With prognosticators continuing to forecast lower wholegood sales throughout 2017, and no significant uptick in such sales before 2019, it is imperative that dealers intent on surviving this protracted downturn rethink their view of the wholegoods department. Impacting this transformation will be the fact that most of the manufacturers, if not all of the majors, will be putting pressure on their dealer organization to significantly increase dealership market share, says Dr. Jim Weber.

Going forward, market share and paper profits should be secondary to the optimization of dealership cashflow. “Future success will be predicated on successfully managing the dealership sales mix and the used equipment turnover while emphasizing product support,” he says. Weber addresses these areas as well as the specific activities that must be implemented for improving both variables while positively impacting the overall dealership. Known to challenge — and even confront — dealer managers, Weber uses a no-holds-barred approach to insist dealers to take a close and realistic look at their businesses. A candid Q&A session follows his presentation.

Weber has been a consultant/trainer to the agricultural and construction equipment industry for nearly 4 decades, working with International Harvester, Massey Ferguson, Case IH, John Deere, New Holland, AGCO, Link-Belt and Caterpillar. He has trained nearly 2,000 equipment dealers, 2,000 parts and service managers and over 1,000 equipment sales personnel. Farm Equipment subscribers continue to read and comment on his 5-year compilation of“The Business of Selling”series.