On December 31st, enrolment in the rural community of Touba Toul – the site of myAgro’s recent expansion in Senegal – will close. Over the past weeks and months, our team of field agents has been in the villages every weekday, holding meetings to explain the program and signing farmers up. Their hard work has paid off: they have enrolled close to 1200 new farmers in less than 40 days, in what has turned out to be the fastest enrolment in myAgro’s history. How did they do it?
- The lead-in: myAgro is new to the region of Thies, where Touba Toul is located. Instead of jumping straight into enrolling new clients, field agents led several weeks of village meetings before opening up enrolment at the end of November. They shared stories of farmers who have enjoyed great success through myAgro’s programs in both Mali and Senegal. After all of these informational meetings, farmers were well-informed about the program and how it would fit within their community, and they were raring to enrol!
- Scripts and tools: Working with the field team, we designed tools for enrolment that were easy and quick to fill out, making the enrolment process swift and straightforward. Farmers choose a packet to save for, purchase their first savings card and provide some demographic information, and then – voila! They are full-fledged members of the myAgro program, already on their way to achieving their savings goals.
This year we used behavioural economics research to inform the script that agents use when enrolling farmers, with the goal of eliciting higher initial deposits at the outset, thus getting farmers further along towards their savings goals early on. We aimed to anchor clients towards the total amount that they need to save, instead of having them opt for the default minimum deposit amount. This resulted in far more farmers depositing more than the minimum and savings results have been impressive so far!
- Strategies from the field: Each field agent has their own style of working, and different strategies for encouraging farmers to enrol. Over the course of each week, agents come up with metaphors and tactics and then share them at Monday field meetings. They also visited villages in pairs for two weeks, allowing them to learn from one another’s interactions and also building farmer confidence in the myAgro, who feel reassured by the presence of another field team member that myAgro is in it for the long haul.
Congratulations Team Touba Toul on the wonderful enrolment numbers! Suqali njëriñu mbéy mi!
