Podcast: Effective Strategies for Green Coffee Buyers

Posted in: Journeys

Podcast: Effective Strategies for Green Coffee Buyers

Not to put too fine a point on it, but excellent green coffee buyers make excellent green coffee customers. This is the message Covoya Specialty Coffee traders, Mark Inman and Rob Stephen, have been delivering over the last few years whenever they team up to present “Effective Strategies for Green Coffee Buyers,” now available in the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) lecture series library.

Rob and Mark are just being a tiny bit selfish. Like every trader at Covoya Specialty Coffee, they really enjoy doing business with green coffee buyers who are good at what they do. They enjoy finding the right coffees for great green buyers, giving them early looks at new coffees, and helping them meet their inventory needs far in advance of coffee arrivals. They will not hesitate to invest in the success of a green coffee buyers who has invested in their own professionalism and effectiveness. And here’s a secret you shouldn’t share with others: It has nothing to do with how much coffee you buy!

Coffee traders at Covoya coffee come from a wide variety of coffee backgrounds and experience. Both Rob and Mark have worked throughout the supply chain as retailers, roasters, and green coffee buyers. And both are hoping to help others learn from their mistakes as green buyers … especially Mark.

In the presentation, Mark and Rob cover a lot of ground. As you listen, these are some of the highlights and themes you will hear.

Mark Inman and Rob Stephen at the SCA Expo in 2016

Keep Calm and Data On

One of the hallmarks of a truly professional green coffee buyer, a trait that is often, though not always, indicative of more than a few years’ experience, is the ability to remain calm and focused no matter what the market is doing; because, whatever the market is doing, experienced coffee buyers have been there and done that. They take the ups with the downs and like the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy recommends, they “Don’t Panic.” Don’t work with anyone who feeds your panic.

Other than logging all the time it takes to just know in your bones that, for better or worse, “this too shall pass,” the most effective green coffee buyers maintain their cool by focusing on data and planning. No matter what the market is doing, great coffee buyers are making data-driven, clear-headed decisions rooted in critical thinking, not an impulse buy in the check-out line. Sure, green buyers should remain open to taking advantage of unexpected opportunities, but if your default position is reacting to whatever is dangled in front of you, you should reevaluate your approach.

Talk the Talk and Talk the Talk

Volume is relative. Regardless of how much coffee you’re roasting, the green coffee buyer is responsible for spending a serious chunk of your budget, and doing it wisely. Mistakes can have a very real and very negative impact on your business. If you don’t have coffee, you’re not a coffee roaster. If you don’t have the right coffees, you can’t be the roaster you want to be. Regardless of how substantial you believe your powers of telepathy to be, or your emoji mojo over text, you still need to talk to your coffee trader. Email is fine for transactions, says Rob, but a conversation gets things done. Great green coffee buyers have communication skills. They can articulate their needs and they know when and how to listen to their trader. Quality conversations and strong relationships are still critical in coffee trading. When you have a great relationship and good communication with your coffee trader, says Mark, it’s like having a free employee.

Ready. Willing. AND Able.

Rob likes to emphasize that a great green buyer is someone who can say yes to what they need when the opportunity is there. This means they have a plan and they know what they need. They are willing to commit to execution when the time comes. And most importantly, they are able to say yes and execute. When a professional green coffee buyer says yes, yes is what they mean.

Failure to execute when it comes to buying green coffee can have any number of causes. Perhaps the most common is simple indecision, an inability or hesitation to pull the trigger. A buyer in any industry is largely defined by making decisions. If you’re chronically indecisive, a buying job might not be for you. Another common cause of failure to execute is that your business card says “Green Coffee Buyer,” but you’re not actually the green coffee buyer. Your boss is the buyer, or the owner of the company is the buyer. You are the carrier of the decision points. If that’s the case, there’s no reason for the trader to speak to you. They want to speak to the decision maker, not out of any disrespect for you—in fact, you have their sympathy—but because coffee trading moves too fast to bucket-brigade buying decisions. The person who hesitates might not be lost, they just end up roasting their second and third choices all the time.

Mark and Rob are not shy and not short on words when it comes to their ideas on what makes a superior effective green coffee buyer, and we’ve only scratched the surface here. Set aside some time to listen to their presentation and you’ll learn: