In his Dealership Minds Summit presentation on pre-selling, Edmund Byne, director of sales for 7-store AGCO dealer Agriteer, discusses a case in which an Agriteer location failed to close the pre-sale of a tractor — a Fendt 1050 — but did impress the customer with its ability to service and support its equipment. 

Byne says the customer was specifically looking to demo a 1050, and while the customer was 4 hours away, Byne says the dealership decided “to haul it all the way over there to let you demonstrate it on your farm with your implement during the right time of season, so you know this is the right product for you.” 

Byne adds that Agriteer was going to have to bring the unit back immediately after the demo, as there was another demo lined up. “That was very frustrating, but this is what we're committed to,” Byne says. “We're committing to pre-sale, and it will cost you money at certain times, I promise you.”

Once they got the tractor in the customer’s area, Byne says they took the unit into the local Agriteer shop and had the service team look it over. “Something could have happened on the truck, but that wasn't really why we did it,” he says. “We brought it in to get that entire store engaged in this pre-selling process. We got them engaged in knowing that it’s not just about Agriteer selling this tractor — this is about your location, owning this tractor, owning this demonstration and owning this customer relationship.” 

Byne made sure the local Agriteer staff knew who the customer was, when the demo was taking place and how big an opportunity it was. He says everybody was on board, adding that planning ahead is the right approach for any equipment demonstration.

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“It’s not just about Agriteer selling this tractor — this is about your location, owning this tractor, owning this demonstration and owning this customer relationship…” 

“When I say plan ahead, I'm talking about your service,” he says. “If you have a technician who's got 5 jobs lined up, if you could somehow work that schedule to be in fairly close proximity to that tractor or to that equipment when it's in the field, that may benefit you. You may even want to have the technician there.” 

Byne explains why this particular demo proved his point. “The customer ran it for 2 hours, and it fell flat on its face,” he says. “OK, this does happen. Not everybody's perfect. Even AGCO is not perfect. Sometimes equipment fails, but what happened was that technician was there within an hour. He was able to come out, diagnose what was wrong with the tractor within a couple hours. The customer was very impressed that we were able to be out there so fast, and also we were knowledgeable enough on the product to be able to diagnose the issue within a short amount of time. 

“At that location, we didn't have the part, but within all of our stores we had the right part on hand, overnight to that location. We had that customer up and running in 24 hours. That customer may not have been impressed with the tractor that we showed him, but I guarantee you he was very impressed with our service and our support.”

Byne says that while they did not sell the tractor to the customer, the demo was valuable in making a positive impression on the customer. “I can tell you he will consider us because of our support that we offered on that demonstration,” he says. “So just because you're doing a demonstration, the product doesn't go well — there's an opportunity for you to sell yourself and sell your dealership.”