In the global dairy marketing world, relationships are everything.
Price, quality and consistency count, but nothing matters more than when personal connections are made which reveal fundamental ideals and values that are shared by both buyer and seller.
When it happens it is a magical "aha!" moment that connects both parties, which Margaret Speich, U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) Senior Vice President for Strategic and Industry Communications, describes in part one of a three-part blog about the organization's recent producer trade mission to Southeast Asia.
It is, without hesitation, a must-read for every U.S. milk producer who believes in the importance of industry efforts to sell dairy products abroad. It will make you feel proud and inspired.
But it is even more of a must-read for those who doubt the value of export efforts or are skeptical.
USDEC rightfully has as much to say about the quality of the U.S. dairy industry, its farmers, and the products they produce. It does so both very professionally and very well.
But nothing apparently makes a connection with foreign buyers like when U.S. dairy farmers show pictures of their families and farms and explain how they do things back home. That's what the four producers on the Southeast Asia trip did at a conference in Singapore for about 100 dairy marketers. (The John and Barbara Brubaker family of Buhl, Idaho, is pictured above.)
It was a new approach by USDEC that turned out to be an "aha!" moment of the trip. And in the case of one presentation it was a moment that the audience literally oohed and aahed about.
"Several importers told us later that they had never seen photos of an authentic American dairy farm," writes Speich. "For some it was an emotional experience. One distributor nearly cried describing it."
Another was so impressed that she asked if there was a way she could obtain dairy products made with milk from the four farms she had just seen.
Building exports is a slow process because forging relationships takes time, effort and miles. But there is no doubt that U.S. dairying is already succeeding in its efforts.
I can't wait to read parts two and three of the blog.
The author has served large Western dairy readers for the past 38 years and manages Hoard's WEST, a publication written specifically for Western herds. He is a graduate of Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, majored in journalism and is known as a Western dairying specialist.
