Imagine if you had so much field work that you couldn’t waste time on stopping the tractor to refuel. It wouldn’t be very effective, would it? Well, it’s the same thing for you!
For the past week, I’ve been on a conference marathon with back-to-back attendance of the CAPÉ fall conference and the annual ACORN conference. I have had the pleasure of meeting lots of farmers and have amazing conversations. I love how passionate, dedicated, creative, and skillful you all are! But…we are not super-human! Just like our machines, we also need maintaining.
If you’re feeling exhausted, tired, or discouraged then you are not alone.
You are not alone!
Before diving right into the winter-planning work or to your off-farm job, please, take some time to re-energize your mind, body, and soul. A week, a day, a half day –all to yourself, without your cell phone, away from the farm. You’ll be amazed at what a great investment this is. Take a step back for a little while and come back with a clearer, more focused, and more spacious mind spirit. You’ll be surprised how something so seemingly simple can be so powerful.
What would it be like to recharge?
What is one small sweet step that you could take this week that would just feel so great?
In the meanwhile, I thought it might be useful for me to write a short summary of the 4DX system. I will focus primarily on how it can be of service in the context of a small-scale organic vegetable farm.
Breaking out of the whirlwind
We’ve all been there. During the winter we have these great intentions of what we want to improve on our farm. The challenge is that these intentions get blown away by the busy whirlwind of urgent tasks.
4DX is a system for being able to make important changes IN ADDITION to the baseline demands of the whirlwind of urgent farming tasks.
4DX is a system to give ownership of the goals to the farm’s crew and support them to feel what it’s like to be part of a winning team playing towards a clear and meaningful goal.
4DX is a system designed to be implemented with and by your team… not to be imposed top down. It is paramount that your team be involved in developing the goals and designing the visual tools that will be used.
‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’, page 21.
Less is More
Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important
When it comes to achieving important goals above and beyond the basic operation of the farm, the key is to focus your energy on one maybe two Wildly Important Goals (WIG). Imagine trying to pierce a piece of paper with all 5 fingers at once… not very effective…. now try with just one finger. Boom! Less is more. Imagine the sun’s rays… they only ignite a fire when they are focused by a magnifying glass on a single point. Are you ready to light your goals on fire!?!
The first step is the craft one or max two WIGs:
If everything else at the farm remained at the current level of performance….
What is one change that would have the greatest impact in terms of bringing your vision into reality?
What is one change that would have the greatest impact on your quality of life?
The WIG is phased as a measurable action with a set date:
Increase farm revenue from 300 000$ to 350 000$ by December 31, 2019.
Reduce work hours from 70 to 50 hours per week by August 15, 2019.
Increase farmers market sales from 45 000$ to 60 000$ per year by November 1, 2019.
As Peter Drucker said, we can’t manage what we don’t measure.
There are two types of measurements we can make:
Lag measures are things that by the time we measure them, we can no longer influence them. Lag measures are the results that we want to create (ie Profit, sales, leisure time, etc) WIGs are lag measures
Lead measures are things that when we measure them, we can still impact the outcome. Lead measures are the means we have of influencing the outcomes.
Let’s take the example of the farmers market.
The lag measure would be that we want to sell 60 000$ per year at the farmers market. (WIG: Increase farmers market sales from 45 000$ to 60 000$ by November 1st 2019) While we can measure sales, there is no way we can directly act on them. You can’t force people to give you their money (legally).
Lead measures for farmers market sales include making at least 2 product suggestions to clients, keeping the tables fully stocked and beautiful (to measure this, you could use a chart of presentation criteria and aim to score above 90% at key times), and reducing client check out wait time to 2 minutes.
‘The 4 Disciplines of Execution’, page 53.
The key is to shift our attention from trying to push directly on the boulder and actually focus on pushing on the lever. Work smarter, not harder!
TIME TO BRAINSTORM: It’s time to identify 2-3 lead measures to focus on that will move you towards achieving your Wildly Important Goal.
Make it a game worth winning: Keep score!
Discipline 3: Keep a compelling scoreboard.
People play differently when they are keeping score. The challenge is that so often in the height of the growing season, we are juggling so many balls that it’s hard to know where we’re at in terms of our larger goals.
The scoreboard is just the tool for this!
The scoreboard is a visual representation of the WIG and the 2-3 lead measures the team has identified. Anyone needs to be able to look at it for 5 seconds and know exactly whether the team is winning or losing. It needs to be centrally located and visible.
It will become the centerpiece of your weekly WIG sessions. It will become the glue that binds your team.
One more nuance that is highlighted by the authors of 4DX… People play differently when they are keeping score. Your team must be empowered to keep score, fill out the scoreboard, and own the results! This is not just another tool to pressure your crew… this is their scoreboard
One for all and all for one
Discipline 4: Create a cadence of accountability.
This is where the work actually gets started! The key to success is consistently taking small sweet steps towards your goal.
The glue that holds this whole 4DX system together is the weekly WIG sessions.
WIG sessions are highly structured, efficient 20-minute sessions held each week. The sole purpose of this meeting is to keep the team focused on the WIG and make it possible to chip away at the WIG while still accomplishing everything that needs to get done in the regular whirlwind of farm activities.
Here is the format for the meeting:
Check in on last weeks commitments.
Look at the state of the scoreboard.
Make a commitment for the coming week.
Each week, members of the team make personal commitments regarding what they will do this week to move the scoreboard towards a victory. This can be an action they take, or this can be some way they are willing to support a team member by clearing the way for them to advance. The following week everyone reports back on their commitment. Team members are accountable to the whole team, not just to the leader.
WIG Session Rules
Do not let whirlwind topics encroach into the WIG session. The ONLY topics at the WIG session are limited to:
‘How do we move the scoreboard forward?’
How do we meet out lead measure goals?
Is the lag measure responding as expected?
If needed, hold a regular planning meeting at a different time
(it can be right after the WIG session) to discuss the farm activities for the
week.
The WIG sessions are non-negotiable. Meaning that it is paramount that you hold them every week, both to keep on track towards your goal and to send the clear message to your team that this is highly important for the success of the farm, and the farm’s ability to create meaningful and satisfying employment for them.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback and experiences implementing this on your farm!
Go make a ruckus!
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*Please note that all links to Amazon are ‘affiliate links’ where I earn between 4-10% of the sale depending on the product. Of course, this does not influence which products I mention… I just figured that if I was going to be linking to them anyways, I might as well generate some income!
I have a dream! To live, in a fun and nurturing eco-agro neighborhood! It’s a dream I have been pushing away for the past decade on the basis that it is not realistic…. but the vision just won’t go away. Throughout our travels over the past 2 years, I have not yet found a place like this. And so… and so the possibility I see emerging is that I am called to take the lead on such a project and use my creativity and enthusiasm to make this happen.
Outcome: This is the ‘WHAT’ towards which I seek to focus my energy going forward.
I live in a neighborhood of 8 houses arranged in a hexagon according to the cardinal directions, each house 100 feet from the next. 30 acres of farmland and 20 acres forest surrounds the living space with enough farmland for everyone to have individually or collectively farm should they wish;
Each resident would hold tenure over their residential lot, presumably they would own the lot;
The farmland would be placed in a land trust whose role is to issue long-term leases (20-100 yrs) to farmers seeking to farm the land organically;
10-15 minutes drive from the center of a small dynamic college town;
8 awesome households, at least 5 households with children and at least 2 older couples;
Cohabitating and participating in the organic development of community through the interconnected nature of cohabitation
In the center of the hexagon is the common area where children play in the mud, where we gather for potlucks and fires, where yoga, dance, and play occurs, where chickens live, and where we share a common space;
A road circles the outside of the houses, connecting them to the common parking lot and at the same time providing access to the farms.
When we lived on the farm in Dunham, there were tons of cool friendly organic farming within a 15-20 minute drive of the farm… but we rarely saw them. The people we ended up developing the most profound connection to were our neighbors across the road; a couple of conventional sheep farmers in their 60’s who drank Pepsi and had a huge open heart and mind. These are not the types of people you would expect us to develop community with, but by the nature of our proximity, this is what happened. the sense of community developed organically thanks to the interconnectedness of mutual support, of trading equipment, of helping each other fix stuff, of slaughtering our chickens together led to a deep and meaningful friendship. This is why I propose to launch an ‘unintentional’ community rather than an ‘intentional’ community. We don’t have to all be the same and have the same values; all we need is an open heart and mind and the interconnectedness of cohabitation will cause community to arise organically.
I envision an initial eight household node, but this project could evolve to also include two and even three nodes of 8 households. I envision neighborhoods where at least 50% of the households have one or more member of the family operating a commercial farm.
Purpose: This is the ‘WHY’ that informs what I want to create.
To innovate what it means to live on a farm;
To live in the countryside and to have access to farmland, while at the same time benefiting from living in a neighborhood;
To be able to spontaneously engage in social activity without having to drive somewhere;
To provide a space where my children can grow up safely, be exposed to a diversity of people, where my kids can just run out and play with the neighboring children and I know they are safe and that everyone more or less has an eye on them;
To be able to farm without being isolated. To be able to cooperate with neighboring farms as we see fit;
To propose a new model of development in contrast to the current model of housing development that destroy and exclude nature and agriculture;
To mimic the rural and semi-rural villages of Switzerland where agriculture and housing co-exist in the same space.
Action: This is the ‘HOW’ of what I seek to create.
A list of actions to bring this vision into reality`. Not necessarily in chronological order nor in order of priority:
Form a core team of 3 people to take the lead on this project;
Research and implement optimal legal structure;
Secure funding to acquire land and implement the necessary infrastructure needs;
Locate and buy a property for the project;
Enroll residents in the vision and sell them residential sites;
Sign long-term rent agreements with those desiring to farm;
Have fun;
Seek advice and support from people with pertinent knowledge.
real estate lawyers
housing developers
successful co-housing and intentional community projects
visit similar projects
Are you with me!? 🙂
Do you have any suggestions or insights into such a project?
What vision is calling YOU that you may have been putting off for quite some time?
As summer fades into fall, it can be easy to be tempted just coast through the remaining weeks of CSA deliveries and farmer’s markets. We can fall into the trap of thinking we are too tired to think about his kind of thing, that the die are cast for this year, that we just need to keep our head down and focus on the fall harvest…
With the rush of summer behind us, fall is actually a fantastic time to focus more of your energy how to better serve you customers and build a solid marketing strategy for the next year. Herein lies one of the key shifts I propose to you: to see your marketing efforts as a means of being of service to your clients. So often I meet small scale organic farmers who fundamentally see marketing as something dirty, sleazy, or ‘sales-y’. Alternately, there is this discourse called ‘they owe us… we work our ass off growing amazing food and saving the planet… food prices are artificially low due to the influence of agri business not having to pay for the ecological and social hidden costs of industrial food production’.
I’m not here to have a philosophical discussing around these issues…
My question for you is: are either of these mindsets useful for you in building a sustainable organic vegetable farm that fully supports the quality of life you would love to live?
Seeing marketing and sales as a means of being of service to our clients empowers us to play full out towards our goals! The fact of the matter is that your farm produces amazing delicious organic vegetables and that there are people out there who would would love to eat them! Whatever marketing efforts you do are fundamentally an act of service in connecting people with your farm.
Marketing is everywhere, it is everything we do, it is how we communicate about what we love, and about the change we seek to bring into this world.
Here are three things to keep in mind this fall so be of maximum service in your marketing.
The empathetic marketer
The key to being an illuminated marketer is to put yourself in your customers shoes and really understand getting to know them. This is actually one of the greatest strengths of small scale organic farmers, we actually have the opportunity to personally know our customers, and we actually care about them…. So let’s make the most of this!
Often we have a sense of what we think our clients are experiencing, but there’s nothing like actually talking with them about it. Over the course of the next weeks between now and the end of markets, get in the habit of discussing the following questions with your clients… and keep note of your observations!
Who are they? Do they have children? What is their income level?
What ‘problem’ are you solving for them? What stories do they tell themselves about buying their vegetables from you? What do they value about your farm? What do they care about in the world? What are their hopes? What are their fears?
Take notes on your conversations, including the specific words that they use to talk about why they love your farm. What you learn from these conversations will be invaluable this winter as you plan out your marketing activities for next year.
A great side effect of these types of conversations is getting to know some really wonderful people even better and building relationships.
Go out with a bang!
This is simple, the way you end the season will influence how people remember you and how likely they are to want to be your customer next year. Of course fall doesn’t have as full a diversity of crops as summer, but this is a time to really pay attention to displaying and presenting your products in a way that highlights the abundance the fall harvests.
What else could you be doing to provide maximal value to your customers from now till then end of your market or CSA season? Potlucks, community activities, recipes? Use what you are hearing in your conversations with customers see how to wrap up the season in a manner that leave a great impression on your customers.
Enroll people for next year, right away!
There’s no reason to wait till next winter to get people to sign up for next year’s CSA program. Starting 4 weeks before the end of the season, offer a means for members to sign up right away!
This same principle applies to your farmer’s market customers too. Find ways to get their email addresses so you can touch base with them next spring to let them know when you’ll be starting market. This is the time to be doing this… not in the middle of winter.
Another approach for market customers is to offer a market subscription program… essentially a hybrid between CSA and farmers market. In its simplest form, People pre-purchase a certain dollar value that they can then use at market in exchange for a certain % discount. Even if the amount they commit to is minimal, it serves to help get them in the habit next summer of shopping at your stand.
The key here is to get your clients to engage in some act that will increase the likelihood of seeing them next summer!
As you put these principles into action, constantly be asking yourself: How can I provide the greatest value possible to this person right now!?
Money isn’t everything, but is sure is a dang useful resource!!
There are so many reasons we farm: to bring about a change in society and our environment, because we love being our own boss and working out doors, to create a wonderful environment to raise children, to grow vibrant nourishing food for our communities, etc. What an amazing set of life’s intentions this is!
And ultimately…. we need to make money from our farm or market garden so that we have the resources necessary to bring all these wonderful intentions into reality.
Your farm is a business! It’s amazing how profitable small scale organic vegetable farming can be when the key business systems are in place. You can make a comfortable full time living from organic vegetable farming!
The financial GPS
One key practice is making a budget and then actually using it to make decisions throughout the growing season. It’s a bit like a GPS, you can’t just enter your destination and forget about it, you actually have to look at the map and use the GPS to navigate to road to where you want to go.
Similarly, the real utility of a budget is to help you make decisions on how to use your money during the growing season. I see too many people make a budget and not take a look at it again till the following winter when they close their books and find out how much profit they actually did (or did not) make.
Instead, keep your bookkeeping up to date and every month (or every weeks, depending on the size of your business) compare your actual results to you budget forecasts.
Are you reaching your sales targets for each of your sales outlets?
If not, what action could you take this week to boost your sales? Are there any new outlets or clients that could be explored?
Are you there any expense categories where you are spending more or less money that you had planned?
Given what you are observing, what could you be doing to adjust your spending so as to reach the goals that you have set for yourself? Notice we often have a tendency to want to buy the larger format of material so as to get a better per unit price. With an up to date budget, we know exactly how much money is left in each expense category. For example, if we need screws but our hardware budget is almost empty, we can just buy what we need rather than going for the 1000 screw box. Alternatively, we can look and see if there is another expense account where we actually over budgeted and thus can redirect some money to the hardware expense category and let ourselves loose on the mega-huge box of screws!
It’s amazing how much power we actually have over how we spend our money. Yes, there are some expenses that are non-negotiable, but you have much more agency than it may at first seem like.
Mid season re-budgeting
Another practice that is useful is to revise your budget forecasts in mid-August or early september. Now that you know the actual incomes and expenses for January through July or August, enter them into a new version of your budget. Next, take a fresh look at the coming months. What are you expecting in terms of income and expenses?
With this refreshed mid-season budget forecast, you now have a much clearer picture of how the fall will shape out, what sales targets you need to be hitting, and how much money you actually have to spend.
I know… you’d rather be out in the fields with your hands in the soil… and you probably have more urgent things to do… but budgeting is one of those quadrant 2 (non-urgent, important tasks) that will free up so much of your mental space and enable you to run your farm or market garden with clarity and focus.. and have FUN doing so!
What would it be like farm without worry about money?
Would it be OK with you if money got a little easier?
There’s never been a better time to master the energy of money than right friggin now.
The capacity to recruit and lead teams of happy fulfilled employees is key to the functioning of farms, especially in the process of scaling up production and/or freeing up some of your time for your other interests.
The key is that happy employees are productive employees. Even more importantly than productivity is the farm atmosphere…. what kind of work environment would you love to be in every day?
Here are 3 tips for building a farm that nurtures and empowers the people working there:
Acknowledgement and Appreciation: It doesn’t take much to simply recognize someone’s contribution and express gratitude. This requires slowing down a little bit since the tendency is to rapidly shift from one task to the next. It’s amazing how impactful a couple kinds words can be! (and an occasional case of beer or popsicles at the end of a hot day of work)
Cultivating a sense of ownership and meaning: For most farm employees, farming is not just a job… it’s a calling. One of the greatest things you can do to nurture this, is to be very clear about your farm’s mission and communicate it regularly with your team. Welcome their input and incorporate elements that they suggest when appropriate. Also, a great way to nurture a sense of meaning is to create opportunities for employees to interact with the farm’s clients who actually eat the food you grow.
Clearly communicate expectations, roles, and responsibilities: Our role as farm owner is to see the full potential in each employee and put them in a role where that full potential can be realised….. and then trust in that person’s capacity and in the rigorousness of the farm systems that we have put in place. In order to do this skillfully, it is important to build in dedicated times into the schedule for communication. A morning meeting at the start of each day is a great place to clearly communicate the goals and task for the day. In addition, it is important to make room for one on one discussion. Sit down at least once during the season for a conversation with each employee, one on one. This is important so as to give the opportunity to the more introverted employees to let you know if anything is up.
As the captain of your farm, you play the leadership role. Even if you are feeling overwhelmed… the staff needs to know that you are a calm and confident leader. We all need to know that the ship is in good hands!
Now the ball’s in your court!
How can you show your crew how much you appreciate their hard work this week?
What action could you take that clearly demonstrates the farm’s purpose and how it fits into the big picture?
How can you create a 20 minute opportunity to sit down and talk with your key employees?
The ability to prioritize and focus on top priority actions first is key in making the difference between being successful and simply being busy.
One useful distinction I have found is the the concept of Urgent vs. Important as presented in Stephen Covey’s book ‘7 habits of highly effective people’.
Even just the awareness of how much time we are spending in each quadrant is already very useful. I suggest you try it for a day or two… carry a notepad and note down how much time you are spending in each quadrant. It can be quite surprising!
Once we have cultivated mindfulness of how much time we are spending in each quadrant, the next step is to ask:
What is it that has me continue to spend my time in quadrants 4 and 3?
How can I schedule time each week for actions that are important and not urgent (Quadrant 2)?
What I notice is that the more time I spend in quadrant 2 (Important, Not Urgent) the less urgent tasks I tend to have…. it’s a virtuous cycle! The more I think ahead and focus my time on important tasks, the less last minute emergencies seem to arise.
One objection to this the I have experienced both from my own ‘monkey mind’ and from my clients is this idea that ‘I’m more efficient when I’m rushing to do an urgent task’ or ‘I enjoy the adrenaline rush of doing things at the last minute’. The thing is, as with all good falecies, this is partially true. There are two things going on here:
Addiction to that dopamin/adrenalin hit: We condition ourselves to perform under stress and our brain come to crave that hit.
Focus! The only reason we are more ‘efficient’ when doing something at the last minute (aka something urgent) is that we are actually focused!
There is no such thing a multitasking. I repeat, There Is No Such Thing As Multitasking. Our brain can only actually focus our conscious attention on one thing at a time. Every time we switch our focus, there is a price to pay in terms of mental energy. When we ‘multitask’, what we are actually doing is just rapidly switching back and forth between tasks.
When we are rushing to finish a task at the last minute, we may be more efficient, but it has nothing to do with doing it last minute per se, and everything to do with focusing on one task at a time.
So… give it a try.
Just for a day, make yourself a list of 3-5 things you want to get done, place them in order of priority. To determine the order of priority, ask yourself: ‘If for some reason this was the only thing I actually got done today, would I be satisfied with my day?’
Focus on one task at a time and do not move on to the next task until it is done!
Have you ever had the experience of being busy without ever really getting anything significant done? Me too! You are not alone. This is a very common experience when we are called to accomplish something meaningful in our lives.
Enter ‘Urgent vs Important’ ! (Tadah!!) This distinction has played such a role in helping me to act in a way that is consistent with my visions and goals… and so, I hereby dedicate a post entirely to this concept.
Some things are urgent… as in they are very time sensitive and demand to be done right away.
Somethings are important… as in these are actions that have a large impact in terms of moving you forward towards some goal or vision.
Combine these two concepts and you get the following matrix.
The key to living a more productive, fulfilling life is to shift more and more of our time into quadrant 2 (Important but not Urgent). In doing so, we are able to use our time in an increasingly intentional manner.
How of your time are you dedicating to each of these quadrants?
What would it be like to know you are focusing your time effectively on taking important actions that have the greatest return in terms of achieving your goals and dreams?
Given that this time of year is a critical period in terms of weed management, I would love to dive into the subject together.
As humans, are we blessed and cursed with a super-computer brain. Give it a problem and it will find a solution. Give it a question, it will find an answer. If you think that organic farming just means that you have a lot of weeds, that there’s no way to win against the weeds…. then this is the question for which you are finding an answer. As in ‘How do I make this farm work despite the crazy weeds?’
So, the first step is the rearrange the way we think of weed in order to shift the outcomes that we come to expect. It is possible to have weed free vegetable fields! It is possible to manage weeds systematically on your farm in such a way that they are not an issue. It is possible to manage the weeds using very little hand weeding.
Jonathan’s 5 pillars of systematic weed management:
Reduce the biological necessity of weeds by systematically using green manures in your cropping systems and having a balanced fertility regiment.
Weeds are nature’s way to protecting and healing the soil. Make sure you are using green manures! (Humm..sounds like a good subject for a future blog post!)
Eliminate the introduction of weed seed into your soil.
Never let weeds go to seed… in a well weeded field it’s quick to just go through and pull the couple of weeds that were missed.
Always use weed free, properly composted compost that has heated sufficiently to kill the weed seeds.
Always use weed free inputs (straw mulch, vegetable and cover crop seed, etc)
Kill the weeds when they are most vulnerable using scale appropriate equipment.
The time to cultivate is when the weeds are at the white thread or cotyledon stage. At this stage they are easy to destroy using shallow cultivation.
Scale appropriate equipment = Hoes, wheel hoes, cultivating tractors, tine weeders (tractor mounted and handheld), flame weeders, hilling discs (tractor and wheel hoe mounted), Finger weeders, Basket weeders, plastic and straw mulch) … just to name the main ones.
Remember that there are 3 ways to kill weeds: Pull it out, cut it off from it’s root, or bury it! Many crops can be hilled which is a great way of getting the weed growing on the row
Plant your crops into weed free beds!
Stale seedbed: Prepare the beds far in advance and reduce the number of viable seeds in the top inch of soil by using shallow tillage to destroy emerging weeds when they are no larger that’s the cotyledon stage (approx. every 10 days.)
Always eradicate perennial weeds prior to planting your crops
Weed next year’s crop this year.
Set aside a certain % of your fields to reduce the weed pressure for the following year (ideally for all your crops, but especially for the crops that are the hardest to weed.)
After doing your deep tillage, mark out the beds and stale seedbed them (see above) during the time of year that you anticipate next years crop to be in the establishment phase (may/june for early crops, june/july for late crops)
From this point on, do not till the soil deeply before your next crop so as to not bring up more weed seeds from deeper down. Ideally you can establish a green manure after the fallow period but make sure you are equipped to handle the residue without tilling too deep.
Alternately this can be accomplished very effectively using silage tarps to occultate the beds on a bio-intensive production scale.
Ok! To sum up this somewhat long winded discussion of weeds, here are the take always for this time of year:
Ok! To sum up this somewhat long winded discussion of weeds, here are the take always for this time of year
What are your beliefs regarding weeds? Write them all down on a scrap of paper… the good, the bad and the ugly! Take a good square look at these beliefs. Are they useful to you? If so, great, keep them. If not.. get rid of them! How can you re-frame the weeds question in a way that you would LOVE you super-computer brain to be working on solving
Are you preparing next year’s fields right now?Now is the time to make sure that your are reducing the weed pressure in the beds where the most sensitive crops will be planted next year. I know this is easy to overlook at this time of year, but part of being a successful farmer is to be able to juggle both urgent and important but not urgent tasks simultaneously.
Keep up the weeding!Within a couple of weeks the weeds will be slowing down thankfully… but now is not the time to slow down. If necessary, consider hiring temporary labor or calling a weeding party in order to stay on top of the weeds.
Depending on where you farm, you may be one of many farms feeling the effects of CSA ‘market saturation’. There simply are more farms offering CSA shares than ever before (which is great!) The thing is, the population of consumers looking to buy CSA shares has not increased proportionally. So… we end up with situations where great farms, offering great products, are still 10-20% short of their registration targets.
There are plenty of strategies to mitigate this trend (that I would love to look into in future blogs posts), today I want to talk about the power of following up… and doing so personally (ie. not only through mass emails to our past membership lists.)
In today’s busy, modern world, your registering for a CSA share is not a priority for (the majority of) your clients… I’m sorry to break it to you, but it just isn’t. Don’t get me wrong, they love your CSA… it’s just that they are already inundated with email, facebook posts, etc and lead busy lives. They’re willing to eat your delicious veggies and support you farm, but they need support to getting there.
This is where following up in a personal manner comes in. Not to harass them with some lame offer like a telemarketer or a spammer… but to genuinely support them in the process to registering for a CSA share that they would love to recieve.
It turns out that 20-30% of non-renewed members will re register simply following a phone call (excluding the people who have moved away from the area). Isn’t that wild!
The thing is… It is so much easier to ignore a mass message than a personal one. So, this follow up needs to be as personal as possible.
I suggest the following approach:
In order to make the task more manageable, we need to try and eliminate people from list who have a legitimate reason for not renewing (they moved away, they got divorced, etc).
I suggest starting with a reminder email to your list of non-renewals inviting them to register for the current season, and asking a quick survey question regarding why they have not yet renewed (multiple choice question, using a google form directly embedded in the email, with one of the answers being ‘I moved way’)
Remove the people who have moved away from your list.
Of the remaining people, start by identifying 20-30 people who are the most likely to renew and CALL THEM ON THE PHONE. If you are shy about this, email me and I would be happy to have a mini coaching session with you (bonus for you, my reader). Remember, you are not pestering them. You are being of service by supporting them to eat your top quality freshly harvested veggies!
Send personal emails to the rest of the list… as in not a mass email… not something MailChimp just stuck their name on… really a 1 to 1 email. You can copy and past a template for the body of the email, but add a personalized opening.
If you’re still short, start calling the rest of the list.
I know it can be intimidating to call people up, none of us like being rejected. But remember… It’s not personal, it’s just business!
One thing that becomes evident in all this, is the need for quality information of your clients. Whoever is interacting with your clients on a weekly basis at the CSA drop off needs to have a system for taking notes and rating people based on their perceived enthusiasm for your product. At the very least, during the last couple of weeks of the CSA season, notes need to help you the following year identify who is worth calling if they do not renew. As with so much on the modern organic vegetable farm… it comes down to keeping great records!
So…
Who are the 20-50 people on your list who are the most likely to renew?
Is there someone on your team or in your entourage that is enthusiastic and your would entrust with this task?
