A Farm Equipment Special Report: What Will Agriculture Look Like in 2021?

Dealers will become even more integrated with their customer base as diagnostic, prognostic and wireless data transfer technologies continue to develop.

"Today and in the future, dealers will be able to offer value-added services beyond selling iron to their customers," says Jerry Roell, director of John Deere FarmSight. "Some customers may want the dealer to exclusively monitor their data, product or equipment fleet. Dealers will need to be ready to build services around these demands."

Partnerships will need to be formed.

"With the ability to easily move around agronomic data, dealers have the opportunity to partner with agronomists and other ag service providers to give their customers end-to-end solutions," Roell says.

The process capability that goes into a sale will change, too.

"It will require a different skill set to sell equipment in the future. Dealers won't be able to simply say, 'You have this many acres, so you need this size of planter and this much horsepower,'" says Ravi Godbole, global research and special projects manager for AGCO. "Dealers will need to be able to explain the advantages of new systems and dig deeper to make a broader case. Then they need to back up that technology with even more support after the sale."

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