Open source sales funnel for Animal science

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this is a farm marketing masterclass on sales funnels for people with an agriculturally based business whether that's a full-scale farm or a homestead it's all to help you figure out where you are now where you want to go and then how do you get there now in the link for this video there is a free download so you can print this out and follow along you don't even have to give your email address it's just a digital download because I believe that this should be shared with everybody so that we can all grow as a community and small scale agriculture becomes more viable the more people adopt Better Business principles now my sales funnel is going to work whether you're a small business and you're just starting out with a few customers you want to grow or you're an established business and you've gotten a little bit further along and you want to figure out how do you get to the next level how do you get to the next scale you need to push the envelope this is going to get you there now while all of this is based on my experience and really sound business and marketing principles I'm just a guy on the internet you have to do your own due diligence if you're making decisions about your money your life your family your friends anything that this might affect I am relieving myself from the burden of the responsibility of your life decisions you need to contact a certified tax professional a lawyer if you're in small business and have those people sign off on what your decisions are I want to get you in the door with more intelligent questions and that's where I come in but then you're going to have to go to the real professionals when it comes time to actually spending money I'm a guy on the internet just sharing my thoughts you cannot trust everything you hear on the internet and with that let's dive in now the layout for this big thing it's it's it's a lot and that's why I gave you a download you're going to come back to this video I don't make viral videos I make helpful videos so we have six different levels here those represent the six major steps in a customer Journey it gets more nuanced don't worry about that think about the six steps six levels in a customer Journey so aside from those six steps I have it broken up into four columns to give you more information First Column that we're we're going to go over is the customer Journey where the customer is on their path to giving you money that's where we want to be then we're going to go over the principles what are the principles that you should have in mind to best serve the customer for where they are on their path to giving you more money and then because a lot of this is Theory based this column right here is the practical application you run a chicken farm you want to sell chickens it doesn't matter I'm going to use chickens for this entire presentation because I love chickens so much but insert honey vegetables cattle whatever you want what is the practical application what are you doing to actualize the principle to serve the customer and because this is a 25 30 minute video master class and I'm covering too much ground all at once I have recommended reading with books that I can share with you that I have read that I appreciate and apply to the different levels and steps and the reason why we have this framework and this common language is because at our end of the day our goal sure is to make more money but what does money give you money is a tool it's not a goal it's not an objective just making more money we have more money so that we can have more days off the farm or make work on the farm more enjoyable cuz there's always more work to do this is to alleviate that work get you more efficient more profitable so you can enjoy what you do on a day-to-day basis more regularly and that seems like a pretty good goal to me [Music] now we're taking a look at our entire sales funnel here it starts in the middle and works its way out we're going to start with no customers and then we're going to start with the first customers and then scale from there sometimes you only need 50 100 customers for the entire year and that's great sometimes you need 50,000 100,000 and that's a whole different conversation then we're on the periphery here so to start the easiest point we're going to go to conversion and that is the point where you're converting a shopper into a customer now when people give you money there's a lot of responsibility in that and we're going to follow some guiding principles to get people to convert zooming back out on our sales funnel we're in our customer Journey we're in the first step of conversion to get our money and now we're going to make it easy in our guiding principles making it easy for people to give you money that sounds really straightforward but a lot of you are really good at it I don't understand it I've been guilty of it myself and what does that mean what is the practical application well let's go over to the next column that's the practical application how do we make it easy for people to give us money accepting the common payment options accepting credit cards with what you're selling do you know how much it costs you to make that product so you have your base cost and then with what your profit is supposed to be there's some advertising and cost built into that how much money do you have to accept those credit card fees as a way to make it more convenient to have people give you money or do you need to pass those fees along to the customer that's a decision you were going to have to make do you know what to do with a check do you know how to deposit a customer's check do you accept digital things with touchless and people touch things with their phone and their apple watches and it's nuts cash do you have a disorganized cash drawer do you go with a bucket of crumpled up bills and hope at the end you know how much money you made based off of how well you made your change if you're sending someone to the market do you count out your cash drawer and then count it again when it comes back to see if they're making change properly if people are doing math these basic steps are what a lot of people trip up on and it's that attrition over time that is one of the core reasons why small farms fail is because they're uncomfortable with money and that interaction the conversion of getting a customer to become or a shopper to become a customer and if you're bad at accepting money you're never going to have enough money to worry about so you don't have to worry about all the other steps focus on this one first first we're still on the first step conversion we've made it easy through our guiding principles for people to give us money we've gone over credit cards checks cash digital so I have some bad news for you you're not the hero you may be trying to raise animals the right way build soil through no till cropping whatever whatever you're really into you know if you're using regenerative EG as a as a buzzword good for you you're not the hero of your story we're in the conversion path at the in the in very middle of our sales funnel we're making it easy for people to give us money we're accepting comment payment options now before we move on to step two and we start getting customers in I want you to have your story defined so you know what role that customer plays in your life and what role you play in your customer's life and to do that we're going to read story brand by Donald Miller you'll be able to get through it rather quickly you'll be able to share this I've bought copies of this for people just because I think it's that important and without me going into any more detail I would recommend picking up story brand from Donald Miller hone your story write it out do the exercises in the book and then it's going to be easier when we move on to step two of our customer [Music] Journey so let's talk about finding your first Farm customers how do you find your first Farm customers we're in our sales funnel we just talked about conversion in step one now we're in a step two at the bottom of the funnel in customer Journey ready to purchase now what does this mean the bottom of the funnel ready to purchase customers who are looking to give you money these are going to be the cheapest customers to acquire they're going to be the most valuable longterm you'll have to do the least amount of work but you have to take care of them so these people who are ready to purchase these are friends these are family these are neighbors if you have a social group uh Sports Church whatever all these people who may or may not be in market for what you're looking for but they trust you and they're going to help you along the way cuz cuz they're going to give you insight about your whole process feedback on your product and it's a wonderful wonderful place to have a lot of people is the bottom of your funnel ready to purchase now what are your guiding principles first we're going to address objections what are people's objections so that we can continue doing our business producing food fiber and fuel uh we just want to know what is keeping them from giving us their money so that we can buy things and do things it's a tool that we need to acquire we also then once we know what their objections are we have to go find them and talk to them going where the people are I want to go where the people are address their objections and try not to be everywhere if you try to be everywhere with your marketing you're going to burn yourself out so go where you know you can reach the most people address their objections and make it easy for them to give you money because they're ready to purchase now I have some more bad news for you you're selling chicken wrong ha you're doing the wrong thing when it comes time to sell your farm products we've gone past step one of our customer journey and conversion we're at our customers who are ready to purchase these are bottom of funnel warm traffic people are looking to give us money now the Practical applications of selling chickens this is the philosophy side this is the application side the practical application when it comes to selling chickens we're going to do some market research market research is as easy as talking to people going out at the farmers market and listening when people are customers are giving us feed back of talking to our friends and family what worked what didn't what's your what's your pain points what what can I do better market research once you find what their pain points are you're going to adjust your messaging and with your messaging you're going to say are they looking for organic non GMO pasture raay are they just looking for pasture rays and local are they looking for just local are they looking for non GMO all the little details the talking points the verbage you're going to have this holster this toolbox of things that you say to address objections all wall making it convenient for people to give you money you want to make it more convenient for them to not only give you money and do business with you but then take your product home and interact with it in their own life the reason why I say you're doing it wrong if you're talking about the features and focused on it being pastures and the birds are moving and they're eating stuff that's great you want it to be easy for them to cook you want it to be easy for them to handle you want it to be easy for them to incorporate it into their lives by doing your res search figuring out what their objections are getting through the features really quickly to to know that like there's the bullet points of pasture raised organic non GMO developing your messaging for recipes for walking through and holding their hand to make it easy for them to feed their families with what you're providing we've done our market research we worked on our messaging we're focused on convenience how do we learn more how do I expand on this aside from a short YouTube video we have to look into the psychology of persuasion you're trying to influence them to purchase the thing that you've worked so hard to provide and and they have some objections what are the different ways that you can have these conversations with people if your this doesn't come naturally to you well for that I have a book influence by Robert Chini uh I throw out my book book jacket so here's a picture of one uh flashing up on the screen I love this book it's a heavier read maybe tough during the season but in the winter months when you have a little bit of time and brain space this is going to go through all the different mechanisms all the levers that you can use to influence people to get them to give you money so that you can continue you working the land working with livestock living out your dreams but without this important tool of money that's going to come from customers buying what we provide you're never going to make it so if you want a little more skills in this area influence Robert shini read it read it again keep it as a reference material I read it probably once a year it's dense but I enjoy it so dive [Music] in how do you make more money from your existing Farm customers while we've gone through conversion we've set it up and made it easy for people to give us their money we found our first customers who are ready to purchase at the bottom of funnel now before we try to get any more Farm customers we want to go down to loyalty and we want to scale our existing first customers who are really dedicated to us now we do that in their customer step it's number three is loyalty we're scaling average order value and lifetime value I'm in marketing I'm a marketing professional we love acronyms aov average order value is how much money they spend at each individual interaction with you you've already got them there their money their wallet is out if you can get them to dig a Little Deeper there's more value with less work now lifetime value I like on a 12-month scale for agriculture how much money are you going to get from your average customer on a yearly basis and if you're thinking about growing your company it's not always about reaching more people but getting more value out of the people that you have let me say that again you don't need more Farm customers you need more value from your existing Farm customers we've got them to convert they're ready to purchase they're already customers so they're loyal we want to build loyalty let's go over to our guiding principle here on our chart what is the guiding principle for our loyal customers we're scaling average order value aov how much money do they spend at each time they interact with us and LTV can we get them to spend more on an annual basis not everybody can double their grocery bill on a week toe basis but if we can add a little bit in our product offering and offer them more throughout the year scale may not always be at the same margin but if we can scale their lifetime value we can have fewer customers every year that we service better how do we do that cultivating community and keep them coming back for more you want Happy customers happy customers are returning customers people want to feel connected and as part of a community now if you can apply these guiding principles you're well on your way to creating a sustainable Farm or Homestead Enterprise how do you cultivate Community when you're trying to sell more farm products and get people to buy more things when they finally reach you and open up their wallets and they're ready to give you money these are some of the things you can do to apply the principles of scaling your average order value cultivating community and keeping people coming back this is a big one having a consistent offering the same thing people have put energy upfront and that's part of your initial getting customers on boarded to see that like they're not going to ask ask you John is it still pasture raised once it's pasture raised and they found you they know they're going to do it they're balancing their choices in life and you have to be that consistent offering to fill the spot that they were looking to fill when they initially became your customer having a consistent offering same size same packaging uh not changing it up week to week always having things available that's what I mean by consistent offering to get people to come back having a subscription service like a CSA or a farm share I'm really on fire about these Farm drops lately where you sell the product online so you've got great data and you're collecting information very organized you touch product as little as possible sell your stuff up front and then have drop points and that drop point might be at a restaurant it might be at a farmers market it might be in a parking lot but having a consistent subscription option where you're readily in touch with people over and over again with your consistent offering to give them what they're looking for now to scale your average order value instead of just selling chickens if you try this out with getting some another Farmer's products because you now have an audience you can upsell are there other things on your farm that you can sell or are there other farmers who are producing things that you can take some of the margin because they're paying you for the marketing and you're scaling your average order value where you didn't have to produce the thing you're just capitalizing on a few extra bucks because the customer is already there and that's the hard part do you know who your farm tribe is we're on the Loyalty section step number three scaling average order value and lifetime value how how do you do that you develop a tribe of people who are dedicated and loyal to your farm your business and you personally through your relationship marketing they love you they want to support you that is important and that is beautiful now to learn more about tribes what they are what that concept is we're going to go to another marketing Master look at how easy this book is to read this is great marketing for him because how long did this take to write but the principle in it of having a tribe of people who are dedicated to your business is super important now your tribe of people is going to go out and do some of your farm marketing for you but we're going to get into that a little bit more in some of the future steps now what's great if you're a small business and you want to stay a small business and you don't need to scale a zillion customers you never have to worry about social media ever all you have to do is go make it easy for people to give you money capitalize on the people who are ready to purchase from you scale your loyal customers so you have average order value and lifetime value are going up and you're making money and you can live very very happily in a small business right in the middle here maybe you'll hit the consideration phase in number four but five and six you'll never have to worry about it but if you need to grow beyond the center section that's what we're going to get into [Music] next question for you what is the best way to keep in touch with customers I want you to answer that the comment section down below we're going to go up here we're at the middle of the funnel we've already talked about the inside here we're at the middle of the funnel where our customers and our customer Journey are in the consideration phase they're they're not ready to purchase yet they're considering it but they need more convincing as they're considering buying from you you need to address their objections reinforce uh your securities and what you do and how their life will be better with your product in it so when it comes time to talking to your farm customers do you go email do you update your website do you do social media Which social media platform do you be on oh my goodness there are so many options but we're in consideration we're in the middle of the top of the funnel we already have a core group of customers we already in ready to purchase or uh yeah ready to purchase we went where the people are because we did market research and we know where our customers are interacting the most they might be most comfortable with email you may be in an area where they're all you know on Instagram or whatever simplify it pick one so in consideration our guiding principle picking a platform and owning it you should know from ready to purchase that they're going to be on certain platforms versus the other ones and always go with the one that you own if you're going to have two website is a must and email is a must you don't have to keep a Blog your website can be essentially a flyer and then you keep in touch with people via email but pick one platform and do a really good job own it expand to a second platform if and when you can if you want to reach more customers if it makes sense for you but just because things exist doesn't mean you have to use them you don't have to be on social media to be successful a lot of people are not but if you pick a platform and own it like your website the combination of your website and email that's all you're really going to need in that guiding principle now let's go over to practice iCal application and show how exactly you implement this how are you going to best use a Blog of log social media email for your farm this is a practical application in this column we've gone through the conversion with getting people to give us money we've found our first customers we've created loyal customers and scaled average order value lifetime value now we're in the consideration phase practical applications of selling chickens in this middle of the funnel I've got three options email social media and a Blog or a vlog how do you use that in conjunction with your website your website should be set up first thing it's the cost of doing business you need to have something on the Internet everyone's on the internet I don't need to say it again how do you use these things well first let's pull out social media and throw it out because the big social media companies own the algorithm and you have the least amount of control over that so if we're picking a platform and owning it we have our website we have our email list and our blog or our Vlog if you're going to create content if you're taking pictures on your farm put them into a blog post before they go to social media that blog post is what do you do one a month what is happening on the farm what are you offering what is important for you to have customers know now you have the space for a little bit of pictures and a little bit more text you may use it may not it's important for search engine optimization but we're not covering that in this video then you're going to take that blogger Vlog Vlog is a video blog where if you're not good at writing you can just say hey I'm on the farm today and here's a update and hosting on YouTube don't worry about getting famous on YouTube use it as media hosting and then you're going to include it in an email so you have a topic covered in your blog or Vlog that people want to hear more about you're going to email them and say Here's what we're selling here's where we're selling it and if you want to know more we wrote this blog post click the link some people just want the top two things cuz those are different customers ready to purchase different part of the funnel if you're in the consideration phase in the middle of the funnel these people need more information in order to make a purchase from you so you're going to use your blog you're going to contact them through email they're going to read the blog they're going to become further invested the more invested they are the closer they are to the bottom of the funnel because we want them eventually to go to conversion and give us money so don't worry about naturally getting a lot of traffic to your blogg or vlogger YouTuber or whatever Drive traffic through your email list which is how you stay connected with people and then use that to get people further down the funnel closer to purchase now have you ever fought a chicken before like punch it right in the face no no one I hope that you haven't but now that you're here how do you reach your customers when it comes time to sharing a Blog a vlog all this information you don't want to ask them for money every single time if you ask them for money every single time everyone's doing that everything is commoditized these days people are going to stop paying attention to you instead you use jabjab hook which is a principal in Gary vaynerchuk's book jab jaab hook so what is the princi princi well if you ask your customers for money every time they're going to stop picking up your phone calls but if you share a little story you work on developing that relationship you soften them up with a jab jab then you come in with the hook knock out that's where they convert that's where you're getting money and then once you've got their money stop asking them for money again right away you know that let them enjoy the thing that they have that you've provided you've produced and now they have to go home and interact with reinforce the fact that that's awesome and this principle of jab jaab hook you overlay into your marketing to develop those relationships build your tribe develop your community and scale that infrastructure that you need on as a customer basis in order to survive as a farmer now I have a feeling that a lot of my audience has done with conversion ready to purchase and loyalty they're out of the middle and we're into consideration and that's where a lot of people trip up are my campaigns running well how do I use a Blog how often should I be emailing where do I find the people what platform should I really start on is my website optimized to have people follow me these are things that I review with my Consulting clients these are things that I've been helping with people for years now I have an organized framework for you to say this is where I am this is where I want to be how do we get there I want to hear your questions about where you are and where you would like to be in the comment section below for this video leave them there and it makes it easier for me to use this foundational video to create more more content to help you with the specific problems that you're facing as you're trying to sell your farm products [Music] Tada today we're going to turn our chicken customers into raving fans raving crazy fans so we've been talking about my sales funnel it's got a top and a bottom middle out all makes sense if you've been following along we're at advocacy we're getting to the outer reaches of our sales funnel advocacy we're going to amplify what does this mean well we've gone through all of our other steps we've developed a dedicated customer base who loves what we have to do they're starting to review us they're talking about us they're giving us feedback we've been building our business we want to scale we want to produce more we're going to need more people how do you do that with social proof you're creating advocates of your customers and instead of you singing your own Praises which anybody can do getting other people to sing praises about you that's wonderful and we're going to amplify their messages in order to feed the new customers coming in in order to help us achieve our goals so you're a farmer who cares I don't I don't care I don't care that you're a farmer and you shouldn't either because it's not about you you are providing a product you are providing a service but as we're building our sales funnel to help our small scale agricultural based business grow it's about the customers it's about their experience with what you're providing cuz if you don't provide something of value no one's going to give a darn about it so let's go over to principles we know that it's not about you it's about how happy the customers are and if your customers are happy what we're going to do is amplify and make it easy for them to share their story we want to be able to capture those reviews on our cell phone at the farmers market or in in person if we can if people aren't comfortable with that write in one of your emails to your customer list hey we're looking to grow the business can you review our products we'd like to put them up on our website but we want to make it easy for people to share their story so that we can grow our business so that we can provide more benefit to our community are you uncomfortable singing your own Praises get your customers to do it for you and then amplify their messages in the bottom of our funnel which is going to feed the top of the funnel so this comes back and feeds itself again in the column for practical applications of selling chickens down here on the bottom da da reviews and testimonials you want to capture and collect those and then use them put them up on your website have them featured on the homepage use them in your email newsletter once every two months here these raving fans said this about us if you have something nice to say please respond to this email with something nice if you refer a friend and you have them come in and you say Susie referred me uh and I'm so excited to be a new customer give a kickback to Susie give her 10% off customers who give you reviews and testimonials and are referring new customers to you are doing your marketing for you and you should reward that because you're spending money on marketing if you're paying yourself it's your time they're taking time off of your plate that you don't have to do you should reward that because it's built into your business model and if they're referring new customers that cost of customer acquisition is off the table so you can you can give them a discount you can give them an extra Farm product next time you see it because then that's going to put them in a great mood and it's already the type of person who is going to sing your Praises share and onboard new customers anyways so make sure you take care of those people is what you do on your farm so good that people can't stop talking about it are they super fans that just love your chicken and they just it's the best thing they've ever tasted it's a completely change their Paradigm it's like Mom used to make back in Italy I've heard all these things what do you do with super fans well there's a book that I'm a big fan of super fans by Pat Flynn Pat Flynn has been a huge influence in my whole business Journey over the last decade and a half and his book is fantastic and it's a very simple principle it's an easy read but super valuable book to have it's about finding those people who are going who have a positive experience with your farm are willing to talk about it and share it and then amplifying their message and using those super fans to create more people and build some critical mass where this thing's going to build it start to build itself and all you have to do is sit back and manage it that's the goal now I have to throw this in here if you are a raving fan of farm Marketing Solutions because you've made it this far into the video leave me a positive review leave me a a comment to say this was very helpful like this video or share it with somebody else so that they can learn if you have a farm or small business owner friend that is looking to grow their company share this video with them and hopefully it helps them out gives you a mutual framework for conversation so that you can have more educated talk about where you are where you want to be and how you're going to get there we're almost there but it's taken a lot of work to get there and we have one more step to [Music] go I want to talk to you about the most expensive Farm customers you'll ever find to try to acquire works for any small business we're talking about Farms today what are the most expensive people to get into your funnel that's right here at the top by building brand awareness now this is the top of our sales funnel we're on step number six in our customer Journey awareness we've already capitalized on all the people who are ready to to buy from us we're getting people uh to cons who are considering us to move down the funnel into ready to purchase and then the conversion now we want to scale our business we want to go from 5,000 to 10,000 chickens from 10,000 to 50,000 from 50,000 to 2 million whatever it doesn't matter these are expensive and it's how you reach a broad audience now how do we do that this is the single hardest farming technique out of any I don't care what type of farming you do this is the challenge that's finding those customers finding the opportunity to sell whatever product you have to those more customers so we're at number six in the customer Journey we're at the top of the funnel awareness we're building awareness and what are the principles that are guiding Us in order to get us there convenience every step of the way and here when we're doing awareness campaigns we're not trying to convert people right away when you're doing things just to generate some awareness it's a bonus if you do convert them but don't set yourself up for for the imminent failure of thinking that a dollar in means a dollar out here it's going to be more expensive than that but it's the only way you're going to grow your business the skill the hardest skill is finding those opportunities if it's expensive and you don't have a lot of resources time money whatever how do you find those opportunities to reach more people who are going to want to buy your stuff now we want to reach more customers to feed the top of our funnel to get more conversions to make more money at the end of the day to give us more days off in time with our family like that's the end goal here making money is the tool and this is a tool to help you do that what is our end goal more time camping with the family that practical application of generating awareness and finding opportunity in people is doing something that's awesome and talking about it over and over and over over over over over over and over over and over again we're going to do that on social media we're going to put together press releases and get drum up some news media uh real actual news instead of social media we're going to host special events we're going to tailor our Google business profile and build our local SEO pack and I I just said SEO that's another acronym search engine optimization super scary complicated topic I'm going to make it super easy in this short short video search engine optimization you talk about what you do if you want to be found and known for the things that you do on your farm or your homestead talk about it a lot in text put it as many places as you can that's why it's more expensive there are different ways to find opportunities for where you're investing this energy but do something awesome talk about it a lot and if you're not comfortable talking about it go back in this video go to some of the other videos if this comes out on a short and see take the customer reviews and testimonials and post post those in these places if you have raving fans they're going to help you with a top of funnel which makes it less expensive for you and more effective because they know how to reach more people who might be interested in what you have to offer now how do you Skyrocket your farm sales well no one Magic Bullet is going to do it for you but if you follow a system so that you can properly capitalize on some of your Outreach efforts when we're talking about the top of the funnel we're generating awareness we're finding opportunities we're doing Special Events and press releases we want to organize that around a launch and have the rest of the funnel set this is the last step the rest of the funnel is set so that we can capitalize on that new attention and to help us with launching that we're going to go to Jeff Walker and his book launch and launch gives you a system for what how what are the what are the actual granular steps of like how many emails to write what is your messaging how do you build that journey to get people into what you want to do so you don't have to do this all the time you can do multiple launches a year you can do one launch a year and then fill up your CSA and then you're done for the year if you want to reach more people this is a great resource and I will say that it it's an upsell for like a $2,000 $2500 course so take it with a grain of salt but it's a bestselling book it's been super pivotal for me and it's really really helpful if you want to grow and scale your business reach more people so that at the end of the day you're making more money for what you're already doing you can scale your business you can hire more people whatever your goals are but my goal is to educate and Inspire and that is why I built this for you so I'm hoping that you've take this all to heart you apply it you use it you ask questions and then you can continue to grow the small farm movement that has really taken hold and is producing a lot of wonderful good things for the Earth for the animals for the plants for the people and our community as a whole life is hard take care of yourself and if you can someone else too and until next time I will see you out in the field