Earlier this year I wrote an article titled “There’s No Easy Button for Used Equipment Valuations.”

For my last “To the Point” column, I’d written about Jim Collins’ new monograph, Turning the Flywheel, and how it could be worthy exercise for your farm equipment company. Over two meetings in 1 week, we wordsmithed our version of a company flywheel — and the 6 spokes that cycle and power our enterprise.

We’ve been following and reporting on “Right to Repair” legislation for over 2 years now, and it just keeps popping back up in my newsfeed. This time around, it was an opinion piece that appeared in Bloomberg.

CRM (and its use for both marketing and sales) is only as good as how committed the entire sales and marketing teams are at entering notes, activities, conversations, inquiries ... How do you measure and hold accountable throughout the organization? What are consequences of not doing it?

Among the many slogans that Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney has coined, these two sum up a critical aspect of his championship culture: Clemson aims for a benchmark, a standard of excellence, that is unchanging.

As a businessperson, I’m impressed by the many ways that grower ingenuity and hard work are paying off, even in an enduring down market. However, as a marketer I am a bit distressed — all that variation in equipment, customer operations and facilities makes it even harder to reach customers with relevant messaging.

There is one fewer big dealer on Ag Equipment Intelligence’s Big Dealer list than there was a year ago at this time. A year ago, we showed 188 dealership groups vs. 187 this year. Is the consolidation of North American farm equipment dealers finally slowing?

2019 will be the year we look back and say, “This was the year things turned for the better.”

Last month, the new “Our Dealer Story” podcast featured a one-on-one with Landis Stankievech of Trochu Motors, a large single-store farm equipment dealer in Alberta. It was a fascinating interview, as it isn’t every day that a young Ivy League athlete, Rhodes Scholar and fast-tracked corporate professional moves back into their parents’ basement to join a farm equipment dealership.

Spring is here and that means baseball season is upon us (and here in Wisconsin we’re blessed with the top of the National League Milwaukee Brewers, adding to the fun). With baseball comes hotdogs, beer and … business advice (bear with me).