Some precision specialists can start catching their breath as harvest season begins to wind down.

Last week, I shadowed Dave Thompson in Amboy, Ill. He’s a precision farming specialist with Case IH dealer Johnson Tractor. He tells me most of his customers were done with harvest by the middle of October. Dave says they’re way ahead of schedule, and he’ll be able to focus a little more on sales now with the extra time on his hands. I asked him, what’s the biggest hurdle you have to clear when selling new technology to customers?

“Cost. I run into that more than anything. It always seems to be related to cost. ‘Good idea. That sounds good.’ Then you tell them what it will roughly cost, and they’re kind of done at that point, so to speak. That would be my number one sales loss right there, simply the cost of some of the kits or equipment. My sales are down, which I believe correlates to the marketplace. The farmers’ price is down so they’re not going to spend money on things they feel they can be without. I’ll go as far to say some of my service calls are down. I think budgetary-wise, the purse strings have been tightened up.”

We’ll have much more from my visit with Dave in an upcoming Day in the Cab article on PrecisionFarmingDealer.com.

Watch the full version of this episode of On The Record