Quick Tips: How to Get Your Money’s Worth from Farm Consultants

Note: This webinar is over, but you can see the presentation slides here!

We’re hosting a free webinar to help you navigate business-to-business relationships.

B2B relationships (like those with farm consultants) can be awkward if you’re unsure of your goals. This causes many farmers to write off what could be a very valuable investment! Consultants, when hired and managed effectively, can help you:

  • Avoid costly mistakes
  • Get more out of your investments
  • Make better sales and business deals

We’ve been fortunate to get connected with some really amazing consultants like Nicole Day Gray from Agriforaging and Gina Giarmofrom Barnraiser, but not everyone is so lucky.

To make sure you have the best experience possible, we’re teaming up on a webinar with a friend who is deeply involved in B2B relationships. Her name is Sarah Taber, and she’s a crop and food safety adviser who is going to give us a consultants-eye view of some common issues and questions.

The webinar is on April 28th at 10:30 am MST, but today we have a sneak peek for you!

The webinar will discuss:

  • How to find a consultant who will solve your problem, not prolong it.
  • What to do with a good consultant once you have them.
  • Expanding your “how to consultant”skills to other areas: how to manage suppliers, service providers, etc to get quality work.

See the webinar slides here!

Want some quick answers before the webinar?

Perfect! Here are some big questions that Sarah has generously answered for us.

Note: Most of these quick answers apply to all professional services (lawyers, lab testing, pest control, etc.), not just consultants.


Untitled_design_6.jpgQuick tips from Dr. Sarah Taber: What are the top 3 misconceptions that growers have when they start a consulting relationship?

1) Consultants are for big farms with a lot of money (e.g. not me).

2) Consultants are for handing your problems off to and forgetting about them.

3) Consultants are a scam (This is only about 50% misconception! The other 50% well discuss at length during the webinar.)

What are the most common mistakes people make with their consultant?

Not knowing what you want! That makes it easy to wind up buying things you don’t need.

In-the-loop-consultants.jpgNot supervising your consultant. In the webinar well talk about staying in the loop with consultants and other professional services.

Not knowing what to look for in a consultant.

Using consultants as therapists (therapy is great, but you’re not going to get great value on it from a food safety consultant!)

What recommendations do you have for finding a great consultant?

You’d think it would be experience, but sometimes 20 years experience just means one year of experience repeated 20 times. Recommendations can also let you down, because a lot of the people doing recommending dont know how to pick good consultants.

A lot of it is just a good fit with your goals and work style. And a healthy dose of insurance. Well talk about this more in depth during the webinar.

See the webinar presentation here.

About Sarah Taber

I’m a food safety auditor and consultant. A lot of people who audit also do consulting, and it’s a really good combination. You know exactly what the auditors are looking for when they show up to a farm. With consulting I work with a lot of indoor agriculture, greenhouses, etc. There’s one client with a cricket farm, and a lot of other new fresh & funky stuff. Its a great job because you get to work with people who are at the cutting edge, and help them bring their ideas off the fringes and into the mainstream. You meet a lot of badasses in this business.

Sarah on Twitter

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