And so you can purchase those at wholesale, mark 'em up, add 'em into your box, and now you have a really great all in one package for your customers.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, there's a lot of great options. When someone like Ryan or one of our other account managers looks at your store, and can evaluate, hey, here's some other best practices to make sure that you're optimizing the purchase of the most expensive items, or you're making sure that you're moving products that's hard to move.
Or do we need to rename something, to make it more appealing? I loved your example of kebabs. Why don't you share that one?
Ryan Grace: Yeah, no, I have a lot of farms, especially in the summer months that have a hard time moving their stew meat. Nobody wants to buy the stew meat and it makes sense.
'cause when it's really warm out, the last thing you want is a big bowl of stew. But you can just rebrand that package as kebabs and throw it into a grilling bundle that you have with maybe your burger patties, some ribs, and you throw those [00:11:00] in there as an additional item. It helps you move your products the way you need to move your products.
It increases the average order value and it introduces your customers to a cut that they might not normally order. I know I experienced this with the farm that I ordered from when he threw fajita meat in his bundle box 'cause he wasn't moving that very well. That's become one of my favorite cuts.
But I never would've gone to his store and just ordered the fajita cuts on my own. But because it was in the bundle, I cooked it, it's so easy. It's way easier to prep. It's one of my favorite things to get. Throw it on a salad, put it in a burrito bowl. But I wouldn't have experienced that if he didn't put that into that bundle box for me.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. Yeah, so the net net of it is, is whether you're a dairy farmer, beef farmer, produce farmer, any type of farmer. We've worked enough with farms, including somebody like Ryan who's experienced, but also with the data on just converting customers, into regular buyers and buying more and more often, um, that we can help, right?
Like we can look at your store and be like, here, let's tweak this. Let's do that, let's change that. And that's just at a very basic level of your store. And then of course they [00:12:00] can get into you with strategies around coupons or promos or how often you send a newsletter, making sure that you have your order reminder set up.
So there's a lot that they can recommend to just incrementally help you have best practices to increase your opportunities at more sales more often from existing customers. A lot of farms come to us and say, Hey, I need help with marketing, or, I need more customers.
The beauty of having the store be available to customers to purchase and making sure it's easy to navigate your store, make a purchase online, put something in a cart, easily pay with a credit card, and then be able to select is it pickup, is it delivery, et cetera.
If your buyers can come to you. And do all of that without a phone, text, email, and do it all on their own. What we call no touch purchasing and self-serve purchasing. That's what buyers today love and are used to and wanna do in their pajamas at 11:00 PM at night when they're thinking, oh, I need to go to the store for meat, but I'd rather buy from the farmer.
And so when you make that experience for them and you're, in this case, you're really [00:13:00] looking like a pro, right? It's ready for them. They're like, this is amazing. And they'll make that purchase and choose how to get that food. You know, many of our farmers say their favorite thing is waking up in the morning and seeing how many orders they got literally overnight and we always love that.
A lot of farmers do come to us saying, I need help with marketing but they have a broken store experience and it's so full of friction to buy from them.
They have customers literally in a list that aren't purchasing from them currently because it's too hard. And we're kind of wimps sometimes when we, when too hard looks like I have to click too many times. You know, I don't wanna email, text, phone, et cetera. So it's really important to get that buyer experience nailed down and that is a hundred percent what our success team does on a one-on-one consulting basis. Literally, you can have people look at your store, give you advice, plan a strategy with you, and see it through, including what your goals are as a farm.
Ryan Grace: One of the other things that we advocate pretty heavily, especially with setting up bundles and boxes, is to build those with a persona in mind. ' cause again, talking about [00:14:00] consumers who, typically are pretty lazy, they want things very easily accessible. which we help with the platform, but also as you're building the descriptions for those boxes, like who that box is perfect for.
This is perfect for small families. This is perfect for couples. When you give that kind of persona, people can relate to that. And it makes it easier for them to say, oh, I'm a couple. I could do the couple's date box. That'd be perfect for me. Or, I have a large family, the family meal prep boxes is what I need to get.
Janelle Maiocco: It's amazing how much doing your store well will literally impact your bottom line.
So we get really, clearly very passionate about that. Another thing we talk about around Barn2Door is helping farmers ditch the office work. The reason we get excited about this is because I don't think, Ryan, you tell me, have you ever met a farmer with extra time on their hands?
So ditching the office work, ironically, is exactly what the software or the system will help farmers do, right to seamlessly manage orders. Real time tracking of inventory. Customers are placing orders so it's easy to manage those as well. And one of our favorite things, is [00:15:00] fulfillment day and how much we get stories constantly from farmers saying, you literally are saving me a day, a week, or a couple hours per delivery day, and sometimes when farmers get set up in the onboarding process, it's neat because. Somebody like Ryan can be like, Hey, here's some extra bells and whistles. These are the things that you can do to shave off even more time and automate even more, on delivery day. And what would some of those examples be, Ryan?
Ryan Grace: Yeah. One of the biggest ones is when you're building your fulfillment, which is the how, when and where people can get your products. So when you're setting that up in your store, if you can capitalize off when you're picking up from the processor. And you already know you have your orders for that date.
You can pick up from the processor, package everything and make those deliveries that same day. Instead of having to pick it up from the processor, unpack it into your freezers, get the orders, pack it up and send it out. So a lot of it is just thinking strategically on, okay, I know this Friday of every month I have a processing date, so I'm gonna plan my pickups or my deliveries for that same [00:16:00] day.
and it's just gonna make your life a lot easier. And it's easy for the customers as well. So that's one of the bigger ones. The other thing we take a look at, especially in the account management side, is looking at convenient pickup locations for customers to help save time. and you don't need to be at these locations for hours and hours, like most people think.
It could be a 30 minute window that you're giving them. I know there's a farm that does this at a local coworking space. So instead of doing 25 home deliveries, he's doing one drop off at a coworking space and all those customers can take their box and they go home with them when they leave for the day.
So looking at ways you can kind of simplify your life as a farmer, which. You got a lot going on. and also make it very easy and convenient for the consumer. 'cause that's a really important piece. If it's not easy, they're not gonna make that purchase.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love that. And it's such practical, real advice.
Again, if you're working one-on-one with a farmer. Figure out who might be some local partners. Who could you work with? Where could you drop? How do you consolidate your delivery days? We've got a farmer I just talked to the other day who went from two delivery days down to one, and it's making more [00:17:00] money.
It's just really neat to be able to shave off that extra time. Another way that I get excited from a platform perspective, clearly when you're getting set up and onboarding, it's lovely because you're helping folks automate then taking all the time in terms of they don't have to manually manage orders right.
On delivery day you can click a pick list and a pack list, your orders spit out onto labels. So it just really shaves a bunch of time off and nothing falls through the cracks. We also have an integration with a routing app so that farmers can also just map literally in a click of a button, their routes, for both dropping at pickup locations locally or if they do home delivery.
So there's a lot of great opportunity to save a ton of time there, but there's also a lot of times savings that I get excited about, and I know you do too, Ryan, on emails, collecting emails automatically as well as setting up automated order reminders as just your basic, hole in one when it comes to marketing, right?
If you do nothing else, but you set up your order reminders that just automatically go out weekly to different groups, you basically now [00:18:00] have marketing in motion, sort of the basic level of marketing in motion, and we help with so much more, but we're so happy that there's automation at a really basic level.
Ryan Grace: Yeah, and I mean, even as a consumer myself, those automations have led me to purchase. When I get that email from my farmer that's like, Hey, don't forget pickups this Friday. Get your order in by Wednesday. I'm like, oh, I need to get that order in. So it's really great for the consumer 'cause we need more reminders.
It's great for the farmer 'cause they don't have to spend time doing all of those emails. You can just have that set to automatically go out each week. So that's really great. And then, like you were talking about with the fulfillments, the pick and pack list makes it so easy to plan for your week, especially when you're putting things on maybe on like the bookends of the week.
So the first half in the back half, and you know that those are just the days that are your fulfillment days. It's not gonna make a difference to the consumer on what day it is necessarily, as long as you're making it easy for them to get the product, they can plan around that. So having those automations definitely helps out quite a bit.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, it's neat. I know you break down with a lot of farms, like some farms come to us with just thousands of [00:19:00] emails and others are building their list from scratch and everywhere in between. And our onboarding and account managers are very familiar with helping drive tactics for both. One thing that our platform does is automatically collect emails for farmers. Emails for farmers are literally your customer list, right? That's who you're gonna communicate with. That's who you're gonna remind to place orders. We have one farmer that always says, whenever I send out an email, it's like going to the ATM, it's just like they all wake up and make purchases. so we love that.
But when anybody purchases from a farmer's store online or in person with their POS, we automatically capture those emails on behalf of those farmers and add it directly to the customer's email list. We also, as you well know, make sure that there's a capture on both social media and on their website.
So again, we're helping farmers automate collecting those emails from customers, which again, saves them tons of time and captures customers when they're ripe, right? Like they're thinking about it or they're right there. And that's when you're gathering all of those emails. The other neat part [00:20:00] is the integration with MailChimp, which I know you can speak to. At a very basic level we sync a farmer's emails with MailChimp if they elect to do that integration to make it easy for them to send newsletters. The onboarding team will help them set up like a welcome email if they're interested in that. But I know when they get to you, if farmers wanna go next level in terms of automation, can you give us an example of what that might look like?
Ryan Grace: Yeah, yeah. The cool thing with MailChimp is it's very scalable. You can use it at a very basic level or you can really deep dive and set up some really awesome time saving things like automations. They used to be called customer journeys, but they have, since changed that name. So it's called an automation, and that's where you can have it essentially send emails for you based off your consumer's purchase activity based off their email interactions based off the sign up. So they sign up for your newsletter, they automatically get a welcome email or they buy some of your bulk beef. They automatically get a email saying, Hey, thanks for your order.
Here's what you should know about bulk beef. And then it can tag that customer as a bulk beef [00:21:00] buyer. so you can have those things set up where it's doing all that work for you. You can also set up some like loyalty programs where after 10 orders, you send them $10 off their next order. All that can be done within MailChimp. Even at the basic level it will sync up with your e-commerce store. So you'll be able to filter who you send your email. Maybe you want to send an email to anyone who's purchased your CSA before to let 'em know that you're opening up. Registration again for the next year. Or maybe if you ran outta milk and you have milk back in stock, you can send an email to anybody who's purchased milk before, letting 'em know that you have it back in stock in the store.
So it syncs with your store. Lets you upload your products, the ones you wanna highlight in those newsletters, any of the promo codes you built up, you can get connected in there. And on the account management side, we really walk you through that process. So if you're unfamiliar with how to do a newsletter or how to navigate MailChimp we spend a majority of our time playing around in there and helping people feel comfortable. Once you get it set up and once you get your template built, the way that you like it, it's really, really easy to continue to send those weekly [00:22:00] newsletters. 'cause you can just replicate and change some things up.
Janelle Maiocco: You know, the neat part about that, you just reminded me, Ryan, at the end of the day, when a farmer signs up to use Barn2Door to run their business and have all the opportunity to make more money, save a lot of time, and just look like a pro, right? Really help their business go next level and make sure it's profitable and sustainable.
It's a new system, right? So, you know, our onboarding team is like, Hey, let's take what you're doing today and get you in there and get you comfortable. And then it's easy. It's just like anything you've tried new, like I tried to do racket ball the other day. I'm like, this will take a lot of work. I don't know if I wanna do this but if you're a farmer with a farm and you want it to be your livelihood having something in place to have it be efficient and most effective and really, make sure that you're optimizing it for maximum sales, attractive to customers. These really important things that we can help just get set up, and much of that is just once you're set up, you're off to the races.
Once you're set up now, the fun part begins in terms of knowing what to do when, and then working with an account manager as needed to maybe do [00:23:00] different strategies for your business, whether you wanna expand delivery, whether you wanna decrease farmer market day, whether you need to double your customers.
So we get really excited about helping farmers wherever they're at and then taking their business to wherever they want to go. So I'm really excited about that.
Ryan Grace: I think one of the coolest parts about what we get to do on the success side of things is we get to be a part of that journey with the farms. I've worked in tech for many years. I've worked for a lot of other companies, and you buy the software and you may get some video tutorials or some articles on how to figure it out.
But you don't get to actually work and have that relationship with somebody and get to meet them on a weekly basis or a bi-weekly basis. You don't get those check-ins. and so being able to be a part of that and follow the journey of the farms, even in the time that I've been here, the farms that I started off with, when we both kind of start at the same time.
Seeing where they're blowing well past six figures now, able to quit their full-time job, do farming full-time, which is what their dream and their passion was. It's really rewarding to be a part of that process with these [00:24:00] farms. and so when we think about the success team, we share in that same success 'cause we get to see these farms live out their dreams and, it's really, really exciting to be a part of that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, thanks for saying that. I love, um, too, for the onboarding, again, you're just getting basically set up for success and then it's kind of like you get the ORs in the water.
But to really get them going is why you're meeting with account managers is to build those habits, to get really comfortable with your system, to know what your opportunities are. and that's the beauty of, again, like if you're in any other business and you want a business consultant, it costs hundreds of dollars for a consult.
There's whole companies that literally charge tons of money for consulting. And ultimately that's exactly what our success team is. I mean, onboarding, obviously, you're gonna still learn about best practices and get set up, but when you're meeting with account managers, I mean you're, getting, you know, one-on-one consulting.
Ryan Grace: Well, I think the other cool part with us all being on the same team, you're not outsourcing that help to another department. So we have a great working relationship from onboarding managers to account [00:25:00] managers. And so we're able to share notes, we're able to talk, we're able to go over to your onboarding manager's desk and have a conversation about that process.
So it really keeps things cohesive, and, and helps that journey from onboarding into account management be as smooth as possible.
Janelle Maiocco: Let's talk finally, in this last little portion about what looking like a pro looks like. I always think of look like a pro as a beautiful brand, but it's even more than that.
It's building trust with customers by the way, you behave as a farmer in your business, right? So you look good, but you also are responsive. You have beautiful newsletters, but I also feel like you're thinking how a big business might think today and bringing it back to your farm.
So it's working smarter, not harder is a little bit of the strategy of it. Do you wanna share a little bit about how we get farmers set up, with their brand and how we think about building that customer loyalty?
Ryan Grace: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the brand's gonna come down to the why, like, why that farmer's doing what they do and knowing their why.
We want that to be consistent across their website. We want it to be consistent across their social media, [00:26:00] across their newsletters. So we really hone into that. And then it's also, the other piece of it is, well, who are you trying to sell to? Who is that ideal customer? ' cause that's gonna dictate a lot of how you're setting these things up.
And so when it comes to looking like a pro, pros know why they're doing what they're doing, so they have that locked in and they know who they're trying to sell to. And if you can. Have those two pieces. it's gonna make everything else fall in line. So it's gonna have again, your newsletter conversations are gonna be seamless.
We also take care of just within the platform itself, like you were talking about with the automated order reminders, for your customers, which again, just looks really nice. When I place an order, I get a nice confirmation email. Tell me about that order. Having a website is a great way to build that brand, to share a little bit of your story, make you look a lot more professional.
And then with the marketing toolkit, that's another way that our design team really helps you out, looking professional. 'cause we give you really nice design, Instagram, Facebook posts that you can use. We give you two newsletters each month, and then a bunch of other additional material in there that you [00:27:00] can use.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, they're beautiful. It's, like 50 to 60 custom designs from our designers who make them monthly and are very seasonal, including creating urgency on your sales handles. Like, Hey, there's a sale going on, or a promo or buy quarter half whole cow. a variety of things for farmers anywhere, to be able to post on their social media. We give them a number of newsletter headers that are seasonal that they can use, and then also sample content, both for social posts and for their newsletters, which is neat. At a minimum it's giving farmers great ideas of what to post.
It's making sure that they're thinking seasonal, and continuing to look like a very engaged brand that their customers then are loyal to and appreciate. So looking like a pro is great, but you know, I always like to think about, marketing is for the sake of sales, the whole point of marketing is sales.
For example, we often talk to farmers who are like, oh, I need a website. And it's like, well, you want a store because if somebody's looking at your website, that means they're learning about you and they're at a very ripe moment to make a purchase.
And so you want the store right there so they can click right [00:28:00] off. They've just learned about your eggs or your proteins or your flour subscription. You want them to be able to click and purchase right then and there. You have to think of buyers in real time in that way. Right?
And the cool part of looking like a pro too, and our onboarding team does a great job with this. And then the account managers will double down and make sure that this is true for any farmer working with us, that you're basically set to capture customers wherever they may be, whenever they might be interested in buying from you, the farmer.
So that means you're basically creating breadcrumbs all over the internet on different channels where buyers might like to buy. So on your Facebook page, there's a shop button that goes to your store. So if the only place your buyers like to go, some set of buyers prefer Facebook, they're gonna find your store.
There are other buyers who, like Ryan mentioned earlier, just respond to the order reminders that you've automated. This is just set up for success. Takes no extra time after you've set it up. If you wanna tweak the message, you can, but otherwise it can just go and he's gonna be like, oh, [00:29:00] that's right.
I'm gonna look it up in my inbox. Go click it. And make an order. So email's a great spot to make sure that you're, again, it's almost like a fly on fly paper. You just gotta make sure you're catching buyers, whether they prefer social media, whether they prefer newsletters, whether they just wanna bookmark your store.
If they text you, you can send them a link to your store, right? And so there's a lot of things that you can do just to set yourself up for success and let it just run on its own right? We're big fans of what can we automate for farmers while they're busy doing the farming side of farming, versus the business and make sure that those customers at any time of day or night, are being captured for them, for their customer list and for sales.
Ryan Grace: Yeah. And that's, we're using the point of sale to get those in-person emails. The website is gonna help with that. And so funneling everyone through that, getting their emails is gonna be really important for a lot of the farms who are getting started.
And so growing that list is what's gonna set you up for long-term success. And like you said. When you have quick connections to purchase from you on your [00:30:00] social media, you have it on your newsletters, you have it on your website, it's just gonna enhance your reach and enhance your ability to get those conversions.
Janelle Maiocco: You know, one final thing I wanted to touch on and then I'm gonna ask you for your, any final pieces of advice you have at work. 'cause you know, it's a big deal to be able to have a success team surrounding you, but it's neat because you've worked with so many farms what your top tips might be. But one thing I want to touch on, I know that you've helped a lot of farms do is set up subscriptions for the first time. Oftentimes when they're getting their store initially set up with the onboarding managers, they might get a couple of bundles up because we know, farms choice bundle box is best practice, ideally in multiple sizes. But often when they come to you, you're like, you can turn that into a subscription. So tell us a little bit of why you care about that for farmers?
Ryan Grace: Yeah. Subscriptions, it's consistent cash flow. It's getting these buyers that are coming back on a consistent basis, which really helps you build the rest of your business and for the consumer. I mean, the [00:31:00] average American has what, eight subscriptions that they're signed up to. So it's something that they're used to, they understand the concept and you're making it easier for them in the long run as well as easier for yourself.
And so we really push the subscriptions just because it gives you that consistency with your orders. People that do buy into the subscription end up spending about 75% more.
They might grab a couple other things while they're there too so it really helps with that brand loyalty and the customer loyalty. And then it helps you move products, especially if you're doing a farmer's choice. It lets you move products the way you need to, and like I said earlier, introduce people to a new product that they might not know about but would be interested in and could end up loving.
Janelle Maiocco: I have a produce farmer that I currently have a CSA from every week and. She does such a great job. Every week there's some like new special treat in there. It just makes you fall in love with a farmer over and over. You're like, I will subscribe forever. You just gave me pickled radishes.
People notice that special touch in a world that's very digital and very busy. And so that special touch, from your brand, to them is a big, big [00:32:00] deal. And subscriptions, honestly, in some ways they almost represent a recurring relationship with that farmer.
Every time they're enjoying your eggs, every time they're enjoying that meat, they're thinking of you, the farmer. And that's an ongoing relationship. It's really neat, it's like, what's your goal? Do you want 30%, 50%?
And we have some farms who prefer 80% of what they have to sell is a subscription. So they just don't even have to think about it month, over month, over month. But every farm might have a different percent. And that's what you can skate towards, right? You can be like, great, that's our goal. Let's go get it.
and then you can leave the flexibility of the other for just one time purchases. But it has changed farmers' lives. Yeah. To know that next month and the month after. Or lined up to my butcher dates. It's pre-sold, it's baked in and it's just kind of a mathematical exercise. Right. Which I know our account managers do daily with farmers.
Ryan Grace: Yeah. And it, again, it just helps from a business standpoint to know that you have that consistency on a week to week or month to month basis that you're getting those orders in.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it.
Ryan Grace: And to do it, I think, [00:33:00] well, one of the important pieces, people are very visual, so I think showcasing what's gonna be in those boxes, even if it is a farmer's choice and it changes each week. Having a picture of like, look what this week's CSA members are getting. Look what this week's Farmer's Choice Box members are getting. Give them the visual context.
It makes it fun, it makes it engaging. It also helps the consumer know about how much fridge or freezer space they would need for those boxes so they can prepare that way. So that's one thing that would help out quite a bit. And then you hit on it a little bit, but definitely doing the onetime purchase.
Like if you wanna try the subscription, here's the onetime box that you can get. You could even mark that one up, a little bit to make more margins, to incentivize people to, to go into the subscription route. I would think that would be a, pretty decent strategy
Janelle Maiocco: among many, among many that you give.
Ryan Grace: Yeah. I was just gonna say, some of the other things are when you're interacting with your customers, we're talking about building customer loyalty, building a strong business economy. When you have a new customer that shows up to purchase from you, ask 'em how they heard about you. [00:34:00] That's gonna let you know what marketing efforts are working.
If it was a friend that referred them, then next time you see that friend, you give them a thanks, give 'em maybe an extra pound of ground beef or something just to say, Hey, thanks so much for sending this person over to us. That meant a lot. And it doesn't take much to incentivize people or to reward that type of behavior.
It could be a farm sticker. It could be. 10% off
Janelle Maiocco: or give them a shirt so they go promote you more.
Ryan Grace: Exactly.
Janelle Maiocco: I love this advice. This is the kind of detailed advice you get with working with the success team at Barn2Door with account managers like Ryan, and we have a number of them and they're all very passionate, very well versed. Have really specific examples for your farm. Even just what he was saying about pricing and packaging and, you know, rewarding customers. There are just layers of strategies that can work for your farm and why we are so passionate about our success team, and making sure that farmers are plugged in and us helping them in every way that we can for their business to, again, make more money.
Ditch the office work and look like a pro. It will make a difference and we love [00:35:00] being part of it. Any final last tips, Ryan?
Ryan Grace: I would say know your why. Know why you're doing what you're doing. Uh, your customers want to know that too. It's a big part of why they're buying from you. So whether it's the transparency piece, it's fixing the soil, it's being able to. Provide good, healthy, locally sourced food, or leaving a legacy for your family.
Whatever your why is, just make sure that that's coming across in everything you put together, your descriptions of your items. You wanna see your why in there, your website, you wanna see your why, social media, so on and so forth. and then know who you're trying to sell to. That can help with the packaging.
I had one farm tell me that he has a, it's a physical customer that he's like, this is my ideal customer. She buys from me every single week. She's awesome. And so when he's getting new packaging or looking for new labeling, he goes to that customer and says, do you like option A or option B? If she likes option B, he's using that going forward.
And so I think. Those two things. and then making it as easy and convenient as possible for your customers will set you up for success.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. I appreciate that. Which is where we are. Happy to help for [00:36:00] sure. I wanna extend my thanks to Ryan for joining us on this week's podcast episode. You can check out more of Barn2Door on our Instagram at Barn2Door.
Here at Barn2Door we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted to offer services, software tools. Amazing account managers and a success team and more, to farmers to help them increase sales and run a thriving business. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and want to simplify your business management, visit Barn2Door.com/learnmore.
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the [00:37:00] soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door. com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.