As planting season 2025 quickly approaches, many dealers are keeping their customers engaged — and prepared — with winter clinics.  

11-store Wisconsin and Illinois Case IH dealer Johnson Tractor hosted its first series of crop production clinics at 7 different locations over the past 2 weeks. More than 300 customers attended the sessions, which included hands-on demonstrations and in-depth training on Case IH, Kinze and Precision Planting equipment. Complimentary lunch was provided, and as a bonus, everyone who attended received a 10% discount on qualifying parts and services.

Meanwhile, 5-store Wisconsin New Holland dealer Swiderski Equipment hosted a planter maintenance clinic at the Food and Farm Exploration Center in Plover, Wis. A clinic like this can help cut down on service calls during busy season by teaching the customer how to troubleshoot problems on their own.  

“Our customers must attend a clinic for us to sell them a service agreement,” says Abby Weltzien, precision solutions service and parts manager for Swiderski Equipment. “It’s a way to bring them onto our service team and teach them what we know. They won’t grasp everything, but they’ll take some knowledge back to their own operation and it will give them confidence in what they’re doing.” 

The team at Baker Precision Planter Works, an independent Precision Planting dealer in Orangeville, Ill., is getting set for their annual 2-day monitor clinic March 12-13. The free event runs from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day. Lunch is also provided. 

“We’ve been hosting these clinics for about 16 years now,” says co-owner Chad Baker. “The first day focuses on Gen 1 and 2 monitors. The second day is for Gen 3 monitors, and we dive more into diagnostics, connection issues, plugins and more. We’ve tried to find ways to keep it fresh and new every year.” 

Ag Technology Solutions Group, PFD’s 2025 Most Valuable Dealership, hosted its annual winter meeting at CEO Skip Klinefelter’s farm shop in Nokomis, Ill., in early February. Running from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with lunch in between, it featured 4 presentations on maximizing nutrient ROI, new sprayer technology and PTI Farm insights, biggest precision paybacks and ag spray drones. Precision specialists were also on hand to showcase new technology like the LeafTech Ag scanner and the EAVision J100 drone during breaks. 

Do’s & Don’ts of Customer Clinics

I had the chance to be a fly on the wall and listen in to a recent roundtable discussion at the Precision Farming Dealer Summit, as dealers discussed some of their best practices and biggest challenges with customer clinics. 

The question of charging for clinics came up, to which one precision specialist responded, "When we do free events, if they're not paying anything, then they don't have skin in the game, and they don't participate as much in the clinic. That's one benefit of a perceived cost. They might walk away with a higher appreciation of the clinic." Another dealer said they don't charge for clinics because their customers have already made a big investment by being there. 

How big should clinics be? There were differing opinions on that question.

"We have time slots," one manager said. "That way customers can sign up, and it keeps the sessions smaller and more personal." 

"There was a point when our clinics got too big," another person chimed in. "It was a mess. So, we put our sales guys in charge of contacting customers to attend clinics." 

The room unanimously agreed that clinics, sales and customer appreciation events need to be kept separate. The key is pre-defining each event ahead of time. One dealership held a product meeting that was a smash hit in its first year. Over 150 people attended, including "the right guys," the big producers who want to know what's going on. 

There was a debate about the length of clinics. One person was struggling with keeping customers to stay for their day-long clinics that include a morning session, lunch and an afternoon session. "Some people do stick around, and I know they benefit by sticking around. But many leave after lunch. How do you keep everyone there all day?" he asked. 

"You don't, you keep it short and sweet," someone responded. "When you go to church, do you want the 1-hour service or the 4-hour service?" 

Do customers prefer shorter or longer clinics? It depends on how far they're traveling from, one person pointed out. "If they're coming from far away, they expect a day-long experience," he said. 

Here are some other comments from the discussion: 

"Free food is always a big draw."

"Clinics are essentially preventative maintenance."

"Clinics become sales pitches too often. It should be more about how the customers get the most out of what they already have." 

"We're all driving sales, even at customer appreciation events with ice cream in the summer."

"It's important to have a set agenda for every clinic."

"Planter clinics are helpful — just going over nuts and bolts of equipment, what to monitor, data management, etc."