We caught up with Annette Massey, one of T H WHITE’s mobile dairy salespeople to find out more about the person behind the wheel of the van you’ll see on dairy farms each month.
Annette grew up focused on her family’s dairy farm. However, when her nephew came back from Lackham college to join the family business, she took the opportunity to branch out in a new direction, while still helping out with paperwork on Somers Farm. She joined T H WHITE’s Frome depot as a mobile dairy salesperson in 2007, and since then has been working with us, delivering dairy essentials to farms over the southwest.
Annette’s patch covers from Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, all the way down to the New Forest in Hampshire and over to Dorset and as she says, everywhere in between! She manages this territory with a four weekly rota; dividing each month into specific weeks to focus on areas of her territory, so she covers all the ground each month. This ensures that she travels to every farm and each customer has a face to face meeting at least once a month.
Annette firmly believes that good relationships with farmers are based on being seen on the farm and as she says “You have to go up that drive and have a chat. I often visit and sometimes just discuss the weather, the cows and anything else but if we are not there for the farming community how can we offer them anything?”
Items that are always on the van and ready for sale are gloves, paper towels, water proofs, ambic filters, mastitis detectors, brushes, handles, and a small amount of essential chemicals in case of emergencies. Annette encourages customers to buy in bulk to get the best price in all situations when they’ll manage to use it up before the sell by date. She will usually message her customers a couple of days before visiting to check if they need anything, then pick up additional items from the depot before driving over to see them with their order.
She also keeps her customers informed with the local news; any offers T H WHITE have and delivers each issue of the quarterly Dairy Digest magazine.
Annette even met her partner through T H WHITE and tells the story, ” It was quite funny, the week before Valentines day I went into the office to pick something up and one of the agricultural technicians was saying he didn’t have anyone to go out for a meal with; so the dairy manager and the office cleaner told him I’d go with him! One thing led to another and we’ve been together for 16 years!” she laughs ” I didn’t join T H WHITE looking for love but it literally smacked me in the face!”
Annette was born and bred within the farming community and knows that farmers tend to be a tight knit group. She said “This is a community with old fashioned values, much like my own. Your word has to be your bond. Openness, truth and honesty are needed because farmers talk to farmers so if you upset one you’ll be upsetting all of them”.
Although she is up for retirement in a few months time, she loves her job and really appreciates her customers. Annette says she’ll stay on as long as possible because otherwise she’ll miss them all too much.
