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Farm Sales Models
- If you are banking on selling via a CSA, then do people in your area know what a CSA is?
- Ask the question – “What are the successful people doing?” That applies to your area, customer base, and your business.
- CSA’s depend on a supportive customer base that has faith in the farmer and wants to support that farmer’s story.
- “You have to craft your reputation as a farmer to sell CSA shares.”
- Talk to other people in your industry to stay up to date. What’s working, what isn’t. What innovations are out there.
- The data that you accumulate when engaging with customers is critical to how you can make future decisions.
- “The more you learn, the more you know to look for.”
Farmer’s Market Keys
- Set yourself apart. The image that you portray is important.
- Learn how to be yourself and be comfortable with that. Let your character shine through.
- “People don’t come to a farmers market to stand in a grocery store isle, they come for the experience.”
- How your products are displayed is key. Show abundance.
- How your stall looks is important – the table clothes, have you verticalized your stall, have a lot to look at (posters of the farm).
- Be a good orator. People go to farmers markets for the experience – think what’s your story.
- If you’re not a people person, don’t do the farmers market. Find someone who does.
- How do you present yourself at the market? Are you approachable?
- How do you invite people in without making them feel like they will be sold too.
- Don’t be sitting at your booth.
- Spend some time to learn basic body language fundamentals.
- Invest in customers that you see value in. Don’t invest in customers that are trying to cheapen your product.
- Be careful offering discounts and bartering. It opens a Pandora’s box by setting precedence for the future.
Learn More from Curtis Stone:
Listen to The Urban Farmer audiobook