Inaugural Farm Equipment Hall of Fame Class of 2024: Ronald D. Offutt

In 1997, with Deere’s blessing, the initial public offering of company shares exceeded all expectations, nearly doubling the $35 million projection. But with Wall Street demanding growth, the company found itself with few places to grow after Deere did an about-face. 

“Moline became fearful thinking that they had created a monster,” said Offutt. “They shut the gate and wouldn’t let us buy anything. We were paralyzed and decided to develop other platforms of growth.” 

That included the ill-fated trucking business in Texas, California and Minneapolis that RDO exited after just 18 months.

Meanwhile, as RDO entered the public markets, the company added layers of general management with people outside the business (what Offutt would later call “the shiny shoes” who had no knowledge nor passion for the business) who undermined the very culture that built the business. What followed was an expensive lesson in extending a company beyond its expertise and letting Wall Street thwart the investments RDO wanted to flow back into the business, including training, facilities and service vehicles. 

This chapter produced the oft-repeated maxim “Don’t fall for shiny shoes.” Offutt yanked the reins from the “shiny shoes” and handed them to his youngest daughter, Christi. She managed to chart a new course, and she later returned the firm to private ownership in 2003 — a messy, costly and painful chapter for all. Christi would lead RDO Equipment for nearly 2 decades, and the decision was a “lightning bolt” epiphany that returned Offutt to his vision of home-grown talent that would breathe the culture he wanted.

Training as a Core Strength

In its Dealership of the Year recognition, Farm Equipment shared how RDO was spending twice the national dealer average on training, a commitment that is not accidental.

As reported in that same Dealership of Year article, Offutt was among the first dealer-principals in the industry to develop a home-grown program, then called RDO University, described as a 2-year MBA-like curriculum that prepared staff for general management posts. At that same time, it also introduced a management trainee program that prepared newer employees for departmental management roles and relocation opportunities. 

RDO still maintains a learning portal with hundreds of classes for all employees to access.

Rewriting the Management Structure

RDO is unique among large, multi-store organizations is the non-contiguous territory it manages, thought to be nearly impossible. But Offutt and his team discovered structural change could make it work.

Earlier Farm Equipment articles reported that in the late 1990s, Deere had been encouraging dealers to add customer service reps to more actively sell parts and service. RDO’s team, meanwhile, pondered whether properly trained and motivated wholegoods salespeople could pick up that responsibility.

Making such a change would cause deep structural changes, however. Almost a decade later, a looming industry downturn brought the lever to enact that change.

RDO developed a playbook that gave general managers more stores to oversee, appointed a GM of sales, gave store managers dual responsibilities that were usually a hybrid job (either parts or service management), created the new account manager role, and introduced a sales support function to assist in administrative tasks. Everything that could be centralized was done so at what was called the Fargo Field Support Office that handles all the administrative duties, including asset management, where emotion could be removed.

“We centralized the back room,” explained Offutt, “but we’re non centralized in the areas important for meeting customer needs.”

In February 2007, RDO moved forward on this sweeping structural change. Success hinged on the new account manager model, in which trained salespeople were asked to promote parts and service, too. 

RDO set the pace in the industry with the account manager model that tasked sales pros — each assigned a small, core group of important customers — with not only selling the large equipment, but also the parts and service. Because they were rewarded for the growth in the aftermarket business, they became experts on their customers’ entire operation.

As the program evolved, two things became clear. First, a great deal of training was required for the account manager model. Second, it was apparent how highly respected and esteemed the precision ag specialists were to farmers. 

As a result, RDO pushed the envelope by insisting its account managers, as well as parts and techs, were highly trained in precision technologies. This was a step toward the mainstreaming movement Deere would extol just a few years after the industry first embraced standalone precision farming departments.

RDO is the first and only dealership to couple a Farm Equipment Dealership of the Year honor (2010) with Precision Farming Dealer’s Most Valuable Dealership (2020), an indication of the dealership’s innovative approach to dealership management and precision ag. Offutt’s team also had the foresight to realize internal investment and expansion in technology training would be essential to their evolution. In 2020, RDO’s ag technology service sales grew by 80% in 3 years.

RDO was also the first dealer visited by Farm Equipment editors that operated a stand-alone call center, located off-site from the dealership. RDO hired transactional sales pros to handle smaller customers or those 200 miles or more away, so the account managers could focus on the big fish.

RDO set up a phone system that directed the customer to call-center staff after 4 rings at the store. No longer were parts counter people overwhelmed by both the phone and the farmer in front of them. Since most of the calls are parts related, RDO programmed its computers to handle the lookups and inventory and ticket-entering as though they were in the store themselves.

RDO’s Next Chapter

In 2018, RDO hired its first non-family CEO in Tim Curoe, previously of Target and GE. For the first time in history, an Offutt was not at the helm. 

“Going outside for a professional manager is a sign of organizational maturity,” commented George Russell of Machinery Advisory Consortium. “It’s an indication of the scale of these businesses that allows them to attract outside professional managers with the capability to continue their growth.” 

Delegating that responsibility and giving others the room to maneuver was a process Offutt, the reluctant dealer, started almost immediately 55 years ago.

While the absence of children in the business had prompted the publicly traded era, all four of Offutt’s children are involved in the R.D. Offutt Co. today. His two oldest daughters, Rondi and Shelly, are members of the Offutt Family Foundation, with daughter Christi chairing R.D. Offutt Co. 

Rondi’s husband, Keith, most recently served as president of R.D. Offutt Farms, while Shelley’s husband, Scott, led the company’s real estate division for many years. Son Ryan Offutt is executive vice president of RDO International.