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Focusing on FOMs: How Farm Onboarding Managers Set the Foundations for Farm Success
235 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we get an overview about the Farm onboarding process with Chris, a member of our Barn2Door Farm Onboarding Manager team. We discuss the role Farm Onboarding Managers (FOMs) play in setting up farmers for success and providing them with tools and resources for their future account management.
www.barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Goals
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast, the weekly listen for farm selling direct. We'll talk about the four levers for farm success, which are quality, brand, price, and convenience. We'll hear from outside industry experts and producers like you to delight your customers, save time, and to increase your direct farm sales and business. We're glad you're here.
Meet the Host and Guest
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast. I'm Garrett, your host for today's episode. We've got a great conversation for you today with one of our Barnadore farm onboarding managers, Chris Norris. Welcome, Chris. Hey, thanks, Garrett. Thanks for having me.
Chris Norris on Farm Onboarding
00:00:39
Speaker
All right, so tell me about your role at Barnadore and how you work with farmers.
00:00:44
Speaker
All right. As a farm onboarding manager, I'm one of those first people that people are going to meet with to get their store set up. So I'm going to work with them to get their inventory items built out, get their fulfillment options built out and basically get everything set to get their store live. So we'll work with them on training and the system. Once we do have those items built out for them, as well as giving them the social media best practices moving forward to make sure they're set up for success on our platform.
00:01:11
Speaker
And so what do you end up doing on a day to day basis? So day to day is pretty, pretty busy. So typically I'll have anywhere between eight and 10 farms a day. Everyone's at different points throughout the day. So I'll have some farms I'm meeting with the first time, some farms I'm meeting with my final call, five calls in.
00:01:28
Speaker
But day-to-day, just working on different aspects of that, whether it's getting their inventory loaded or getting fulfillments loaded, whether it's announcing their store or training them on the system, showing them pick pack lists, giving them social media best practices, reviewing mail chimp, just depends on where they're at in
Challenges in Transitioning to Online Sales
00:01:44
Speaker
the process. So day-to-day, every call is different depending on where they're at and we're just moving them forward so they can get over to their account manager.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. So the process from start to finish when you're first meeting a farmer, what is that like?
00:02:00
Speaker
So typically our orientation call, the first call I have with a farmer, just kind of listening. We have great notes from our sales team when they signed up just to see where they're at, just in general. It's just basically a conversation with them to see what they're envisioning as far as getting set up, what I need to do to build stuff out for them and basically just getting an overall feel for what I need to do to make sure they're set up for success. So that initial call, we'll just talk about what they want to sell, what they're thinking of selling.
00:02:26
Speaker
and I'll take what they're doing and give them those best practices along the way, give them advice on what they're doing, and then get everything set up and create a game plan to get their store alive and get them trained on the system so we can get them selling on our site as soon as possible. So you're pretty much that very first official contact with a farmer that's starting with Barn to Door. Why do you think it's so important to have onboarding managers here for farmers to use?
00:02:55
Speaker
The whole online thing can be really intimidating for a lot of people. So obviously there's people that are tech savvy and then there's people that barely can log into a computer. So we're here to kind of help the people across the gamut there. So having that one-on-one contact to be able to get set up and be able to talk to a person to share best practices to help them out and answer any questions.
00:03:17
Speaker
Just huge compared to a lot of companies where you might sign up for something and then they're just giving you an email saying, Hey, here's how to do that. So having that one-on-one conversation, building a relationship with those people you're working with is really key to their success and setting them up for success rather than them basically just having to do it on their own there. So you've definitely worked with a lot of farmers. How long have you been working with Marnadore?
00:03:41
Speaker
I've been here almost a year and a half now, been a farmer onboarding manager that whole time and seen the progress and all the changes that have gone along in that year and a half too.
Importance of a Live Web Store
00:03:50
Speaker
So in that time that you've been here, what are some of the primary challenges you think farmers face when they're transitioning online and specifically with Barned Door?
00:04:01
Speaker
I mean, a lot of people that I work with haven't sold online before. So they might be doing things by word of mouth or trying to sell on Facebook. They haven't had any experience selling online or they might've signed up with another site that doesn't offer that one-on-one help to kind of get set up and they just get frustrated with that or it's overwhelming to them. So I think in most cases, people are coming to us for that e-commerce experience.
00:04:25
Speaker
or they were at a previous solution that just wasn't working for them and they're wanting something you know having that extra help to streamline things and really make their farm successful moving forward. So for farmers we often recommend that they get their web store live before a website. Why is that the case?
00:04:42
Speaker
A website without a web store, you're basically sending someone to a dead end. So if you have a website without a link to a store there, you're not making money there. So people can go read about your history, read about your products, but there's no button to link them to a store to be able to purchase those products. So first off, if you're doing that, or you're having a website that doesn't have
00:05:04
Speaker
a link to the store on there the likelihood of them returning to that website later down the road and hoping that's up there is a lot slimmer so we get that web store set up first because that's where you're going to make the money on the platform that's where people are going to go to make those purchases get those set up
00:05:20
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff we can do during onboarding to get stuff ready for the website as far as forwarding their domain to the web store and things like that without having the full website available yet. We want to focus on making them money first and showing them those results and getting that and then focusing on getting that website built out for them afterwards.
00:05:39
Speaker
Right, right. That's very important. I mean, that's ultimately why farmers are here. They're here to make more money. Exactly. So we want them to see those results come through and that starts with the web store, not the website. So there's a lot of things people can do if through social media before they have a website too. So there's a lot of different ways with the store to share items out once you have stuff live and be active on social media too, without having that full website up yet to still make that
Key Elements for Store Launch Success
00:06:06
Speaker
money.
00:06:06
Speaker
What should farmers expect when their store first goes live? That kind of depends on the farmer. So there's some farms that have a huge following as far as that goes. There's some farms that are starting from scratch. So once you have your items live and everything is ready to go in your store, we'll show you how to post items live. A lot of that comes down to once having that live is how you're sharing out that store link with people.
00:06:30
Speaker
If you're just starting off, don't have a Facebook following or have Instagram or any social media. And you're not starting with any customers. That might be a case where obviously you're on the internet there. So anyone can kind of search and barn to door, find the farm and make a purchase, but you're not driving those directly to your store site. So a lot of what we do in onboarding is to set up those foundations to make sure you have a Facebook business page, have a shop button added on that.
00:06:56
Speaker
If you have Instagram, make sure we get a link tree added with the store link there so you can share out to those followers on those sites that your store is active. Another big part of onboarding is the email collection. So even if they're starting small, if they just have family and friends as emails, we get those folks loaded as customers. So they have someone that they can start emailing to let them know that the store is active there too. So it really depends on where the farm's at, whether they're just starting, they might not see
00:07:25
Speaker
a ton of traffic right away, but that's where, you know, your account manager is going to come in to help you start growing that customer base organically versus an established farm that, you know, we've had some farms where they put up a shop now, but, and I had one farm a few weeks ago down in Texas where they created a promo code, announced their store one night and he emailed me the next morning and they already had $400 in orders sitting there. So it just really, it just kind of depends on where the farm's at currently and how they're marketing and how
00:07:53
Speaker
who they can market to at the time. That note about emails was really interesting for me. I didn't know about that. Yeah. As far as e-commerce goes, email collection is the name of the game. So that's what we always try to target for folks is just letting them know that try to target for a hundred emails to start. So our most successful farms on our platform all have at least a hundred emails in their customer list that they're able to message at least on a weekly basis.
00:08:21
Speaker
to send an order reminder to you to send a weekly newsletter to. So a lot of the stuff in onboarding, especially with MailChimp is just setting up that foundation to give them tools to help collect emails. So that'll go into creating some signup forms for them, a pop-up on their barn to door site, and then creating some mail templates for them that their account manager can then work with them on sending out and automating so they can start messaging to those people. But
00:08:48
Speaker
The email collection is the main goal to push those drivers and push those sales to the website. Awesome. That is a great feature and one of the many key features I think leads to success. And on that note, when we're talking about success, what do you think are some of the best practices that farmers can implement during their onboarding?
00:09:10
Speaker
You know, a lot of it is just going to be showing up for meetings and just kind of learning the system on your own and clicking through. So, you know, depending on how people learn, I'm one of those people that like to just click through everything, take a look at everything and go along there. So, you know, we definitely try to do a lot of the heavy lifting and onboarding as far as getting stuff built out. But in the end, the farmers are going to be the ones managing the ins and outs of the page. So we want to make sure.
00:09:35
Speaker
that we're there to help them along the way, but that they're actually learning and involved in the process as
Adapting to Farmers' Needs
00:09:40
Speaker
well. So we want to make sure they know how to update their schedules, add drop locations, update farmers market dates, add new items. We want to make sure they know how to do all of that.
00:09:50
Speaker
Um, cause they'll be managing that on their own. So just setting them up, showing them the way and then having them kind of be interactive in those meetings. Everything is through Google meet. So we'll have them share their screen kind of moving forward and click them through, have them make updates themselves. And then there's always a little homework between calls too. So we'll always have a few things that they can cover between calls to stay on pace and on time to meet that four to five week.
00:10:16
Speaker
range moving forward. So just a little bit of interaction and off the lean in a little bit. But again, we try to do a lot of the heavy lifting for them to make it as easy as possible. Yeah, one of the one of the great things that I like about this entire process is that there's so much adaptability, at least on our end, to be able to meet the farmer's needs. Because obviously, we've got so many different farms, so many different farmers, and they all have something unique to work on. And I think it's great that you guys are able to do that for them.
00:10:46
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, that's one thing never working with farmers before I worked here is just seeing the work ethic they have. And, you know, like their schedules can be crazy. So, you know, adapting to be able to work with them. I have people probably maybe a fifth of my calls each week that we have to cancel or reschedule just cause stuff is happening on the farms between farm stuff and life stuff. Rescheduling becomes a huge part of that too. So just being flexible to help them out through the journey is definitely a must in this industry.
00:11:15
Speaker
So we talked to one of our farm account managers in one of our previous
Onboarding Process and Success Metrics
00:11:20
Speaker
podcasts. What do you think are the biggest distinctions between a farm onboarding manager and a farm account manager?
00:11:27
Speaker
So your farm onboarding manager, we're basically there to set up those foundations to success for you guys. So we're there to get everything set up initially. And we don't have to have the full store set up. So we want to focus on what your main selling items are, what's going to make you most successful to get that store up and running right away. So getting those items built out, your most successful and most popular fulfillment items.
00:11:50
Speaker
getting those up and running. So you have something to sell immediately, right? We can always go back in and add other things to the store as you go, but your onboarding manager is there to get that store set up as quickly as you can, get you trained on the system, share some best practices with you and get those foundations built out. So you can move over to your account manager and really fine tune things and really focus in on making sure you're successful in the platform and growing your customer base.
00:12:18
Speaker
Is there a set amount of time that a farmer will be working with an onboarding manager or is it really how long it takes for them to get acclimated to the system?
00:12:28
Speaker
Um, so, I mean, that always depends, you know, farmers are busy. So after the orientation meeting, set up a weekly time to meet with them. Most farms I work with, we're getting through those weekly calls and giving them over to their account manager within four to five weeks. So, you know, one call per week, depending on schedules, people might be able to do two meetings a week, things like that. So some people move faster than others. But on average, I work with people for about a month, just a weekly meeting for those four to five weeks to get everything covered and get them scheduled to meet with their
00:12:58
Speaker
account manager. So we talked a little bit ago about how onboarding managers provide the tools for success. What does some of that success look like?
00:13:09
Speaker
Oh, wow. Depending on the scale, the farm, you have people that are starting out that I've had guy that he's like, I bought chickens three weeks ago. He's like, I'm going to start selling chickens. Never done it before. Didn't have any clue how to do it. We got him set up and everything. So, you know, some people might see success as selling one chicken online and just getting that start. So I've seen people starting off small and just getting that first order through seeing that it is possible to sell stuff online. How easy that is for them to have that all in one spot instead of fielding.
00:13:39
Speaker
emails and Facebook messages, word of mouth, having that all on that platform. That can be a success just getting one order through. We've had other larger farms that are already established and have customers success to them might be doubling sales or tripling sales or selling out their CSA pre-orders, things like that. So it really just depends on the farm, you know, what success looks like, but obviously getting those orders through and seeing things work for them in the system is going to be the biggest motivator for that success.
00:14:10
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Talking about the relationship again with the onboarding managers and the account managers, do you both work closely with one another as far as that trade off? Do you give them information about the farm before they end up going to the account manager so that they're able to continue that success?
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah. So we'll honor my last call with the farm. Once we get them scheduled with their account manager, I'll go through in our system and kind of set up a note for the account manager moving forward. If there's any pending items that the farm is still waiting on getting done, we'll note that for the account manager. Otherwise I'm giving them next steps. So if we have all those foundations built out and their goal is to announce their new CSA in a month, I'll make sure to
00:14:57
Speaker
put those notes for the account manager in there. So they'll be able to kind of research that before their first meeting with the farmer and can hit the ground running with the farmer there and keep working on their goals towards there. So a lot of communication goes into that directly with the account manager before they even talk to the farm for the first time. That's great to hear. It's good to know that despite having different job titles here, everyone is really one cohesive unit when it comes to helping farmers succeed during their time here with Barnadore.
00:15:26
Speaker
For sure. Yeah. It's definitely team effort through the company there. So I mean, sales leaves me great notes when they sign up a farm. So I have an idea of what I'm getting into when I talk to them for the first time. And then we just try to continue that pattern, leave notes for the account manager moving forward and keep that communication going. So the farmer's not having to repeat themselves on any things and we can keep that momentum going for them.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up sales because I wanted to ask a little bit about that. So obviously the first point of contact is with sales and then eventually sales brings that farmer to you guys. So what is that process like? So basically when they're closing the deal and they have the okay from the farm that they're signing up, they're going to schedule a meeting on my calendar for an orientation call. So
00:16:11
Speaker
Sales will schedule something with them. And I'll usually have either a half hour or 45 minute call booked on my calendar with the farm. They're then going to go get the account created for the farm and everything, both the farmer's account and like an internal admin account on our end. And then they'll basically leave me notes based off of their conversations off sales volume, what they're looking to sell, what their priority items and fulfillments are. So I can go into that conversation with them already with a good base of knowledge.
00:16:40
Speaker
off their operation.
Evolving Support for Farmers
00:16:42
Speaker
So again, we're saving them a little bit of time where they're not having to repeat every little aspect of that moving forward. Just basically the general kind of overall summary of what they've talked about so I can know what to base my conversation off of when I start working with them. Yeah, that's great. In your time here, how have you seen your team change and improve to better serve farmers?
00:17:03
Speaker
Oh man, that's the joy of working, you know, with a startup is things are just constantly evolving, you know, just in the tech world and especially with startups, right? We want to service, you know, farmers and make things easier for them and help them. So it's just a constant learning experience. So just in the year and a half, I've been here thinking about how we were onboarding farms a year and a half ago versus now, a lot of things are just streamlining things and kind of automating things and making things easier.
00:17:29
Speaker
for the farmers and for ourselves. We still like offering that personal service, obviously. So I don't think we're ever going to lose that. So just constantly evolving and changing with things as they change. It's the name of the game working here to make sure that we're always able to service the farmers moving forward. It's good to see that growth over time. It's good to see that we're always trying to improve and we're always trying to deliver the best experience possible for people that are coming on board.
00:17:54
Speaker
We've had a lot of additional resources as well. So when I started, we had our learn center and a few other things. And then we started our connect program where they can connect with a lead here at barn to door, as well as other barn to door farmers. We have our academy. So there's a lot of resources that we've really built out and seen grow, you know, across the year and a half I've been here and they're going to continue to keep growing from there as well too. So super exciting stuff as far as that goes.
00:18:21
Speaker
Absolutely.
Success Stories and Advice
00:18:22
Speaker
Now, do you have any success stories from some farms that you've personally onboarded?
00:18:29
Speaker
Oh, I mean, plenty. So it's crazy, like the variety of farms you work with too, but it's especially just starting off and I've had folks do poultry farms in Arizona. I've had fiber farms. So people do an alpaca fiber. I basically, as far as the territory have the Western half of the country here. So I've worked with beef and pork producers in Texas and Oklahoma bison ranches in Utah and Montana.
00:18:54
Speaker
and flower farms in Alaska kind of run the gamut of stuff. And I think that's the funnest part about onboarding is getting their store set up and trying to push for that first order to get that through and be like, Hey, look, what we've set up is working. You have an order and show them how to process that order and see that I can think of a lot of success stories between farmers that haven't sold before that start selling stuff or farmers that are just looking for a solution to streamline things. So we've had
00:19:23
Speaker
plenty of examples of farms that are already running CSAs, but they're doing everything manually on spreadsheets on Excel. And then we create those for them. And we've had a couple of farms that are thousands of dollars of pre-sold out, you know, their CSAs for summer and fall already. So I think that those are kind of the most exciting things to see where it's working for them so well that they're already sold out for the year, things like that. So that's like my favorite part of this job, seeing that success and just knowing that they have.
00:19:53
Speaker
that income in there and that they're in a good spot moving forward too. That's great. That's so great. Well, Chris, do you have any closing thoughts or advice to give to farmers just about the onboarding process and going on from there?
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, in onboarding, we're obviously here to help you. There'd be a little work on your end, but you know, our favorite part as onboarding managers in our team is hearing your story, see what's going to work for you and guiding you, giving you those best practices moving forward. So maybe the way you're doing stuff, we can set stuff up to make you succeed even more or give you those best practices to kind of change what you're doing. So I think part of it is having a little bit of an open mind because obviously I've onboarded hundreds of farms. We've worked with thousands of farms.
00:20:38
Speaker
across our platform. So we know what works. So, you know, having a little bit of an open mind, obviously we want you to succeed, you know, as well too. So having that open mind and then just putting that little bit of work in to be able to get rolling there are the two most important things. And then we're going to work the best we can to get you set up and get set for success there.
00:20:59
Speaker
Chris, thank you so much for speaking with me today. It's so important to hear about onboarding managers and how you help farmers succeed. And best of luck to you in the future. Awesome. Thanks, Garrett. Thanks for having me.
00:21:11
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to Chris for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barn to Door, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities. To learn more about Barn to Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, go to www.barn to door.com slash resources. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week.
00:21:42
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Direct Farm podcast. You can subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts to automatically download new episodes. For more free resources that you can read, watch, and listen to, visit farntador.com slash resources. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you again next week.