Customer Relations
Background
Breawna Caldwell joined Keystone Cooperative in North Central Indiana just over two years ago. Early on, she focused on building a strong foundation for success in a competitive region. This meant getting acquainted with her customer base, local market dynamics, and internal processes.
For Breawna, the launch of Keystone and Contango’s partnership was well timed. After a year and a half in her role, aggregating data and translating it to a strategy still involved hours of administrative work. With that in mind, Breawna quickly integrated Contango into her work. Six months later, she’s streamlined how she creates her origination strategy, manages customer relationships, and has found more time to execute on high-value activities.
Finding and Capturing Opportunities
Early on, managing her customer list was one of Breawna's biggest challenges. “When I started, I had to run a 70-page report just to get customer names. And I always felt like important customers were falling through the cracks,” said Breawna.
With time, she turned the report into a mental map. “Even once I got comfortable in my role, I thought of my mental map. Where are the farmers located? Who's closer? How far are they from a competitor to us? Who should I call?” she would ask. While Breawna got up to speed quickly, translating a mental model into actionable buying decisions proved to be tricky.
“Waiting a day to call might have been the difference between the farmer having a contract with someone else and the bushels being available,” said Breawna. “Now with Contango, I can pull up all the farmers in the draw area on the map, see where I need to be calling, and get a list.”
Today, Breawna uses Contango to not only see all of her customers and prospects in one place, but to understand the market-clearing price needed to win their grain. Then, she identifies pockets of win-win opportunities, builds a call list, and starts dialing. This enables her to fill existing positions before markets change or opportunities expire.
Value-Centric Customer Interactions
On evenings and weekends, Breawna farms with her family. Because she's been on the other side of the table, it's important to her that her interactions with customers are intentional and value-additive. Recently, Breawna's started using Contango to plan how and when she engages with farmers, adding clarity where there historically had been a degree of ambiguity. As a result, she’s building stronger relationships with her existing customers and winning business from new ones.
“I don't think any call is a wasted call,” said Breawna, “but when I’m trying to get bushels and everyone’s busy, and they're closer to a better market, I can see that. Then, when I do call them, I’m not fishing for corn I'm not going to get. I’m having an intentional conversation with them about their marketing plan."
While Breawna uses insights from Contango to plan value-additive interactions with her existing customers, she also uses insights from the tool to win new bushels. When one prospect had been hauling grain an extra hour for a few cents, Breawna used Contango’s farmer freight calculator to show the side-by-side freight cost comparison and the impact on net basis values. Breawna used the data to back up what she had been telling her customer all along.
“He didn’t believe me at first, but once I walked him through the math, he saw that it actually made more sense to sell to us. He ended up bringing us four loads,” said Breawna.
More Time for What Matters
“Everything is in one place. I don't have to flip through a million tabs. I don't have to run a million reports. What used to take me so much time takes seconds. This one tool we've put in our toolbox is the thing that makes my job more efficient and organized on a daily basis,” said Breawna
All in all, less time spent buried in data means more time for Breawna and her team to act strategically and deliver results. Looking ahead, Breawna's excited for the tool to evolve and continue to improve. "Every time there's a change, it's very user-friendly. You're just making it better by adding small features that are really easy to learn how to use," she said. "We've come to you guys with feedback and it's been added, implemented, changed. I'm just excited to see like that continue because I know it will probably continue to make it a better and better tool."
