Sparboe eggs are gathered by an automated process. The hens’ cages sit above a continuously moving conveyer belt; eggs softly plop down onto the belt and ride to the plant, where they are “candled” with lights that reveal defects like cracks or dirty or bloody spots. Then they’re inspected with ultrasound to uncover minuscule cracks not visible to the naked eye, then washed, graded, and covered with a protective coating—a material similar to what the chicken secretes when it lays eggs (that natural coating comes off during washing). Finally, the eggs are packaged. It’s an entirely hands-free process.

“When you pull your Sparboe egg out of a carton at home, you’re the first person to touch it,” Schnell says. Automation is one sign of change in the industry. In a storage area where boxes filled with eggs await loading onto semi-trailers, Schnell points out another: flat-top egg cartons that allow more room for printing marketing messages. The product has to be right, but so do those messages, she says. New products are always vying for grocers’ attention, “so we have to constantly come up with reasons why eggs are a power item in the dairy case.”

“Change is going to happen,” Schnell affirms. “My challenge is to prepare the company to embrace it.”

It’s an echo of something Bob Sparboe used to say: “Life is in the execution. You need to adopt the attitude that ‘I will succeed not in spite of my limitations, but because of them.’”

“That was a big mantra when I was growing up,” Schnell says. “But I really don’t focus on limitations. That’s just not my style. I think if you focus and do your best, at the end of the day, that’s about all you can expect out of yourself.”

Her focus now is on two new strategic relationships with partners she declines to name for the time being: a major Mexican egg producer that will buy nutrition and veterinary services from Agri-Tech, and a prominent European company that will distribute egg products from one of Sparboe’s Iowa facilities to customers all over the world. International business relationships aren’t new for Sparboe Companies. What’s significant is the way these alliances “add value to our company, and to the other companies,” Schnell says. “Our future opportunity lies in developing partnerships where we can. To quote one of my father’s phrases, “Add two and two, and maybe get five!”

 

Relationship Sales

Sparboe Companies’ new strategy began taking shape decades ago, when Beth Schnell learned about selling from her dad. Beth Schnell grew up in Litchfield, not far from the headquarters of Sparboe Compa-nies. The family business “was very much woven into the fabric of the family,” she says. “We had long conversations at the dinner table, discussing how you should look at your job, how you should look at your commitment to getting up on Saturday morning and getting your chores done.”

She drew her first Sparboe paycheck in ninth grade—for packing eggs—and worked after school and weekends all through high school, at the farm and in the office. “I was delighted to be promoted into the office,” she says, laughing. One of her favorite jobs was “trading the spot desk” when she was 19 and filled in for someone on leave. “Basically, it was selling truckloads of eggs from our farm to other egg companies all over the U.S.,” she explains. “I was allowed to sell all those eggs, coordinate the trucking, and haggle with accounts receivable! My dad trusted me a lot at that age. “

She graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter in 1982. (“My mom and dad said, ‘You can go to college anywhere you want, but you get to pay for half of it.’ That was good for me.”) The next fall, she married her high-school sweetheart, Bob Schnell (now president of the Center National Bank division of Sparboe Companies), and began a career in the Twin Cities, first working at ad agency Campbell Mithun as an analyst in the media department, then moving to a Twin Cities food broker. “After working on analysis for a year, I knew I needed to be with people, and I wanted to learn to sell. My dad always said, ‘If you can sell, you can always make a living.’”

So Schnell rejoined Sparboe Companies in 1985 as one of three salespeople; her father, Bob Sparboe, was another. “I sold with my dad for 15 years, and we just had a great time. Those are special memories for me—flying to customers, driving to customers, preparing for the call. He was a great mentor.”

They pursued some customers for years. “Dad would say, ‘You haven’t really done your job until you’ve asked three times for the order.’” Schnell laughs. “There was a lot of that! In other words, don’t be discouraged. Eventually, if it’s a partnership that should form, it will form.

“My dad really was a relationship salesman,” she says, “and that’s the kind of sales I like, and that’s how I envision Sparboe continuing: building relationships, delving into our customers’ needs, and thinking about ways to solve their problems and help them grow their businesses—instead of saying ‘I have so many cases of eggs I’ll sell you,’ and taking the order and leaving. That was never who we were. And that isn’t who we are today.”

Sparboe has been a supplier to the Monticello-based Cargill subsidiary Sunny Fresh Foods since 2001, and has built a farm dedicated exclusively to supplying that customer. Still, “it’s a very informal relationship in many ways,” says Sunny Fresh President Mike Luker. “It’s really built on trust between our two companies.”

Luker says Schnell is always driving her business to innovate: “I think that’s a key approach of her style—to innovate not only in areas of opportunity, but also in areas that are already working well. Sparboe has brought us numerous different ways to buy our raw materials that have helped us align with our customers. The whole idea is, it’s a win-win. It’s not about lowering anybody’s margin; it’s about eliminating excess cost and activities that don’t add value.”


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