The 11th annual Precision Farming Dealer benchmark study recently asked, "What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your precision business in the next 12 months?"
Dealers from across the U.S. and Canada responded with their top challenges and also shared how they plan to address them in 2024.
Challenge: Economy
Potential Solution: Creative financing and deferred payment plants
Challenge: Being able to hit John Deere's benchmarks while remaining profitable
Potential Solution: Stay close to Deere, hope they will provide some help and guidance
Challenge: Prices of goods and services, and unpredictable down time of satellites
Potential Solution: Offer the best service, make sure the customer is getting what they're paying for
Challenge: Transitioning from selling Trimble to selling more Raven and CNH products
Potential Solution: Training our precision specialists so they are able to sell the products
Challenge: Interest rates and the uncertainty in the market
Potential Solution: Try to leverage the knowledge and experience of our team to partner with growers to add value and help them control the things that will put money back into their pocket
Challenge: Charging a higher percentage of precision specialists' time to customers
Potential Solution: Bill more phone support and closely manage what the specialists are doing on a daily basis
Challenge: Defining how our business model is going to change with autonomous vehicles
Potential Solution: Define the roles of each department as it relates to different sets of challenges with autonomous vehicles
Challenge: Hiring another mechanic/precision technician that meets my standard of work ethic
Potential Solution: We're trying to find a college graduate who studied computers or robotics
Challenge: Precision is a new service that we're just getting started with. Getting the word out and getting farmers to buy into the total benefit of the service
Potential Solution: Marketing and face-to-face meetings, clinics
Challenge: Low markets and high interest rates. Both things that precision doesn't directly fix
Potential Solution: Find the best ways to finance and competitively price
Challenge: High cost of initial investment
Potential Solution: Value added selling and cost savings initiatives
Challenge: Supply chain finally getting close to normal, but still needing to sell a season earlier than before. Getting enough help to cover the product line and territory
Potential Solution: Hire more people and stock more parts
Challenge: Competition from local, small dealers
Potential Solution: Get our personnel in front of the customers and encourage referrals
Challenge: Keeping staff up to date with the fast rate technology changes.
Potential Solution: We just started moving to monthly branch level precision training with key sales, parts and service staff. In the past, we held regional training in the winter which is no longer effective
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