If I had to guess, I would say that a majority of salespeople have sorely missed building new customer relationships and expanding business over the last year or so. In my conversations with sales managers and salespeople, they’ve been able to hold the line and maintain current customer relationships, but it has been extremely difficult to grow new ones.
Spring 2020 is going to be a spring that we remember and one that brought business challenges unlike any we’ve experienced before. But crops still got planted, parts purchased and equipment serviced. There have been challenges indeed, but those challenges have brought opportunities to connect with your customers in different ways and also fine tune some processes.
Dealers lament about the struggles of keeping salespeople focused on moving used equipment rather than just the shiny new units. A sure way to light a fire under your sales team is with compensation plans designed specifically to move used equipment — where the biggest impact exists. From withholding commission until a trade is sold to attaching bonuses to the used units, compensation plans tied to used equipment vary greatly — all with their own pros and cons.
In sales, where charisma and extroversion can be advantages, some people attribute success more to inborn personality traits than to skills that can be coached or taught. Yet the fact that companies in the U.S. alone spend more than $20 billion annually (by conservative estimates) to train salespeople on products, selling skills, and territory management, demonstrates the widespread belief that you can help “make” salespeople great.
Rick Rusin, Used Equipment Remarketer for Champlain Valley Equipment (headquartered in Middlebury, Vt.), manages the upkeep of a used equipment spreadsheet with the entire company's used inventory. The spreadsheet is a great resource for all salesmen.
Alan Byerly is convinced most dealer-principals fully understand the importance of service when it comes to looking at and understanding the big picture.
Source: David Meyer, CEO, Titan Machinery Inc., Fargo, N.D.
We need to understand what is important to the customer, what drives his purchase decisions and what differentiates you and your dealership from the others.
How your salespeople handle it when customers complain will determine whether those customers remain loyal or switch to competitors, so here are 5 ways your salespeople can take the sting out of complaints and keep customers buying:
In this episode of On the Record, brought to you by Associated Equipment Distributors, Marc Johnson, principal with Pinion, provides 4 factors that will be important for dealers to watch in 2025 that will impact their business.
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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