Building A Winning Team" Marketing and Management for Farm Couples After Program Evaluation Gender: Male

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1 Building A Winning Team" Marketing and Management for Farm Couples After Program Evaluation Gender: Male 1. What do you feel was the most useful part of the program? I liked the comprehensive approach to the whole subject. The most useful part was the discussion involving managing risk. Rethinking the marketing plan. The best part of this program is when I listened to the other people carefully I learned that you can learn from everyone. Bret Oelke Bret s knowledge and persistence on marketing plans and advice is second to none! Being able to bring my wife up to speed on marketing. Great being able to learn with others in age bracket. A good refresher from college marketing class. Better than my 300 level ag marketing courses. Bret s URL s. I have used a lot of his web address gathering information. Better yet. Put them on a CD for faster use. The group gathering to discuss different ideas and options. The ability to find out many different resources available to all of the groups. The terms in the marketing terms presentation. Giving my wife information that would have created guide the conversation if I would have tried to inform her. The interaction with the group. Everyone sharing ideas about what works for them. Also, the Internet tools and websites we discussed. Free information. I believe a very simple snapshot of something that really will work for me is make small, increment sales. The marketing stuff. It gave a good introduction into parts of marketing that I didn t understand and got me thinking on how to improve upon it. How to calculate cost of production, setup marketing plans, evaluate financial records, making networking connections. I feel this program brings a couple closer together getting away from everyday routine. Networking with other couples and bringing forth a lot of good discussion topics about the business. Financial analysis and how it applies to my farm and what a banker might look for and enterprise analysis. Everything was useful The budget planning landlord relationships farm communication. 1

2 2. What topics (not covered) do you feel should be included in this program? I think adding a segment on calculating cost and risk in marketing would be helpful. Sounds like it is already in the works. Marketing plan. Increasing sales, prices, rolls, basis. More hands-on. It would be tough to include more when so much is already being covered. Continue with program next steps. Would like more info on options I need to have better handle on them. More in-depth of estate planning (never too early to start estate planning). I liked all the different topics than were covered. I wrote list to have a list of marketing terms and definitions. I will let you know. Definitely would like to hear more about livestock marketing, as far as input strategies for that, but I realize that the time was limited. Might be good to have a whole separate class for that. Discussion on crop insurance. Possibility of buying clubs. Long term marketing club or meetings. Examples of marketing plans that work or don t work, playing out a few scenarios. How to actually use some of these tools. Better understanding of futures and options markets. This was a good introductory course. Right now I am feeling very interested in wanting to learn more about a lot of the things we didn t go over. Writing a personalized marketing plan. In my opinion the course should have multiple weekends and focus more on one or two topics per weekend. Maybe more on how to put the futures and options to work for myself and more details. 3. What would you change about the program? Maybe more helpful to do as a long weekend kind of event. Mix in some social activities to boost attendance. Good for learning and also good tax write-off. Weekly. Same number of sessions. Longer more sessions. Margot s presentation on farm records needs improvement. It would be helpful to have pro s and con s and a demo of the different record keeping programs. The addition of another meeting would help fit it all in. Not sure worked really well. Have the class time longer to get through all the information and Bret always has more to add. Nothing. Not much, it covered a lot More time, more classes. Split the men and women for one or two classes. 2

3 Either need more sessions, or less material to cover. All very good stuff, just gets to be a lot to digest each meeting. Probably two more sessions would really help. More hands-on, actual marketing, marketing planning. There is a different level of expertise perhaps in the beginning you breakout the group into two groups, i.e. advanced and beginner. A little less farm management stuff, there are a lot of other places to get that stuff. Split into two separate weekends. More time, seemed like most slides ended with we don t have time to get into that. I feel that coming to the conference with a marketing plan, homework assignment or farm financial background would be helpful. Also, I felt that some of the earlier presentations could have been done on one s own time or a blog or internet viewing. Schedule a couple of 15 minutes breaks. Make it longer. More time to cover material and hands-on with real numbers worksheet. 4. I was surprised by I don t surprise easily. Different perspective on marketing. How everyone shared. Everyone was involved. More questions to the women. How much farmers actually receive for their crop. How open the group was. I was surprised by how much fun this class was. The different topics that were covered not just marketing. How open the male (some female) participants became about their operations. How closely the markets tend to watch and follow history. The food. How useful the marketing plan sheets are. How many resources are out there to use. All the different avenues there are to market your products. How much Farm Bureau has to offer. How much work I have to do on my farm, to get to a point where I am comfortable with my marketing. The interest from both the men and women was very impressive. Bret s energy and his love for markets. How everyone doesn t have a good plan and budget so I am not the only one. 5. I changed my mind about.. Being an A, B, or C customer. Never thought about that much. Marketing tools. Using different tools. Keep marketing in the same general season/year. Looking for different marketing strategies. About the number of sales I need per crop year. Being more open to different marketing ideas. 3

4 How much we need to look at marketing vs. production. How marketing is so important to use all available avenues to the producer. Marketing options (or availability) of using more than just straight options or futures. Sell if the price is good and just do nothing if it isn t. Money can be made on a market moving any direction. Young farmers, Farm Bureau. I really enjoy this group. My mind was pretty much made up on options. I don t like-em now I still don t like-em but I will probably use them more often. That futures markets are only for hot shot speculators. How to market crops profitability through other avenues such as basis contracts, options. Not implementing a marketing plan (written). I realize now that verbal and nonverbal communication is very important. Market s. Futures trading but need to learn a lot more about all the technical information. 6. I now understand.. More thoroughly different tools and terms of marketing. Feel more comfortable doing my own hedging. The state of the Grain Buying business. There are more people that like I do. That it will take more capital to farm in the future. The other parts of the market. I don t know if I will ever understand everything. More of the marketing terms. I have a lot to learn. I said one time that if you read about your field of business for one hour a night, you will be an expert in one year. It will probably take me two years! The important of having a marketing plan and the need to follow it. Knowing how to be proactive when dealing with vendors, lenders, and land lords. Marketing takes too much money. How utterly unprepared I am. I have more control over the price I get paid for crops than I originally thought. How I need to develop a better marketing plan. How necessary written plans are. More about the fundamentals of the markets, where to go for more information. Financial ratios and how they are calculated. We ve known about the ratios but actually having to calculate and interpret was very educational. That I don t understand. Basics on futures and options have a good idea and can put together a good budget and expense sheet. 4

5 7. I plan to Use marketing plan to become the most successful farm in the county. Work with Karen more closely on a written marketing plan. Use more strategic thinking when marketing rather than the same old stuff. Modify my marketing plans. Implement more marketing options. Develop a written marketing plan and purchase plan. Stick to my written marketing plan even though I have lot money the last two years. Make and live by marketing plan. Learn more about the terms. Improve our visibility as a commercial business through marketing and communication. Make a better effort to make and follow a plan. Watch outside markets, and pay more attention to managing the inputs. Farm and do more Farm Bureau things. Use my marketing plan as a written tool something I ve never done. Develop a real marketing plan and examine marketing tools in my area. Attend a local marketing group to get into marketing more. Put forth a conscious effort to apply as much of this as possible in order to make my farm run smoother. Write down a marketing plant in detail as an operation with everyone s signature. Look over my own numbers to calculate my ratios and my costs of production, and develop a simple marketing plan. Continue learning. Put what I learned to work and want to expand what I learned and check out Bret s marketing meetings. 8. Other comments: Would be fun to have a marketing exercise with some kind of trophy to compete for - fictional exercise. Great to see programs of this brought by different organization like to see more in future. Thanks you Farm Bureau and Corn Growers. Thank you to Karen and Farm Bureau and FCS for their sponsorship. Great class I would highly recommend. It s great that Farm Bureau and FCS and MCGA and the Extension offer this program. We NEED to continue with this group! I need to learn and feel that this is a group that would do well to stick together. Bret is a fresh perspective. Bret was a great speaker. One very interesting. Free beer! I do think this program was very beneficial however I feel it may have started a bit strong and didn t spend much time on basics. Truly appreciated your honesty and your delivery. Good eye contact. Felt like you were talking to me. 5

6 We should have gone into Saturday night to cover more marketing information or later on Sunday too. Would like more detailed information. Enjoyed case study and Sunday s presentation the most. It was a great start and would like more follow-up conferences. A lot of material to cover would like more sessions in the future. 9. Would you recommend this type of program to others? (Circle one) YES NO Yes 100% 10. Is there a better (or different) way that this type of program could be delivered? Plan it all together with other activities. Have competitive events to practice marketing skills. No. The first couple of meetings need to be separate male from female so the women can become more comfortable with the concepts. No. Format is great. Not really. The way it is delivered is very good. Bret keeps it very interesting. No. As mentioned before, separate for a couple of classes, maybe the women will open up more. Having an intro course for those who may have been overwhelmed with the pace that we covered this material. It was very intense. I enjoyed the last two session the most, first one a little long to general for me. If everyone had a laptop instead of overhead. The sitting in semi circle wouldn t be mandatory. No, with our busy weekend schedule we shouldn t do it another way but there needs to be follow-up. This is as good of a setting to be in. I thought it worked well. Some presentations I feel could have been done before so we could have done more hands-on i.e. technical. No an intensive weekend session is more inviting for me to participate in than a several week program, or anything that involves homework. Make it longer or more session throughout the year. I think it worked out great. Need follow-up programs. It was nice to be with other couples this age group. 6

7 11. What kind of follow up, if any, would you like to see as a result of your participation in this program? Any additional spreadsheets, etc. or other schedules to assist in decision making. A male group of young individuals with the same interest as what was in this group. Would like to join one of Bret s marketing programs. Being able to have Class # II. Have an advanced marketing class. Would love to continue with this group (class). More estate planning seminars. follow up s from participants in the next classes and their participant remarks. I would like to be notified of any follow-ups. I would like to continue meeting monthly to keep up on marketing, friends, issues. Another couple of sessions in August to recap what we discussed this winter. A year end review of what happened on the markets over the last year, how our plans worked and what we could have done better. Have us put together market plans and work through them. More information, follow-up conference. A follow-up weekend either next Fall or one year from now with exactly the same group to build on this. s. Future follow-up programs to go more in-depth. 12. Please additional comments or questions to either Bret Oelke oelke002@umn.edu or Karin Schaefer Karin.Schaefer@fbfs.com 7