More than a dozen farm equipment dealers from across North America sat down to candidly exchange ideas and considerations for structuring their precision farming business.

Here are a few of the top takeaways from the discussion.

• Consider precision farming as a “5th department” to dedicate the time, resources and training to make it profitable. “This can be expensive, but it’s a game changer.”
• Precision is a specialized field and dealers can’t necessarily count on their sales, service or parts managers to handle technology issues.
• Hold specialists accountable for their time spent on sales and service calls. “Sometimes there is no one driving the specialist and the managers don’t want to boss him around because they’re scared that they’ll make him mad, and they’ll be needing him soon.”
• If billing for precision service, make sure your specialist uses a company logoed vehicle for support visits. “A service call is implied and the farmer won’t be surprised to get a bill.”
• Have a system in place to track precision inventory and be conscious of “product obsolescence” to avoid stocking out-of-date technology.