Bruce BakerFor the third and final installment in our series of interviews with experts who will speak at this Sunday's Farm to Market Conference in Liberty, we talked with Bruce Baker, a marketing consultant who teaches farm and food business people how to improve their sales, packaging, and customer relations. He surprised us with some strong opinions about what he called "country sappy stuff."
Watershed Post: What will you talk about at the conference?
Bruce Baker: My area of expertise is sales and customer service: what to say and how to use language that entices people. It’s following the four distinct phases of a sale, and improving the visual merchandising. I find that these farmers' markets that are just starting up, someone brings a card table and flops some garlic on it on top of a tablecloth with a crazy calico print on it. The result is busy and slapdash.
You have a great opportunity with a sale, and most people blow it with their greeting. They say really dumb things to customers, like, “Are you looking for anything you need?” My belief is that if you posture yourself as subordinate to the customer -- “Let me know if you need anything” -- and leave them alone, you’ll [make more sales]. [You have to] wait for the customer to ask you something, or to make eye contact. That’s the permission. Generally it’s a question, often a stupid question, like, “Do you grow all those things?” The customer is really saying, “It’s OK to talk to me now.”
WP: What is the hardest part of your job? What can growers and sellers do to help you?
BB: To change. We tend to want to do the same old thing we’ve always done, but we just don’t live in that world. The baton has just been passed to a new generation, so change is really important. I keep meeting the same people who are growing the same varieties of the same stuff. They grow tons and tons of tomatoes, but they don’t have cilantro. But the person who is really savvy puts together a salsa kit, with cherry tomatoes, a beefsteak tomato, a bunch of cilantro.
WP: So what should a farmers' market look like, design-wise?
BB: Multiple levels in your display is really key. Most people display on tables -- already, your product is eight to 10 inches out of the zone from where it needs to be. The best thing you can do when you want to sell anything is to stimulate the senses. Put the colors together so they really vibrate. Onions and potatoes won’t sell as much as onions, potatoes and three colors of peppers. Taste samples really ramp up the sales. “Simple elegance” and the ‘new simplicity” are the words. A simple, elegant, professional look. The “country” look couldn't be more dead. Country sappy stuff like scarecrows, or a goose with a box around its neck -- the younger generation of people think it’s silly, Hallmark-ey and Wal-Mart-ey. They don’t want anything to do with it.
WP: Do you have any rules for promotional materials, such brochures, postcards, and labels?
BB: So many people don’t ever have that stuff out. When they do, it usually has terrible graphics, and they have way too much focus on the farm, which is important to a person only after they have become a loyal buyer. We live in a culture of "What are you going to do for me today?" So focus on the benefits of the product: "It's grass-fed beef, which means it will lower your blood pressure." Put the focus on what are you doing for the customer. How does your product enhance or change their life? Consumers don’t want to think that what they’re eating came from an animal. [For a farm selling pork], I would picture either a table set with a wonderful pork roast on the table, or a man at a grill cooking. Because that's the "you."
