Talking with Troy Marshall
Colorado beef producer Troy Marshall always seems to have an opinion on something. For the past several years he has been sharing his thoughts in BEEF Magazine’s weekly e-newsletter Cow-Calf Weekly.
We will begin to build some of Marshall’s remarks into the American Cowman blog and you’ll have the chance to comment.
Most recently, Marshall is tackling the political front regarding the farm bill and the fight over attachments of an array of pork and amendments ranging from immigration reform to the war in Iraq.
He says, “While activist groups hoping for a more substantive reform of farm policy were extremely slow in getting mobilized politically, their effort seems to be gaining momentum as they sense this may be their best opportunity in a long time to attain their goal. That is thanks to the farming segment’s record commodity prices and income levels.”
He continues: The second big piece of news was the Bush Administration’s threat to veto the bill due to its cost and differences in accounting. The administration’s biggest complaint with the measure as it relates to the beef industry is, of course, the packer ban provision in the Senate bill, which it opposes.
Marshall concludes, Not withstanding some of the marketing provisions and the amendments some are trying to attach to the 2007 version of the farm bill, the measure is essentially a continuation of 2002, just with a whole lot bigger interest on renewable fuels. I suppose the only thing surprising would be if there weren’t a whole lot of political battling over a $286-billion bill.
Related Topics: Small Producer Challenges
November 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
In his Nov. 30, Cow-Calf Weekly column, Troy Marshall shares these thoughts on marketing: Ithink talk of marketing and sales skills makes most everyone a bit nervous, especially when it comes to customer service.
Every customer-service initiative must be based on complete honesty and true goodwill. If you’re adopting a customer-service stance solely to increase sales, then it will likely be transparent and borders on the unethical.
It’s a major commitment to treat your customers like gold, and it’s a simple concept to treat your customers in the same manner you would like to be treated. But like all things in marketing, the difficulty isn’t in developing the proper strategy, it’s in implementing it.
The question should never be: “what’s in it for me?” The great irony is that when one forgets their self-interests and puts others’ interests above their own, their interests generally get taken care of.
In today’s world, your customers have to be so satisfied with you that they won’t consider doing business with anyone else.
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:25 am
As we broach a new year, Troy Marshall shares these thoughts from his BEEF Cow-Calf Weekly column: Have you ever reached the end of a day, month or year, and set back and asked where all the time went? I’m guessing you started out with a definite “to-do” list and despite the fact you were busy and productive all day, your list was essentially the same size at day’s end. You spent your time, you just didn’t spend it on accomplishing your projects.
Life has many distractions. While some are unavoidable, a good number can be reduced. Experts say that identifying the most frequent sources of distractions in your day is the start of lowering their impact on your daily life.
Here’s a list you might find helpful in focusing your attention and accomplishing your resolutions in 2008.
1. Do the important things first.
2. Don’t start a job without a plan on how to accomplish it. Planning pays.
3. Don’t move to another job before completing the last one.
4. Embrace delegation.
5. Delegate things to technology. Doing things the way they’ve always been done is almost a religion to most folks. And while we’ve all heard it preached to avoid steel, avoid expenses, etc., time is our most precious commodity and using it properly is by far the number-one way to both reduce costs and increase revenue. If you’re getting the return on management that you should be, then things that save you time usually make you money, lots of it!
6. Avoid things that aren’t part of your job. Delegate and focus.
7. Collect the necessary records in a usable form. Having records that overlap or are too complicated to use is inefficient to a waste of time.
8. There is a limit to what you can do well. Tom Peters talks about outsourcing everything that is non-essential or that you aren’t good enough at.
9. Don’t allow interruptions during critical projects. Even better is building barriers to interruptions. Do you always answer the phone, immediately respond to all e-mail, or set aside everything every time someone drives into your yard?
10. Don’t allow conversations to wander. This is a tricky one, because people and relationships are an essential part of anyone’s success, but it must be monitored.
11. You don’t need all the information. The main facts are usually the key. While the more trivial info can be useful, the time chasing it down usually can’t be justified.
12. Stay cool. Getting worked up by distractions to the point that you’re stressed and fixated on the problems rather than the solutions is counterproductive.
Everyone probably can pinpoint another 3-5 items that hinder their effective time utilization. The key is to identify and address them. Good luck in achieving your 2008 goals.
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