The Success in Shortline Machinery series highlights the best practice strategies employed by top farm equipment dealers to promote and sell shortline equipment. It is brought to you courtesy of Väderstad.

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Väderstad, is a family-owned full-line manufacturer of high-speed planters, seed drills and tillage equipment. Together with farmers in 40 countries all over the world, we have spent the last 55 years creating machines that make any farmland find its full potential. Väderstad is seeking independent-minded dealers capable of selling and servicing high quality equipment to professional farmers. If you are looking for the possibility to expand your customer base, contact Larry Wieler at larry.wieler@vaderstad.com or (289) 527-4697.

First published October 13, 2011

As with any merger or acquisition, the rolled-up organization often finds a hodgepodge of shortline equipment. If those lines are not in conflict with the major-line's products, they almost assuredly will compete with another shortline product in the mix. In the first few weeks of the merger, Precision Equipment was already at work discussing shortline rationalization.

"This is a good time to have that dialog, because we have a new entity - it's Precision Equipment now instead of Farmers or Elder," says Ron Farrier, chairman of the board, Precision Equipment.

"Both dealerships had different shortlines, so now we've got to figure out which one's going to do the best job working with us," he says.

Precision Equipment is assembling a panel for these decisions, a structure many small store dealer-principals may find foreign. "When you're the owner, sometimes you react off-the-cuff in decisions like these - for instance making a decision on a rep's personality. Now, we've got a committee that helps make that decision so that's going to be exciting to get everybody to agree on that."

Precision Equipment is bringing in their shortline companies to re-pitch themselves. "We're putting them through the test," says Farrier.