“We trialled the concept in Australia with great success last November with more than 500 people from our customers taking part,” said Duncan Granshaw, general manager of Cobb Asia/Pacific.

“With the further success of our four seminars at three locations in China, we're planning to use same concept in Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand this year and we’ve now been requested to have a second one in Australia.”

The Chinese seminars took place at Weifang, Shenyang and Zhengzhou for representatives from 120 independent customers, with technical personnel from Tyson and the Beijing Poultry Breeding Company as well as Cobb.

“We were aware that for our customers, distributors and Cobb users it was becoming increasingly difficult to free up personnel to travel to seminars in their home countries or even more so overseas,” said Duncan Granshaw.

“We also knew that with our expanding number of distributors the highly regarded annual Cobb world technical school over two weeks in the USA and the smaller seminars by our technical service team couldn’t reach nearly as many as we would like. So we thought we’d also take seminars and workshops with several presenters to our customers.

“We were aware, too, that sometimes customers are reluctant to interact with our team in front of their competitors. So the idea of a travelling seminar held in one country at several locations evolved. In Australia we held five seminar/workshops, each in a different location, and also had several field visits covering broiler and breeder farms as well as hatcheries.

“We asked the Cobb users for their areas of concern and tailored a seminar to suit the concerns, coupled with field visits. Our team were totally familiar with any problems and with the customer’s farms and hatcheries before the presentations and workshops. Instead of giving a generic presentation, they were able to talk about specific and familiar issues.”

“The exercise was very worthwhile,” commented Michael Leahy, national livestock operations manager, Baiada Poultry, Australia. “It covered all our geographic areas which use Cobb and all disciplines — broilers, breeders hatchery and nutrition — and all tiers of management, enabling all to interact in a familiar environment.

“Being the first held using this model, the exercise was refined as we went on and improved by the Cobb experts visiting the local areas before seminars. In this way both Cobb people and our own were sharing information and context.

“The benefit, beyond the initial exchange, is building relationships at different levels within both businesses. Maintaining these relationships will be the key to optimising performance of the Cobb bird in our market.”

Mr Granshaw said this had proved to be a highly successful model, aimed at all levels within customers, from junior employees just starting in the industry up to senior managers.

“The individual customers organized the venues and invited all the attendees for each seminar, so they were completely comfortable with what was discussed,” he added.

“We provided the appropriate presenters from our World Technical Support Team and from our enhanced Asian team. We’ve covered all aspects of the industry from grandparent management through parent stock, hatcheries, broilers and nutrition. “It has proved to be an excellent way of further helping our customers, coupled with the world technical school, regular service visits on a requested and routine basis and visits from the World Technical Support Team we are enabling all Cobb users to get the very best from our products.”

BPBC sales team and Cobb team at Weifang

BPBC/CP China team and Cobb world tech & Asia tech team at Shenyang