Kim Schmidt:

I am Kim Schmidt, Executive Editor of Farm Equipment. Welcome to Farm Equipment's Used Equipment Remarketing Roadmaps podcast. In this episode, KC Seymour of Moving Iron LLC visits with Jason Holt with Anvil App Works and Jason Nichol, Interior Region Sales Manager for Prairie Coast Equipment in British Columbia. This episode of the Used Equipment Remarketing Roadmaps podcast is brought to you courtesy of Agrisolutions. Let's jump in as they discuss creating a sales pipeline and using data to help in the sales process.

Casey Seymour:

Today I have Jason Holt back here with me, and Jason is flying around making things happen here, doing all the fun stuff over at Anvil. What's going on over there today, Jason?

Jason Holt:

We're really preparing for year-end. We've had a great fourth quarter so far working with several dealers and the inventory piece. The dealers that are winning are the ones that are really managing their inventory well and it's really becoming apparent. So, really happy to talk to you today about some of the things we've got going and share.

We've got a guest on here as well. We invited one of our customers to join us and share some of his experience, and going on five years with us doing different sales activities. We brought Jason Nichol on, Interior Region Sales Manager for Prairie Coast Equipment, which is up in British Columbia, Canada. I'd like to hear from him about some of what he's got going on up there for his sales team. The application we're going to be talking about is what we call Sales Pipeline. It's our visual pipeline manager and it's how we bring some order to the chaos, as you talked about right there at the beginning. That's what we're looking forward to today.

Casey Seymour:

Pipelines, they're not important. No one needs a pipeline.

Jason Holt:

Absolutely not. Revenue. Revenue.

Casey Seymour:

Mr. Nichol, how you doing today, sir?

Jason Nichol:

Hi, guys. Hey, thanks for having me on today. I appreciate it.

Casey Seymour:

Yeah, I'm glad to have you on, man. This is exciting stuff. I love talking to dealers about dealer stuff, so this is going to be a nerd session for me and a nerd session for the rest of dealerships out there. So man, I'm looking forward to this. Looking forward to this man. Okay, so pipeline, I work with my guys quite a bit on pipeline strength, pipeline building, pipeline accountability, where are you at on deals, how are you tracking those deals, all those kinds of things. I guess talk about that a little bit. How how's your team use that, and how do you use that as a manager managing those teams?

Jason Nichol:

Yeah, thanks for the question, Casey. It's pipelines. The key word is that pipeline. Everybody hears it all, blah, blah, blah. But it's very important I think with any business nowadays, trying to make things easier for their sales team and their team, whatever they're trying to establish the pipeline with. Teaming up with Jason Holt and Anvil here a few years ago, we've created this pipeline for that main reason just to make it easier for our salespeople and myself to help them as we call "forage ahead" with each deal that they start with a new one.

Casey Seymour:

One of my favorite movies is Moneyball, and not because of baseball. I'm not hardly a baseball fan. The whole point of that movie is how they use data to go out and win more games and all that kind of stuff. I love data and everything that comes along with that because you can gleam so much from that. There's a scene in the movie where I made my sales guys watch this, and they begrudgingly entertained me for a minute as they did that, but there's a scene in there where they're sitting down with all the scouts and they're going through this and they need to take Jason Giambi and some other people and figure out how they're going to get so many RBIs, and so many hits and this, that and the other thing.

They start going through the data thing, and Jonah Hill's character is talking about what it is that they're doing. They end up taking so many players to get to have a lesser batting average to get to this one guy's batting average so they can get the same thing. I equated that back to my guys as that all we care about is getting on base. That's all we need to do. Get on base, get on base, get on base. I look at getting on base as every appraisal that you go out and do for a used piece of equipment, a trade-in, that's getting on base. Sooner or later, you're going to have enough base hits, you're going to get all the way around, you're going to score a run and sell something.

So when you're looking at your guys and using this pipeline manager that you've got here, how are you having that conversation about getting on base? How are you having that conversation of keeping that pipeline full, and what's that mean and what's that look like to your organization?

Jason Nichol:

One of my favorite movies as well, Moneyball. In relating to that, how they get a guy at first base is, we break out our industry in our AOR and the total industry dollars that are happening within our AORs. The pipeline has helped us break that out for each of our salespeople, working within that AOR to show us by generating a new quote, the volume, then every quote, moving towards more volume, more sales leads to allow us to target and capture more of the AOR and even increase the AOR activity.

So from both sides, they're helping us and the managers are helping them by outlining what is out there and then them capturing it and starting it for us to help them move it along.

Jason Holt:

I think Jason, one of the other things for you to think about there is the visibility. Moneyball is a great example there. Without the stats, they wouldn't have been able to have that conversation. What the pipeline is doing, as you said, it's breaking it out, but it's also showing you you're able to just one click see what deals are there, who's they are. That goes a long way as well as having that visibility to the pipeline.

Jason Nichol:

Important thing is the close date, so it could happen eight months from now. So they're able to select that manually and then automatically put that in there in a task form to remember that this is a closed date, but the other important one within the pipeline is the forage ahead. That's the next step in the deal. After they have that conversation, then we can help them with orders, stuff that's already on order, convert them to retail, just really strengthen the communication between the salesperson and the customer, which I really see a huge improvement in the last year plus with our sales staff and our customers.

Jason Holt:

That feedback is important because as you're doing that, as you've got deals and you're juggling them, keeping that organized, just seeing what you have in there and where you're at with it, and being able to get back up to speed on it real fast and have that conversation, and not lose track of it and realize a week later you haven't contacted that customer back, goes a long way and separates you from your competition.

Jason Nichol:

When it gets hit out to the outfield, there's always that chance you're going to drop the ball, right?

Jason Holt:

Yeah, definitely. Once you got on base, you don't want to forget about it or drop it for sure. One thing I shared that Jason talks about before is just that whole visibility of knowing how many deals you've got right now. There's a lot of folks who can't answer that question at all, and it changes that conversation with your salesperson from, "What are you working on?" The typical sales manager's first question, "I already know what you're working on. Let's talk about this one, this one and this one because I see this one needs some help."

And Jason, your quote back from when we were first working on this was... Really, it's turned you into a coach because you can do that, add value instead of being an admin who's just kind of bouncing things back and forth.

Jason Nichol:

It's allowed our sales sales team and our sales staff members to be more of an account manager. They manage what they started, and managers, we do what we can to help them secure the unit that's on order to retail, get it to the sold on order column, or assist to get it to the sold column so they can move on to the next one too. I think it's benefited both parties on my team anyway, for sure.

Casey Seymour:

One thing I like about pipelines too, is I'm really big on expediting the washout cycle as fast as possible. I want to go from selling the new piece of the first trade all the way to the complete washout. If I could do that in one day, that would be amazing. But it's a struggle in organizations to do that, especially I think in bigger organizations too, as you start looking at the magnitude of equipment that comes across there. The one beautiful thing about a pipeline is that if you're doing your pipeline correctly, you should be able to look and see, when I take this piece in on trade, I know who the next people are going to go.

I don't have a digital version of this yet, but I've got a giant whiteboard that's a magnetic whiteboard with little strips of people's names on it of here's the trades that are coming, and then we start on these little magnetic strips, start writing other people's names on that, where they're going to go and who we're going to take them to. Lo and behold, it makes a plan. I know it's crazy to think like that if you draw those things out, how well that plan comes together. When you're looking at your washout cycle, since you started using this pipeline manager, how has that affected your washout cycle, and have you seen a movement in your turn that you didn't previously see before you had it?

Jason Nichol:

Yeah, yeah, great question. Absolutely. I got to have a few examples of that. Part of my job is increase equipment turns. The more you turn equipment turns, obviously it's the better job everyone's doing. Not only for your dealer, your branch, your company, but your manufacturers as well. I had an example of a sales guy that worked for me for a while, and he was a notebook guy and every time he would take great notes, he'd write it down, turn the page, write down, turn the page write down, turn the page. Well, the third page back never got followed through. Always moving forward, never really going back, which part of this pipeline that Anvil, Jason and his team helped us establish has really helped that individual remember just those things.

It's just a nice little email, "I haven't forgotten about you. We just had this come in. It's going through a shop. Once it's ready, I'd like to present it to you." A lot of times, he already has it pre-sold. So it's great to see how much that's helped that person succeed.

Casey Seymour:

It's easiest way to generate cash in your business, you know what I mean? Just keep that money flowing and keep that next asset moving, especially if you start looking at... I remember when I first started in this business, it was if you had 25 million in inventory as a whole, you were doing okay. Now you might have 25 million in just one category. It's a big deal to really pay attention and know what you're going to do with [inaudible 00:11:41] flow through the system.

Jason Nichol:

Wow.

Jason Holt:

Jason, I remember one thing when we got started, how we're automatically emailing that trades created yesterday. So as new stock units come in and trades get there, everyone gets that report every day in their inbox automatically. There's no effort at all to sharing and communicating what's new. I remember the quote early on, I think it was the Prairie Region, but they said they noticed the coffee talk in the morning, or the water cooler talk, was different once they started getting that because the sales team would get together and say, "Hey Charlie, I saw that you had a deal going with a certain trade-in. Tell me about that. I want to move it through." Are you still seeing that, Jason?

Jason Nichol:

Oh yeah, we just did one this week. We just did this one this week. Tractor coming into the Peace Region that customer in our region needs, and before anybody else even knows what's going on, it's already done.

Yeah, it helps everybody. It helps the branch bringing it in. It helps the customer that needs it. It's helping the company. That's our main goal, is to keep that rolling.

Jason Holt:

It's not like anybody was hiding it before, but it was just hard to communicate that across 20, 30, 40 salespeople. And now with the automation, it becomes easy. Just everybody sees it and can scan it without anybody having to talk about it.

Jason Nichol:

I think that's a key thing for your staff and your company, is try to make things easier for your staff to do their jobs or make their days more pleasant. I know it's a new thing, and I know it's a new system, and I know there's going to be some challenges, and I know some are going to pick it up quicker than others, but it's for those have, that it's really made their ease of doing business a lot easier that I have found. Their stress level is calmer and everything. I mean, we're in a busy pace industry and it can never happen fast enough some of the times. But if you're actively managing your visual pipeline, you are truly staying ahead of it.

Casey Seymour:

Yep, that's very true. One last question about this topic here, and then I'll ask you a couple other hard-hitting questions here on the Moving Iron podcast. From an industry perspective, and as long as I've been doing this, this has kind of been my opinion of the industry and how we look at things, we start with what we're going to sell new first, and we are worried about that budget process and what that looks like. Then we go through that process and then we were like, "Okay, cool, we've got all these trade-ins now. We'll worry about those when they come in though. We'll worry about that when it gets there."

From using this pipeline tool and using with your staff and the buy-in that you've gotten, have you become more proactively looking at your trade-ins versus reactively looking at them compared to what you may have done five years ago?

Jason Nichol:

Oh yeah, for sure. The reason being, it's a little quicker. It's all right there. It's visible, and it's all options for the customers. We've all seen inflation go up a little bit. It's always great to sell the new, but that's not always going to be the outcome. So, having that option to review your customer within that pipeline to move it one way or the other has been beneficial for sure. It's helped our used equipment sales as well.

Jason Holt:

I know. Jason, you've had some impact with some of the special program tractors as well, where you get a fleet and you have to turn them and work them through, or you've got some unusual machines up there and some of the narrow cabs and the vineyard tractors as well, and having some visibility to who owns those.

Jason Nichol:

Within the quote, you have your quote, you can show the customer the photos. You can show them the service estimates we've done to it. We can answer all of our questions without having to drive back, and then having to drive back and then prepare it. Whether they wanted to do it through their mobile, through their iPad, through their Android system, through their computer, having those tools to be successful is I think key in our performance. It's turned a lot of our... I went through some old school sales training and you were either an order taker or a field marketer. Some classes that I sat in, if you were a sales guy, you definitely didn't want to be pointed out as an order taker.

Casey Seymour:

Right, yeah.

Jason Holt:

Well, and one thing, Casey, I know in some of what we've talked about and what Jason's doing there is having your pipeline, and your CRM, and your inventory together. They go through a process with their customers, and what product lines do they buy from us? Do they have a budget this year? Are they an every two year customer? Are they a forage customer? Are they a dairy customer? That's all right in their CRM as well. Jason had a process with his team where they were working their best customers and filling out their CRM, but that's the effect of what you've got on your whiteboard, is that who are my two year roll customers? Who are people who buy sprayers? Who are my dairies? Who are my commercial hay producers? Who are the vineyards?

So when Jason gets a narrow cab tractor in, he can pull up the vineyards and see, well, who's a two year cycle customer that is a vineyard. That work pays off because they're all connected to each other.

Jason Nichol:

Some guys like to run so many hours and that's all, and they want to keep that rotation so to speak going, and the way things are currently are we need to be a little further ahead than what we probably were accustomed to than any other manufacturer out there. We've been pretty spoiled in some years past, and this has helped us move eight, 12 months further ahead of it to help the customer get that further ahead as well.

Casey Seymour:

Yep.

Jason Holt:

Do you remember that deal you were telling me about where your team was just taking pictures and keeping up what the customer's fleet was, and then how you were able to turn that competitive customer around?

Jason Nichol:

Thanks for bringing that up, Jason, because we really demonstrate that to show how much it does make it easier for the salesperson. Our geographic area, we could drive four hours to go see one customer, or to get to that area and see 15. With the cost going up, if we have that information in there, then all of a sudden we come out with a quarterly program that we're going to go and target these. I mean, what we really need to do is update the hours and make sure nothing's been damaged, and we have all the information we need to go there and close a deal.

Casey Seymour:

One of the biggest things about any of these systems when you put them into place, I don't care how minor or how major it is, it is trying to run a marshmallow through a granite wall. Some days it feels like just, no matter how hard you push, it's not going anywhere. When did you really feel like your team had bought into this process enough to where even the most stringent holdouts said, "You know what? This is worth me trying."

Jason Nichol:

Unless you're Aaron Judge and then you get walked to the first base, you still have to hit the ball.

Casey Seymour:

That's right. True. That's right.

Jason Nichol:

I think what I was fortunate is I had a couple guys on my team realized how much it helped them improve their sales and grow their sales. I'm not talking thousands. I'm talking millions. When you get a couple guys like that, or a couple people like that on your team, that takes them way up the ladder in volume. I think other ones go, "Hey, how did you do that?" And they just have a quick conversation. I allowed that for one salesperson to talk to a few other salespersons to help them do what he was doing and give it a try.

I think the biggest thing for me was I really had to figure it out and lead the way as well. If I'm doing it, then it's more funner and we do it together. Anvil helped us a lot, tweak some things and make it easier. We actually started with three, four things to move it all into one for them. A lot of that did come from a couple of the guys that brought it to me, then I brought it to Jason and we made it work for them.

Jason Holt:

I remember, Jason, when we launched it you had that comment where you challenged him to give me a week, do it for a week. I don't know, what were you doing? You remember that?

Jason Nichol:

Yeah, we were doing some rewards. The guy that logs the most calls or enters the most customer data to strengthen our database, increases their customer quality control. Just little contests. And try to raise the level, raise the bar.

Kim Schmidt:

We'll get back to the discussion in a moment, but first, I wanted to thank our sponsor, Agrisolutions. Improve performance and durability with a wide range of premium tillage parts and extended life solutions with Agrisolutions. As the market leader in wearable parts, components, accessories, and solutions for tillage, seeding, planting, and fertilizing, Agrisolutions is proud of their purpose to build and feed the world. To learn more about Agrisolutions and their globally recognized brands such as Pelota, Ingra, Salt Tillage, and Trinity Logistics, visit AgrisolutionsCorp.com. Now back to Casey.

Jason Holt:

How much time do you think a team member or a salesperson spends on their visual pipeline board a day or a week?

Jason Nichol:

Well, now the guys here, it's open all the time. What I like about it is you can take a window snip and say, "I could can see a lot of stuff in negotiation. Let me know how I can help you move this or do that." I understand everybody gets busy and calls keep coming in and keeping it up, but my role is to support them and I have a job to do too. When I see that there, I need to engage and see what I can do to help them help us.

Jason Holt:

One of your best ideas, one of your ideas that his team brought to the table was a little pop-up hover. One of the four bits that he talked about there is the forge ahead. It's a little play on the word anvil, but it's not focusing on what you've done, but focusing on what you got to do next. So as you're trying to juggle 15, 20 deals, you capture, what have I got to do next? I got to do an evaluation. I got to deliver a quote. I got to get the signed PO. And then, you can just hover and it'll show you that note. It'll show you whatever you captured to remind yourself just very quickly, five, 10 minutes a day just looking at it, "Oh, my next deal was I was going to do this," and reminding yourself. Then Jason can see it as well. So if it's like a forage chopper deal and you need some money or you're negotiating the trade value, you can see that right on the deal without having to click in or move around, or do anything at all.

Jason Nichol:

Yeah, and I think everybody that's in sales is competitive and they want to know the score in which would I have found. If you let them know this is a total AOR, and we have three guys doing Ag sales and that AOR, and you've got your strengths and experience and stuff, so you break it out. We develop homepages for each sales guy, so their total sales volume is on their homepage and their past year's sales so they can see if they're trending and what's happening. To your point, Jason, yeah, when they set a forage ahead task within the pipeline, it automatically carries that task, the date they set, to come up on their homepage.

When they start with their homepage, they see their tasks today and then say, "Oh yeah, I've got to get back to this customer regarding this tractor.

That's moved up in the system." Then it moves them to act on it to keep moving it. It's the accountability. If there's any dealers out there, a lot of times they think it's micromanaging, but I don't. The more you sell, the more you should reward yourself by doing it. If you forage ahead of task, remind you to talk to someone about a deal you're working with on and you close the deal, well, the reward's there, for sure.

Casey Seymour:

Yes.

Jason Holt:

Speaking of that homepage, I remember what you were talking about front was you used to make those in Excel. You used to go pull it together and you would spend hours putting those together and then emailing them out to the team, and telling them where they're at on their scorecard. That became your homepage, which is just automated every morning now. So, you've gained hours a month back or hours a quarter back of just not having to send spreadsheets around.

Jason Nichol:

And time-consuming more for them, like go through each thing, and then now it's they have it, I have it. There's no emailing back and forth as much. There's no phone calling back and forth. We don't eliminate talking and helping each other, but probably cut that load off over 50%. We have more time selling, talking with customers, strengthening the data, moving the pipeline as sold. That's what it's all about.

Casey Seymour:

All the things that don't matter, right, Jason?

Jason Nichol:

Yeah. Not talking to me wondering why this thing is still here or there, right?

Jason Holt:

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

Casey Seymour:

I think the next kind of real question here too is, so I'm listening to this right now and I'm a guy and... Nah, man, whatever. High performers are always the ones that they go pick up a new tool and they're going to just be the high performer still. The two guys you were talking about there that came up the ladder, were they the highest performers on your team?

Jason Nichol:

The very first year we got this tweaked, he was right there at the top. Then last year I had another top performer that really applied a lot of time and effort into his customers, his customer quality, his pipeline, his data, emailing, logging. Just very proud of what he accomplished last year. Yeah, so for sure. That's why I know it's working and that's why I know I'm a believer in it myself is when I see them doing it and I see them getting to the top.

Jason Holt:

Because he was middle of the road, I believe, as he got started into this.

Jason Nichol:

Yeah. I mean, it's a rope, right? I mean you get busier, customers get a little more anxious, a little more wanting. It's tough for them. It's not as easy for them as it used to be either. So their planning needs help with planning, and when you're on that rope, you can either slide or you can climb. There's only two ways to go.

Jason Holt:

So he decided to climb.

Casey Seymour:

I think the key factor here when you start looking at pipeline development and how your pipeline pays off for your customer or for your salespeople, is that I'll never be able to do X because I don't have Salesman A's customers. If I had Salesman A's customers, wow, man, I'd be the richest guy in the company. I think when you start talking guys and really walking them through how to develop a pipeline and what that looks like, all of a sudden you start shining lights on, "Well, why this guy? No one's called this guy for a while. No one's calling this guy for a while."

You haven't done that, and there's always a reason. "No, he's..." Whatever. "He only buys X. He only comes [inaudible 00:29:01]. All he wants to buy is New Holland stuff." It's like well, he's got a New Holland, a John Deere, a Flint all in the same yard. I don't think he's only going to do this or only going to do that. There's a lot of assumptions that get backed into customers' perception I think from sales guys a little bit. How has this changed that mentality with your sales guys?

Jason Nichol:

Not doing really much business with you. I mean, it's something that you're neither driving by them, you're not stopping in, you're not actively engaging to help both of us. It's a communication key. I work with this team and I'm saying, "Hey..." Every one of our customer accounts has a call frequency things that we can set. Some are monthly, some are quarterly, some are semi-annually. Someone that comes in that just buys a consumer Ryan lawnmower, that's obviously a semi-annual customer, and one that we're doing business with tons like a dairy farmer or cash crop, that's a monthly thing where we're in with technology with an operation center.

I mean, we're there monthly, but I think the key of it is communication. The important thing sometimes is we all want to sell, but sometimes it's just a conversation on how things are going, how's the kids doing in school, how's the son doing at hockey this year? That's what's going to strengthen that customer to that quarterly conversation and get them into a monthly conversation. I think we see a lot of that sometimes get forgotten, and this has allowed some guys to just make that call or just send that email, or things go on.

Jason Holt:

You know, nailed it though, Casey, that some folks can just sell ice to an Eskimo and they don't need any help. But for the majority of us, there's a process. There's a way of doing it. There's a Sales Pipeline 101 out there, and it's everything that you guys just talked about. But helping do it the same way, having the tools that help, you think about how you use your phone day in and day out. It's just how technology can take a solid technique, which is what sales is, but just allow you to repeat it time after time.

Going back to Moneyball, that's exactly what they're doing there to get on base again. It's swing mechanics, pitching machines, it's doing tape. It's just doing the basics. It's the blocking and tackling. But by with technology, you can just do that consistently, do that reliably, get back to your customers, have the relationships that Jason just talked about, and take somebody who is a good salesperson and turn them great. Jason's got those examples on his team of that, taking a good one and just making them great.

Jason Nichol:

I think what else is important too, those guys that are well established, seasoned salespeople that have had a strong trap line for 20, 30 plus years, we don't want them walking out the door and then it's all gone with the cell phone they've had or that notebook. I mean, companies, to be sustainable, that information is theirs. We've got to work with them to leave that with us and thank them for everything they've done. You give, you get. The ship's still got to go on. I think it's the most important is to the customer.

Casey Seymour:

Right.

Jason Nichol:

Because they're going to keep going, right?

Casey Seymour:

Yep.

Jason Holt:

Yeah.

Jason Nichol:

Or their son, or their daughter, or their grandchild.

Casey Seymour:

That's the other thing too, is if Salesman A retires, then he goes off and moves to Arizona or whatever, all that information goes with him. The next guy coming in, even though he left on good terms and everything's fine, it's your kind of starting over at square one with that customer. The company kind of knows what that relationship is and how things kind of work, and those kinds of things. You've got 85% of the information, but the other 15% of the information that you're missing, that's really the important information that you need to know. Building that customer profile and what that looks like, and how those things all flow together, it's bigger than how many cows you have, and it's bigger than those kinds of things. It's just a bigger thing. All that information is just a small little nugget in all of that information as it flows together.

So keeping it all in one place where not only me as a sales guy can see it, but my manager can see it, and my marketing people can see it, and even to some extent if you really need to understand some stuff, if you start looking at all the functions and facets of the company, we start looking at parts and service and how all those things play in together, now all of a sudden the guy shows up. "I need a water pump for X, Y, Z machine." Oh, well, it's a serial number break. I can't imagine how many parts out there have serial number breaks in them because it seems like every one of them.

Jason Nichol:

Exactly.

Casey Seymour:

And you go pull that machine up and it's sitting right there, and you can look at it, and you can come across and go get the right water pump the first time, or order the right one the first time, whatever the situation is. All those things make a huge difference in the customer satisfaction of doing business at your dealership.

Jason Nichol:

It's not a tool that some people may think, "Oh, they just want to know where I'm at today and think I'm not doing the job." No, it's allowing you some freedom and some space to be out there. Then if the customer comes in, we can all help.

Casey Seymour:

Right.

Jason Holt:

We've got examples of it's not even just salespeople moving on. I saw there's a work order on the Combine. Why don't I go try to trade him out of it? And seeing that visibility, or a CSR is seeing who called the call center and having those types of relationships there as well. It's not only preserving the information for the next salesperson, it's leveraging just what the dealership knows. I like to say just imagine if you knew what you already knew. The collective knowledge within the dealership, having that all coalesced together, is powerful.

Casey Seymour:

Very much. Very much. All right, so now you've got the system here and you're really measuring what's going on there. How are you going to measure the success of a sales guy? It's not margin. Obviously, margin percent and those kinds of things are going to come into place, but it's not total margin dollars because not all territories are created equal. You don't have the same opportunities in every territory. As you're looking through that, how are you using this to measure your success of your sales guys ?

Jason Nichol:

Just with growth. Growth can be are you gaining more accounts? Are you covering more of the areas? Is more business coming our way? It allows us to focus on do we order more of this? Do we order less of that? Do we need more? This model versus that model helps us plan ahead the way the industry's kind of trending based on how the customers are either expanding or needing more horsepower. Maybe they need less tractors. So, growth I think would be the key word there. I don't think a company out there that doesn't want to grow. In our industry, our growth is by customers.

Casey Seymour:

For sure. For sure. Then probably lastly is, there's a lot of different tools and levers you can pull on this, but what's your most favorite part of the system?

Jason Nichol:

What I like the most about it is allows the team to do what it is we're asking them to do a lot easier. You don't necessarily have to put in 14 hours a day. You manage your time and you manage your accounts, and it's a live system. You don't have to be at a desk. You don't have to be at a computer. You can do it with your iPhone. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. If you know need to pick your kids up at school, or you need to go to the Christmas concert, you're there. It's allowing us to move the technology and the speed of it, and-

Jason Holt:

I'm going to answer that as well, just from working with them. It's just really rewarding to see the difference in their sales meetings and the meetings to the bosses and the managers and such where you started out almost admin type focused and then being able to move now. Now we're talking about who's the next deal and how do we take care of this person? You're up 20% year-over-year. And you're having those types of conversations because it's visible. So you're not getting 20 people in a room and filling out a spreadsheet anymore and meetings with the bosses. "Here's my forecast. I know what it's going to be."

It's just taking some of that robot stuff away and just feeling, like you said, tied to a desk. That's all gone now from the way you've been describing it to us. That's cool. That's fun to watch.

Jason Nichol:

Yeah, and speeds it up it and mostly for the customer. They know where it's at and they have an answer.

Casey Seymour:

Yep. Yeah.

Jason Nichol:

They don't have to go ask six people for it. It's right there.

Casey Seymour:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, well-

Jason Nichol:

I better be careful. I might not have a position [inaudible 00:39:06].

Casey Seymour:

Automate your way out of a job.

Jason Nichol:

You know what, that's technology, and it should be made easier for everybody.

Casey Seymour:

Jason Holt, do you have any final thoughts on [inaudible 00:39:22]?

Jason Holt:

No, just thank you Jason for sharing your insight here. You've come a long way, and I don't think you'd want to go back to the way it was.

Jason Nichol:

No.

Jason Holt:

No?

Jason Nichol:

No. No. I'm actually looking forward to moving forward. I know we have some things in the Anvil pipeline. We're going to be moving forward with the tasks and service request, which is just going to make it easier for other departments. I'm really excited about that, Jason.

Jason Holt:

Yeah, which I just want to highlight that to everyone, all of your listeners there, Casey as well, is we're continuing to work with our customers and grow over time. That's the secret to adoption, not trying to just do everything at once, but continual improvement, continual growth into that. There's the old saying, "When's the best time to plant a tree?" Well, it was actually 20 years ago, but if you can't do it, then let's do it today. That's my request for an interview. If you feel like you want to get to this point as well, reach us at Sales@AnvilApp Works.com, or reach out on any of the social and we'd be happy to talk with you as well. We are a partner with Prairie Coast and Jason, and we're proud of that. We want to continue that type of growth. If that's interesting to you, we'd love to talk with you about it.

Casey Seymour:

Awesome. And Jason Nichol, if you want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?

Jason Nichol:

My email is JNichol@PCE.ca.

Casey Seymour:

PCE.ca, right?

Jason Nichol:

Yep.

Casey Seymour:

Okay. Right on. Okay, well, fellas, I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

Jason Holt:

It's our pleasure.

Jason Nichol:

Thank you for having me today. It was a pleasure. I really enjoyed doing this, guys. Thank you very much.

Casey Seymour:

Right on.

Jason Holt:

Thank you. Yeah, really appreciate it.

Casey Seymour:

It's been a fun conversation. We'll do it again sometime, so what's up? All right, well, I'm Casey Seymour of Moving Iron podcast. Check me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram app, Moving Iron LLC. Go to Moving Iron podcast on LinkedIn and check out the video version of this on the Moving Iron podcast YouTube channel, which is cleverly named YouTube version of that. It's just Moving Iron podcast YouTube channel. Check that out. Everything Moving Iron-related, go to MovingIronLLC.com. With that, with Jason and Jason, I'm Casey. Let's go move some iron, folks. I'm out.

Kim Schmidt:

Thanks to Casey for sharing his conversation with us. You can keep up on the latest industry news by registering online. To receive our free newsletters, visit www.farm-equipment.com. For Casey as well as our entire staff here at Farm Equipment, I'm Kim Schmidt. Thanks for listening.