Farm Equipment magazine announces formation of its first-ever editorial advisory board.

For the 36th year, farmers, farm equipment dealers and agribusiness professionals converged in Regina, Saskatchewan for Canada's Farm Progress Show. With 1.9 million square feet of indoor and outdoor exhibits and more than 45,000 attendees from 50 countries, it's the country's largest trade show. Regina is nestled in the central western part of Canada. This is dry-land farming that extends down into the U.S. Great Plains. The farms in these regions are big and the equipment matches in scope. This was reflected in much of the equipment on display at this year's show, which could be characterized as big and getting bigger.

What methods have you found work best for incentivizing salespeople to ensure that trade-in units are sold on a timely basis? Which programs do not work well? Why?

CRM means Customer Relationship Management. The short answer to why you should care is that your future success may depend on if and how you implement CRM. Retail, your business, the business of selling and serving end users, is very competitive. Long term success often depends on doing a lot of little things right. Selling and servicing farm equipment is no different than any other industry where CRM is now a standard practice. But our industry is just starting to learn about its benefits of and to use CRM successfully.

Rather than waiting for a potential customer to get a flat tire in front of the dealership or chasing low margin roll-over customers to amp up the dealership's volume bonus, dealers and sales managers, together with their salesforce, would be far better served developing meaningful and lasting relationships with the overwhelming number of customers that are seeking such a partnership.

As his company's staffing needs grew, the late Jobs was vigilant against the threat of a swelling of second-rate talent (or what he called "the bozo explosion").

Do you have a cell phone? Do you access the Internet regularly to find information? How about voice mail? Or a digital camera? Word processing or spreadsheets?

Fifteen years ago during a series of speeches I delivered to various equipment dealer associations throughout North America, I predicted that the agricultural equipment industry would lose between 25-40% of its dealers during the first decade of the third millennium.

As the cost of machinery continues to escalate and farmers grow their operations. They want an account executive who understands the impact of depreciation rules and applies them to their greatest advantage.