Lessiter Media President Mike Lessiter take a moment to recognize the companies who generously helped Farm Equipment sponsor the Dealership Minds Summit.

With prognosticators continuing to forecast lower wholegood sales throughout 2017, and no significant uptick in such sales before 2019, it is imperative that dealers intent on surviving this protracted downturn rethink their view of the wholegoods department. Impacting this transformation will be the fact that most of the manufacturers, if not all of the majors, will be putting pressure on their dealer organization to significantly increase dealership market share, says Dr. Jim Weber.

Correctly valuing used equipment is Job 1, and while there’s no silver bullet, you can increase your odds and limit those deals where you’ve been “bitten too hard” by following a disciplined, data-backed approach. During this authoritative panel discussion, 3 experienced dealers from different regions of the U.S. share the process they use to determine the best value for used equipment to get it sold.

A recap from the shared insights, questions and peer interactions from the 8 concurrent roundtables on important remarketing subjects.

Having spent his entire career in used equipment remarketing at 3 different dealer groups, and personally responsible for much of the industry’s sharing of best practices on the subject, Casey Seymour brings a unique viewpoint to the Dealership Minds Summit. Recognized as one of the best and most practical minds in the industry, he’s personally worked to instill inventory management controls and understanding of fundamentals for all dealers.

Terry Hlavinka, general manager of Hlavinka Equipment Co. in East Bernard, Texas, discusses the importance of cashflow as a dealership, and how implementing a system to limit inventory and perform in-house accounts is crucial for attaining strong margins.

Terry Hlavinka, general manager of Hlavinka Equipment Co. in East Bernard, Texas, breaks down the need for customized marketing programs with mid-sized and smaller operations.

Terry Hlavinka, general manager of Hlavinka Equipment Co. in East Bernard, Texas, reflects on the 2017 Dealership Minds Summit and what resonated most for improving his own business.

Due to the number of attendees that preregistered for this topic, the “Valuation Data Sources: What, Who & Why?” roundtable was held both days of the Dealership Minds Summit – Roadmap to Mastering Equipment Remarketing. The majority of dealers attending this session were looking for better tools to use when placing a value on used equipment and trade-ins. One dealer said, “It is an inefficient marketplace, the information is bad. How do we get better information?”

During a roundtable discussion at the Dealership Minds Summit moderated by Anne Salemo, president of Charter Software, dealer discussed how they are tracking their used equipment inventory. Implementing a real-time inventory tracking system at a dealership is an important business decision with several variables to consider. In order to evaluate whether a real-time tracking system will benefit your bottom line, dealers need to evaluate their losses and look at their internal inventory controls.  If your internal inventory controls are off and not being managed properly, implementing a real-time tracking system will have little hope for success, one dealer commented.