When your product is unique, expensive and unknown, there is only one way to promote it and that is by demonstrating it in the field to actual customers. I began to travel my first territory in 1970 and the principal instruction I received was that I needed to sell our flagship product, a 15-foot cutter, which my predecessor had failed to sell.
Last week I had the chance to speak to a bunch of investment managers at a meeting organized by an investment bank. Most times their questions are fairly predictable, but sometimes they aren’t. Some of these managers are very “detail oriented,” which they should be, and they ask for hard numbers.
There was a large absolute dealer auction held on Aug. 8, 2017, in north central Illinois. It’s always fascinating to compare wholesale auction sale prices from dealer/consignment/online auctions vs. traditional farm auctions.
Several weeks ago, now, I had a conversation with a research analyst at an investment banking advisory firm who was looking for some perspective on the current and future prospects of the precision farming industry.
Last week 235 attendees from 112 different dealerships across the U.S. and Canada gathered in Omaha, Neb., for 2 days of discussion focused on remarketing used equipment at our 3rd Dealership Minds Summit. The theme of the Summit was “Roadmap to Mastering Equipment Remarketing.”
Why do today’s equipment dealers need to fundamentally evolve to, embrace and implement the changes needed to the outdated relationship model and roles of “dealer” and “customer?” In an environment of accelerating demographic changes, and with the fast paced, continually evolving, marketplace, changes can be difficult, and the answers may not appear readily obvious.
If you were to read through any of the major farm equipment manufacturers annual reports (also referred to as Form 10-K by the SEC), each of them refers to the businesses that sell their products as “independent dealers.” This would imply that those dealers are free to operate their businesses as they see fit. We all know this isn’t anywhere close to what’s actually taking place in the real world of the farm equipment business.
Let’s talk big square balers. I saw a very nice 2011 model Massey Ferguson 2150, one owner, only produced 7,800 bales, sell for $51,000 at a farm auction in northeast Iowa.
One of the fun things about our coverage of the farm equipment business is discovering and sharing how each of the various cogs perform together in the larger “machine.” On each of the Dealership Minds special issues, we’ve had subscribers laugh about how they learned something they didn’t know about the role of a person they’d worked 10 yards away from for a decade, sometimes more.
Built on 90 years of expertise, Yetter Farm Equipment leads the agriculture industry in designing effective and innovative equipment for residue management, seedbed preparation, precision fertilizer placement, harvest attachments, strip-tillage, and more.
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