EXECUTIVE CORNER
The ElevatorSpeech
by Darrell Wilkes, Ph.D., International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA) executive vice president Have you ever heard about the “elevator speech”? It is a term used to describe a 30-second encounter with a potential customer. It’s the amount of time you would normally be in an elevator together. You have 30-seconds to get somebody’s attention. Thirty seconds to summarize how your product can improve the customer’s business. You may have heard of the same concept, but it was called the “business card test”. This simply means that you should be able to summarize the advantages and benefits of your product on the back of a business card. As Brangus breeders, if challenged with the elevator speech or the business card test, what are we going to say? If you ask me, these are our bullet points: • Brangus cows thrive in harsh environments – they produce longer and deliver more calf payweight. • Brangus deliver heterosis without a complex crossbreeding program. • Beef from Brangus meets the high quality expectations of the modern beef industry. This list will be complete when we can add just one more bullet point: “Brangus feeder cattle bring premium prices.” When we can truthfully state that and back it up with data, then your elevator speech will be complete and demand for Brangus bulls will be off the charts. I firmly believe that the only thing holding us back as Brangus breeders is ACCOUNTING. I am confident that we can show any producer in harsh environments that a Brangus cow will out-produce a straightbred British cow by at least $100 per year – and more like $2,500 in the life of a cow. Instead of producing 7-8 calves, they’ll produce 10, thereby reducing the second largest cost in a cow-calf operation -- cow depreciation cost. When it turns hot, a Brangus cow and her calf will graze and the calf will grow while other cattle are standing in the shade or the pond – and not grazing or growing. Because both the bulls and cows can handle the harsh environment through their inherent thermotolerance, they are less stressed and will deliver higher rates of reproduction – fewer open cows, fewer late calvers, more calves weaned, more pounds to sell. While none of this is rocket science, it takes a rather sophisticated recordkeeping system and significant number crunching to validate the extra $100 per cow per year that a Brangus cow will deliver to your bottom line vs. a British cow, especially a straightbred British cow. The $100 per cow per year is absolutely there, it’s just hard to “see”. Contrast this to the easy math that a producer can do in 14
March 2022
their head when they see their good Brangus calves bring a few cents per pound less than an Angus or SimAngus calf at the local auction barn. It is very easy to multiply 600-lbs times 5-cents per pound. That’s $30/hd discount. Because this number is obvious, it tends to overshadow the less obvious (but real) $100 per cow annual advantage of a Brangus cow. In very plain English, there are thousands of producers in harsh environments who are trading $100 per cow in lost production for $30 of calf revenue. Obviously, that’s not a good trade. The solution to this problem is to eliminate the “eared discount” that Brangus feeder calves tend to get – along with all other eared feeder cattle. There are two components to this solution: 1) differentiate genuine Brangus calves from the mix of “black with a touch of ear” calves that are often referred to as Brangus in the marketplace, and 2) continuously gather data from feedlots and packers comparing the feeding performance
