prepared for 2008 annual meeting of nebraska independent crop consultants in lincoln, ne, december...

Prepared for 2008 Annual Meeting of Nebraska Independent Crop Consultants

In Lincoln, NE, December 16, 2008

By Dan ManternachDoane Advisory Services

A Division of Vance Media Corporation

Factors Tempting Factors Tempting Big Clients to Hire Big Clients to Hire Their Own Staff Their Own Staff AgronomistAgronomist

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Acreage so extensive that the consulting firm’s fees are nearly as high as hiring their own agronomist and have his labor available for busy spring and fall planting season as a bonus. (48.1%)

Having staff expertise to select and adopt the full array of GPS technologies in grid sampling, yield monitoring, variable rate pesticide and fertilizer application beyond what crop consultants can offer affordably. (29.7%)

A sense that consulting firms are too quick to prescribe costly “preventative” measures for seasonal pest or diseases that may not have been necessary. (12.7%)

A sense that consulting firms don’t have adequate staffing to spot yield-robbing pest or disease problems in a timely manner for quick response and least-cost control. (9.5%)

Doane subscriber poll results to the question:Which of these reasons, in your view, is the most likely motivation for a large farming operation for dropping a crop consulting service and hiring its own staff agronomist?

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• Speaking for myself, as a crop consultant gets older and has been working with established clients many years, we can become complacent.

• And that will leave us vulnerable to our largest growers either looking for another consulting firm or even hiring their own agronomist.

• This is why it’s so important that we network with other independent consultants, whether among our own company or at least within state and national organizations.

Comments from crop consultants contacted…Which of these reasons, in your view, is the most likely motivation for a large farming operation for dropping a crop consulting service and hiring its own staff agronomist?

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• Regularly attending the NAICC annual meeting has challenged me every year and encouraged me to stay up on how other successful consultants run their businesses throughout the U.S. and even internationally.

• Bluntly speaking, I think some of us spend too much time in duck blinds and deer stands instead of developing our skills professionally. We think we know everything important there is to know and there is no new stuff in our field.

• Our large, progressive growers pick up on such an attitude very quickly, even if we don’t think it applies to us. And with these big guys, perception is reality. It doesn’t matter if the perception is right.


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• We have traditionally charged clients on a per acre basis. We need to get more creative with very large growers; perhaps on a “work done per day” basis where we ask what the grower wants, calculate how much time that will actually take, and price our service accordingly.

• We cannot give our service away. A good grower will recognize superior service and be willing to pay for it, provided we figure out how to document our performance in cost savings or yield enhancements, perhaps using small, untreated “check plots” in the corner of a field.

Comments from crop consultants contacted…Suggestions for improving our service and minimizing risk of losing a client to another firm or having them hire their own staff agronomist:

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• I used to be proud of how each field or even parts of a field were treated differently. But I find large growers prefer one type of treatment to cover most of their acres.

• Thus, for these guys, we have to get away from the “crop scouting” mentality and see ourselves as total farm crop production and management consultants.


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• Use one field reporting software program so reports can be e-mailed to clients. Some will want such reports also e-mailed to suppliers and dealers. Reason? Hand-written notes from the client are often missing specifics of our recommendations and as a result different rates or even different products get applied than what we recommended.

• Stay in touch with the client’s suppliers on a regular basis. See them as an “ally” in meeting the client’s needs precisely. Just because we’re “independent” doesn’t mean we should never darken the door of area suppliers and dealers to discuss the whole range of their products and programs. Large clients will expect us to know that, not be asking THEM about what’s available to them!


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• Growers will do business with whom they trust, whether an independent crop consultant or the becoming-more-prevalent seed dealer/consultants. The lasting relationships take time to develop and it includes relationships with the spouses, the kids and even the hired help.

• Use this to your advantage because many of the younger “newbie” consultants don’t appreciate the time and importance of this.


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• I often equate crop consulting with coaching college sports. Tom Osborne would not be revered in Nebraska if he hadn’t won football championships in the latter years of his coaching career. How many coaches would have been fired after several losing seasons, even after winning a championship years earlier?

• When it comes to these big clients, we have to ask for the business on a yearly basis and never EVER take a big client’s renewed business for granted. For these guys, “What did you do for me last season?” has become far more important than “What have you done for me over the last 5 years or so?”


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1) We have NOT had many growers hiring their own agronomist and then dropping us. Just one experience so far. But we do see it as a threat and are trying to address it.

2) However, growers often ASK our consultants to quit and come work for them, but so far we’ve been able to retain staff.

3) We have found a “threshold” of about $30,000 in annual billings as the point where our clients “look at us a little differently and start to expect services above and beyond our basic offerings.


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Growers we find “most likely” to hire their own staff agronomist:

• Large, prosperous operators who have used consultants for several years in the past, successfully.

• Large operations short handed on full-time labor as it is.

• Operations needing better information management in general and reason that an agronomist has computer skills necessary to provide that function as well.

• Operations where the owner deducts the value of the staff agronomist’s labor beyond his role as the farm’s agronomist from his actual salary cost when comparing to consulting costs.

More comments from crop consultants contacted…

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I think we can still be involved at a high level even for operations that have their own staff agronomist:

• No single agronomist can be on top of all new research and technology available. The more combined technical expertise a grower has access to, the better. Consultants could work WITH staff agronomists.

• Growers interested in hi-tech GPS farming can find that expertise among folks without agronomy degrees; maybe even better qualified in that area specifically, for just a little more than general farm laborer salary.


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I think we can still be involved at a high level even for operations that have their own staff agronomist:

• Yes, the staff agronomist can certainly perform many of the functions we currently do, but then WE might expand our own service offerings to OTHER needs the grower may have; such as helping him explore specialty crop economics.

• We may need to adopt a more variable pricing model for our services, but offer specific discounts for services the staff agronomist can perform and then offer even better service in those tasks still left to us by the client.


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We need to tactfully show clients how they can underestimate the true cost of having a staff agronomist:

• They often have unrealistic expectation of what salary it will take to hire a fully qualified, degreed agronomist.

• The person they hire will often be a fresh college-graduate just looking for an entry-level job and short on experience in practical applications of what he has learned.

• The entry-level farm staff accountant will likely leave in a few years to start his own business or join a consulting firm.


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We need to tactfully show clients how they can underestimate the true cost of having a staff agronomist (continued):

• Costs for insurance, benefits, a pick-up, testing, training and professional meetings are often overlooked.

• They often have unrealistic expectation of what salary it will take to hire a fully qualified, degreed agronomist.

• The person they hire will often be a fresh college-graduate just looking for an entry-level job and short on experience in practical applications of what he has learned.

• There’s a temptation to add so many farm-tasks outside of agronomy that the staff agronomist doesn’t have time in busy seasons to do as good a job as the consulting firm would.


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We need to tactfully show clients how they can underestimate the true cost of having a staff agronomist (continued):

• There is a cost of not networking with other agronomists that you have in a consulting firm.

• It’s tougher for a staff agronomist working for one farm to keep up with all the latest research, technology and ideas that come our way as professional consulting


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For those in your survey who chose “A sense that consulting firms are too quick to prescribe costly “preventative” measures that may not have been necessary:

• I don’t think this is a legitimate issue except for a very few in our profession. IPM minimizes risk, but does not eliminate risk.

• Hindsight is always 20/20. Anybody can look backwards and declare that a treatment was “unnecessary”. Clients have a tendency to do that.


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For those in your survey who chose “A sense that consulting firms are too quick to prescribe costly “preventative” measures that may not have been necessary:

• I’ve been consulting for 28 years and have seen many things work that “shouldn’t have worked” and many things fail that should have worked.

• We can always be second-guessed, after the fact, but we have to work with the data, the weather and the situation we face at the time a decision must be made.


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For those in your survey who chose “A sense that consulting firms are too quick to prescribe costly “preventative” measures that may not have been necessary (continued):

• A consulting firm has the manpower to meet your needs even if your assigned consultant takes ill or has a family emergency during a critical scouting season.

• We pay our consultants very well. You get a seasoned professional as a result and don’t have to settle for an “affordable” new college graduate.


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For those in your survey who chose “A sense that consulting firms are too quick to prescribe costly “preventative” measures that may not have been necessary (continued):

• We show our clients convincingly how the return on their investment in our services is at least 5 times and often 10 times or more the cost we bill them.

• We show our clients how the time savings and risk management they don’t have worry about themselves is a bonus value they won’t necessarily get with a younger, less experienced staff agronomist they’ll feel a need to check up on and get “second opinions” on his recommendations.


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There is a book called “The Paradox of Excellence” that basically says “the better job you do, the more transparent you become and the less you are appreciated.”

• Translation: If we are solving all our clients’ problems and taking all the roadblocks out of their way and everything is going well, then it looks very easy and the grower doesn’t realize all the little decisions, thoughts, experiences and timing that goes into a successful “Systems Approach.”

• Then, the more we are taken for granted, the more they might consider hiring their own person to perform our functions and provide labor as a “bonus”.

• Conclusion: It’s not really our nature, but we SHOULD try to “blow our own horn” once in awhile to make sure the client is AWARE of all we do on their behalf “behind the scenes” back at our offices or even out scouting in their fields that they don’t even see.


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Among additional services we consultants could add for large scale clients to retain their business and discourage them from hiring their own staff agronomist:

• We need to make sure we are much more than “just a crop scout” that alerts them to problems, but problem SOLVERS in ways where we earn our keep in cost savings and extra yield.

• Our very large clients probably expect extra services that are exclusive to them on account of the amount they spend with us; starting at $25,000 and up.

• Consider sponsoring outlook and management conferences exclusively for large scale clients who love to mingle with their “peers”.


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Among additional services we consultants could add for large scale clients to retain their business and discourage them from hiring their own staff agronomist:

• We need to present such clients with new management ideas across the gamut of farming that they may not be aware of; even tax management or marketing concepts we don’t profess to offer ourselves, but serve as the client’s “eyes and ears”, always concerned with their success at every aspect of farming, not just agronomy.

• Organize FSA maps, yield maps, disease and pest problems encountered, steps taken to avoid or mitigate in a year-end summary book that becomes part of the farm’s permanent records.


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Among additional services we consultants could add for large scale clients to retain their business and discourage them from hiring their own staff agronomist (continued):

• Prepare a chemical and pesticide shopping list that helps the client find the best deal on products we’ve recommended.

• Offer more “information management” counsel to help the client better organize, analyze, and retain historical data for future decision-making.

• Offer field enterprising; where each field is evaluated as a separate enterprise; best crop choices, best rotation schedule, etc.


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To show our concern about performance and accountability; our desire to provide large clients excellent value they won’t get with a staff agronomist unwilling to ask such “loaded questions”, we should schedule a “de-briefing” meeting at the end of the season with the client and his staff of hired help to ask THEM:

• What went well in their view?• What went poorly in their view?• What can we do differently to meet and preferably EXCEED

their expectations next season?• What additional services will they be expecting from us in

the future?


prepared for 2008 annual meeting of nebraska independent crop consultants in lincoln, ne, december...

Documents

crop consulting service

staff agronomist slide

consulting firms dont

large growers

independent consultants

large farming operation

consulting firms fees

superior service