May 5, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode, the first of a series of three segments of an extended interview, Andy speaks with George Keen of Wise Wolf Consulting about effective sales management strategies for equipment dealerships. They discuss the importance of account assignment, sales coverage, and the balance between customer retention and prospecting. The conversation also delves into managing inbound leads, commission fairness, and the critical role of data utilization in enhancing sales effectiveness. Keen emphasizes the need for a structured approach to CRM usage and the value of demonstrating its benefits to salespeople.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Beyond the Hood, stories and strategies to fuel dealer growth.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
I'm your host, Andy Campbell, and our guest today is George Keen of Wise Wolf Consulting.
If you're a sales manager, sales leader within your equipment dealership, this podcast isfor you.
(00:28):
And this is part of a larger conversation that we had with George, but we've truncatedthis down to be about 35 minutes of the most focused topics on sales management and sales
leadership.
Specifically, I'm going to talk to George a lot about
sales manager strategy, account assignment, how do sales managers assign accounts frombalancing customer retention versus prospecting, and all the strategic decisions that go
(00:53):
into account coverage.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with George as much as I did having it.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
I'm your host, Andy Campbell, and I have the distinct pleasure of being joined today byGeorge Keane with Wise Wolf.
consulting.
(01:13):
George, thanks for joining me.
Nice to be here.
Good.
Well, and George, I first learned about you with an article that you had uh published onfarm equipment.com.
And then I found out about your book.
And from a totally different source, somebody emailed me and said, Hey, have you everheard or talked to George?
And they included a link to some of your stuff.
(01:36):
And then we had set up this podcast and then you sent me your bio.
And so I'm going to read just bullet point off in this bio to set the stage for today's.
uh
So if anybody does not know George, so 10 years with the software DMS ah So dealermanagement system for those that might not know so customer support North American sales
(01:57):
15 years with curry management consultants So that's consulting in construction AGforklifts generators Transport refrigeration reefer trucks.
So there you're talking us Canada Europe Great Britain South America
And then on top of this, you facilitated over 20 best practice dealer groups.
So I imagine like these peer groups and then 10 years with a John Deere Ag dealer out inVirginia.
(02:23):
Five years now doing consulting with Wise Wolf.
George, you've got a fair amount to talk about.
Yeah, when you get to be this old you got lots to talk about.
That's fantastic because you know people often ask me who are your favorite podcast guestsand And I honestly can say it's always the next one just because the amount of information
(02:48):
that I learned What what got you started?
I mean with the DMS system like how did you actually get into this industry?
Uhhhh
working in uh computer software.
And one day I got a phone call from somebody for a new position and I went in for a sevenhour interview and they said, we'll call you back.
(03:19):
But that started 10 years with computer software for equipment dealers and
everything kind of flowed from there.
Well, I can say from working here at Tractor Zoom that data and information does tend tobe the bedrock.
(03:39):
And once you kind of understand that, I'll, you know, lot of, you know, understanding ofthe whole industry, uh, really spawns from that.
But, but talking about that, you know, and kind of giving everybody a preview of what ourconversation today is going to be about when George and I were going back and forth about
potential topics for today.
I mean, we're covering everything from sales, inventory management.
(04:01):
change management, absorption rates, rental, as well as we always get is some goodphilosophical life lessons.
Uh, so we're covering a gambit here, but considering all of the industry experience youhave and knowing that right now we're in early 2025, the economy, the ag economy,
especially is a little slower.
(04:23):
Let's start out with the juicy stuff and let's get into sales.
Uh, so
You know, especially here lately at TractorZoom, we spent a lot of time thinking aboutwhat makes a dealership sales team just really effective.
How can they, they best utilize their resources?
When you look at a lot of teams, how do they spend their times?
(04:44):
Whether it's customer calls or their focus on accounts, like what is the best use of theirtime?
My traditional approach has been account assignment, but I think you need to back up alittle bit on that question.
that is, what's the sales manager's strategy for handling the business?
(05:13):
Are they looking to penetrate the existing market?
Are they just looking to hold on to what they have?
That has a lot to do with where I think the balance is in how they assign accounts tosalespeople.
(05:34):
So are they doing 75 % customers, 25 % prospects?
Or are they doing 75 % prospects and 25 % customers?
What are they trying to do with this?
Once you know what the sales sales manager is doing, then we go to the question of what'sthe salesman going to do.
(06:04):
Salesperson.
But you know, I've got a sales manager years ago that told me he was hired right out ofcollege and he was given X number of counties and he went out and just did a bang up job.
Next year they cut his territory in half.
(06:27):
Being a young kid, he said, I'm not going to let them, you know, keep me down.
I'm going to show them.
So the second year with half territory, he did the same business.
Third year, they cut his territory in half.
He went out and did the same business again.
Wow.
(06:48):
What did that tell you about the sales manager and their perspective of their informationabout what was in those counties?
Sales manager didn't know the business.
So what's the sales manager, uh, information and do they know the accounts that are outthere prior to
(07:17):
Us using CRM's customer relationship in a management software.
Did the sales people know all the accounts that were there?
Did the sales manager know all the accounts that were there?
(07:40):
Probably not.
Well, I was going to say on that topic, and maybe you're getting to this.
So knowing everything that's out there and then splitting it up appropriately.
I mean, you had mentioned like the 25 75 split.
So 75 if you're working 75 % prospects, you're growing the business.
But even knowing how do you know what's out there?
And then how do you go about that account segmentation?
(08:03):
Breaking, you know, farmers or potential customers into high priority, low priority?
How do do that?
Certainly we expect the salespeople to bring information back.
But we need that information in a place the sales manager can look at it, organize it,decide what to do with it.
(08:27):
Do you want the salesperson calling on every one of those accounts?
Now, if that prospect has one small 25 horsepower tractor to take care of their garden, isthat some place that the salesperson should be going weekly?
(08:55):
Or should they be spending their time at a farm that has 14 tractors and a whole lot ofimplements?
Okay.
Where did the salespeople put their time?
As we've looked at the business over the years, and this particular uh discussion appliesto almost any industry, but it's
(09:24):
appropriate here also.
My experience has been 40 % of the potential revenue out there is maybe done by 1 % 2 % ofyour accounts.
You've got large producers in your area that bring you or your competition a lot ofbusiness.
(09:52):
Then you've got maybe
the next 30 % of business might be 10 to 12, 15 % of your accounts.
Well, notice here, at best, we've got 20 % of the accounts and they've done 70 % of yourbusiness.
(10:12):
As a sales manager, are you assigning those accounts to salespeople?
But in talking about those,
top accounts, I'm not saying customers, I'm saying accounts.
Because prospects are accounts and they can be just as big as your current customers.
(10:38):
Are your salespeople calling on the big prospects at the same frequency that they'recalling on the big customers?
Or are they spending their time on the 65 % of the customers and prospects that bring you10 % of your business?
(11:02):
Hey everybody, quick break from the show and then we're gonna get you right back to theconversation.
But I wanted to take a moment to let you know how TractorZoom is partnering with all ofour dealership partners to fuel their dealership growth.
We're doing that with TractorZoom Pro to give people better valuations, faster access toit, and the ability to manage their inventory using AI, using large data, even if the
(11:23):
dealership doesn't have the capacity to develop the AI and the large data themselves.
It's all there within TractorZoom Pro.
And also with Anvil Pro.
integrated business systems solution.
You can actually cut costs by integrating solutions, not paying for all these extraone-offs and keep people in the same solution so you're not constantly switching screens.
And then you could optimize your workflows, do a lot of things with automation thattechnology should be able to do right now.
(11:48):
So just two ways that TractorZoom is working with our dealer partners to really help themfuel their dealership growth.
Okay, you can check out some links in the show notes.
You can also go to TractorZoomPro.com to check all that stuff out.
but we'd love to at least show you all the different ways that we're helping ourdealership partners.
Okay, let's get back to the show.
Hope you're enjoying it.
How do you go then about, let's say if you're not sized, kind of like you had justsuggested with that stratified uh prioritization, if you're not broken down like that, how
(12:21):
do you think about assessing accounts in dealership?
you just straight geography?
Do you go off of previous past relationships?
How do you get to that point if you're not there?
Generally, I think we need to have a balance because I want the accounts to begeographically clustered for good use of a salesperson's time.
(12:49):
I don't want them driving 75 miles for a single account when everybody else is closearound them.
OK, so how do you cluster
the accounts, but then how do you look at getting the best coverage for the high volumeaccounts and not having a salesperson spend too much time or maybe even equal time on low
(13:24):
volume accounts.
If a salesperson has potential for
Like for illustration, let's say five calls a day.
He's going to do five, he or she is going to do five calls a day, five days a week.
(13:44):
So I've got 25 calls.
I'll even be generous and say maybe only 20 calls, but they do this 50 weeks a yearbecause they got two weeks of vacation.
So I've got a thousand calls potential for the year.
from that single salesperson out.
(14:06):
How frequently do I want that salesperson calling on the big accounts?
And how frequently do I want them calling on the one piece of equipment accounts?
What I call the D accounts.
Well, I probably want them monthly at least.
(14:31):
on my large accounts, maybe bi-monthly on my second level of accounts, B accounts, and myC accounts maybe quarterly.
Well, I would expect the same thing in allocating the call frequency as uh the number ofcalls.
(14:59):
So if I
If 40 % of my business is those large A accounts, then I want 40 % of my calls on the Aaccounts.
If I do those guys monthly, I could get about 30, 33 accounts in 400 calls with monthlycalls.
(15:23):
I've done the math.
Likewise, if I did
30 % of my calls, or 300, on my B accounts, and I'm gonna see them every other month, Ican get about 50 B accounts for that salesperson.
(15:45):
Now I'm gonna do quarterly calls for the C accounts, and I've only got 200 calls forthose.
So again, I've got about 50 accounts.
And I might have 100 calls left after that allocation.
And I'd probably use those for emergencies.
(16:08):
Somebody calls in, somebody emails, somebody goes to the website that we didn't have onour list, and I need to take care of it.
But if I add that together, I've got 133 accounts that salesperson can cover.
(16:28):
Now, if I look at three counties and we know how many accounts we have,
Do we have more than 133 accounts?
Because if we do, what's going to happen is we're either going to be weak in one of thosethree categories, or we're going to ignore a whole bunch of accounts that are in those
(16:56):
counties because we didn't have enough sales people to cover them.
So when you start to look at it, not by how many counties do I have and how
is the salesperson going to cover it.
But you look at how many calls the salesperson can do, all of a sudden, three countiesmight be too much.
(17:25):
Four counties might be fine.
You know, how many acres does each farmer have and how many county, how many farms arethere within the county?
Now I start looking at, can I get good coverage from a salesperson with these parameters?
(17:48):
And am I going to cover that county correctly?
or that group of accounts correctly.
I might need two salespeople for three counties.
In other places based on large farms, I might need one.
But in the past, we've looked at geography because we didn't stop and do the math todetermine what sort of coverage we wanted.
(18:22):
So it sounds like, mean, to run that kind of organization, you need, first of all, to keeptrack of what everybody's doing and then also give them a process.
So I imagine that's where CRM ah would really add value.
But then you're also laying out the strategy of here strategically is what you're after.
And then you're working back to figure out tactically how many salespeople, what kind ofcoverage you need.
(18:49):
And I don't think many salespeople have done that.
And frequently the sales managers are responding more to the manufacturer's insistence onaccount coverage because they want market share.
But they're not measuring it based on salesman's time.
(19:13):
They're not measuring it based on geography.
The manufacturer just wants share.
And to them, what that really means is that's keeping their production line busy.
That's why the manufacturers care about share.
(19:33):
It has nothing to do with the dealer's profitability or the salesman's effort.
Hmm, right.
And so we often find that there's a lot of uh there's a bit, you know a push and a pullthere to make both parties happy
(19:53):
And so that conversation and that strategic setup was a lot about, you know, sales effortand outbound sales effort.
But what about inbound?
And so inbound leads are fantastic, right?
Somebody's warm, they want to buy from you already, but it's not always clean cut.
(20:15):
So what would you say when you have either an email, a text, a call in coming in throughthe central hub?
ah What's your take on commission fairness?
But I mean who answered the phone whose County it was in who had the existing relationshipthat may have already brought that person in How do you manage that mess?
(20:40):
First question is what's the sales manager's strategy and how do they want to handle it?
I've seen some sales managers that would pass that unsolicited phone call off to anin-house salesperson to handle it initially.
(21:05):
And then once they've quantified that account,
Then they may choose to hand it off to a local salesperson or they may just handle thatsale in-house until they know more.
Other people are going to directly pass it off to a salesperson based on geography.
(21:31):
To me, the question still comes back down to, you know, dealership strategy.
What do they want to do?
It's not going to be one solution handles, you know, the situation for everybody.
Having that clear defined strategy articulated down into a process ahead of time oftenavoids a lot of those issues.
(21:58):
Now we had just talked about the importance of the CRM system and just your the processesand the management of executing the strategy which at the core basic gets down to data.
How is it structured?
How is it organized?
And you had plenty of years at a DMS company and then uh every other position after that,I'm sure you dealt with data and data utilization.
(22:28):
So how do you put that dealer data ship to work?
And maybe a more pointed question is what common data sets within dealerships do you thinkare overlooked, underutilized or potential gold mines?
think is the current
(22:52):
is so questionable what's going on.
I think we need to look at some of the data for salespeople and consider what's thepurchasing cycle for an account.
Do we have a farmer that buys every seven years or every 10 years?
(23:19):
Now, it may be different
cycles for tractors than it is for implements.
Okay, but what's the purchase cycle for an account?
And to do that, you got to go back in history.
(23:39):
You got to look at your data.
So you've got a dealership that's in the third generation.
They've been on a
computer software system for the last 50 years.
So let's go back to when we're only 25 years into the 21st century.
(24:02):
Uh, we go back to 75 and there were some computer software, 40 or 50 years, but let's lookback at all the invoices of what we've sold to that account.
during that last 40 or 50 years.
(24:23):
How many tractors did we sell?
What size, what model, et cetera?
What implements have we sold?
What's the replacement cycle for those accounts?
So I want to use the historic data of the account to prompt the salesperson on when theyneed to plan the next
(24:50):
tractor or implement sale.
Likewise, based on the history, does the customer buy new or do they buy used?
And what equipment do we currently have, especially with this tariff culture that we'redealing with right now?
(25:15):
If the customer has bought new in the past, but we have late model, well maintainedequipment on the lot outside, should that be something that we're pushing to the customer
because tariff is not going to impact used equipment predominantly?
(25:38):
If anything, it's going to drive the price up.
Right.
Okay.
But
the customer doesn't have a tariff charge on used equipment.
So is that the type of value that that customer would like to pay?
(26:01):
It's not going to be the same answer for every customer.
is that something else to think of?
So we get a look at the turnover cycle for our customers.
Is there any way to look at turnover cycle for prospects?
(26:24):
How would you do that?
be quotations.
If we have quotations that long ago,
If we've been calling on that account and keeping records, we might have, you know, quotedwork, quoted uh equipment that didn't sell.
(26:47):
But that's the reason we have CRMs.
Which gets to the importance of data governance and collecting good data and not justbeing you know transactional with the data and just using it for the here and now and then
shutting it in a closet How would you use that call data getting to maybe tariffs or achanging?
(27:12):
Environment how would you use any of that historical call data plus whatever else isexternally streaming in to adjust call frequency?
Or would you?
I'm probably going to make a comment here that's not going to be comfortable to everyone.
(27:35):
But as I said, my normal approach is to put more calls in the large accounts, less callsin the small accounts.
So one question would be, how many pieces of equipment
(27:56):
does an account have?
Now you probably need to balance that between tractors and implements, but you know, ohhow many acres do they have?
How many tractors do they have?
How many implements do they have?
Where are you going to put your effort?
(28:18):
ah Because one guy has the potential to buy
One tractor a year, somebody else has the potential to buy 12 tractors a year.
Well, I definitely want to go with the amount of calls and the effort into that largeaccount.
(28:44):
So I want to look at it.
There's a strong relationship between the revenue volume and potential, the number ofpieces of equipment, and generally the number of acres.
Okay, so I've got a specific question on that because this conversation actually just cameup with a colleague of mine here at Tractor Zoom and then a dealer that we're working
(29:12):
with.
How many dealerships do you think have great data on their customers in terms of thecustomer's fleet and the number of acres?
I think the number is small.
I don't have any specific information on it, but I think unfortunately the amount ofdealers that have good information is limited.
(29:41):
Yeah.
Yep.
But doesn't make that data any less valuable.
In fact, it probably makes it more valuable because it's a rare commodity.
So George, my next question is one that I don't know if it makes me a complete hypocriteor it, you know, it stabs me a little that I love spreadsheets.
(30:02):
but I also understand that there there's problems with them.
And so how, you know, now that we're talking about collecting this data,
and using it and making decisions off of it.
How should dealers balance that potential love of spreadsheets with more of a systematicprocess or a platform?
(30:29):
My experience with dealerships in a variety of industries is pretty much the same of whatI saw when I worked in an ag dealership.
And that is salespeople have been allowed to do their own thing for so many years thatconverting them to a CRM takes time, challenge and commitment.
(30:58):
If the dealer principal is committed to doing it and the sales manager is committed todoing it, you've got to start showing salespeople that you're using the information in the
CRM.
Otherwise, they're going to do their own spreadsheet.
(31:21):
They're going to use their day timer.
They're going to use Outlook, whatever they've done in the past.
And each of them does their own thing.
the dealership is paying salespeople to go out and talk with accounts, to gather data sothat
(31:46):
we can do a better job of selling.
The more information we get into the CRM, the better our information and oh analytics canbe.
But in order to get to encourage and convince salespeople to do it, sales management,ownership, and anything else in the company has got to show salespeople that doing the
(32:19):
work in the CRM has value.
And that means I want to see a weekly meeting with what we did in our dealership.
We had a weekly Tuesday morning sales call and we had six branches.
(32:40):
had 18, 20 salespeople.
Everyone called in on the telephone.
did at this is pre COVID.
We didn't have video calls yet, but everyone called in on the telephone and sales managerwent through.
(33:02):
what was in the CRM, what the open quotes were, what the contact activity was withsalespeople.
But the whole point was to show salespeople that what they're putting into the CRM hasvalue and we're utilizing it.
(33:23):
If you don't demonstrate that to salespeople regularly, they're not going to put theeffort into
put it into the CRM.
Once you get a salesperson converted to doing that, all of a sudden they start to realizethe opportunity and the information they have.
(33:45):
And they start going back and saying, can I get a list of all the service work that's beendone on this account?
Because that'll start to tell them some things.
But you've got to get them converted
from my dad used something called Day Timer and he used it religiously.
(34:08):
He'd put appointments for next week, he'd put appointments for the end of the year in hisDay Timer and he'd keep track of it.
Well, CRM's just the same thing.
We're just doing it electronically.
He didn't have that back
(34:30):
1950.
Thank you everyone for joining us in this episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
In my conversations today with George, we talked a lot about sales leadership, salesmanagement and efficiency.
If you're not yet aware of how Tractor Zoom is helping equipment dealerships across theUnited States, go to tractorsoompro.com and you can learn a lot more there.
(34:54):
Now, this is also part of a much larger conversation I had with George.
In the next episode, we'll be talking about optimizing inventory management andensuring...
effective data utilization.
I hope to see you there.
Beyond the Hood, stories and strategies to fuel dealer growth.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
I'm your host, Andy Campbell, and our guest today is George Keen of Wise Wolf Consulting.
If you're a sales manager, sales leader within your equipment dealership, this podcast isfor you.
(00:28):
And this is part of a larger conversation that we had with George, but we've truncatedthis down to be about 35 minutes of the most focused topics on sales management and sales
leadership.
Specifically, I'm going to talk to George a lot about
sales manager strategy, account assignment, how do sales managers assign accounts frombalancing customer retention versus prospecting, and all the strategic decisions that go
(00:53):
into account coverage.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with George as much as I did having it.
Welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
I'm your host, Andy Campbell, and I have the distinct pleasure of being joined today byGeorge Keane with Wise Wolf.
consulting.
(01:13):
George, thanks for joining me.
Nice to be here.
Good.
Well, and George, I first learned about you with an article that you had uh published onfarm equipment.com.
And then I found out about your book.
And from a totally different source, somebody emailed me and said, Hey, have you everheard or talked to George?
And they included a link to some of your stuff.
(01:36):
And then we had set up this podcast and then you sent me your bio.
And so I'm going to read just bullet point off in this bio to set the stage for today's.
uh
So if anybody does not know George, so 10 years with the software DMS ah So dealermanagement system for those that might not know so customer support North American sales
(01:57):
15 years with curry management consultants So that's consulting in construction AGforklifts generators Transport refrigeration reefer trucks.
So there you're talking us Canada Europe Great Britain South America
And then on top of this, you facilitated over 20 best practice dealer groups.
So I imagine like these peer groups and then 10 years with a John Deere Ag dealer out inVirginia.
(02:23):
Five years now doing consulting with Wise Wolf.
George, you've got a fair amount to talk about.
Yeah, when you get to be this old you got lots to talk about.
That's fantastic because you know people often ask me who are your favorite podcast guestsand And I honestly can say it's always the next one just because the amount of information
(02:48):
that I learned What what got you started?
I mean with the DMS system like how did you actually get into this industry?
Uhhhh
working in uh computer software.
And one day I got a phone call from somebody for a new position and I went in for a sevenhour interview and they said, we'll call you back.
(03:19):
But that started 10 years with computer software for equipment dealers and
everything kind of flowed from there.
Well, I can say from working here at Tractor Zoom that data and information does tend tobe the bedrock.
(03:39):
And once you kind of understand that, I'll, you know, lot of, you know, understanding ofthe whole industry, uh, really spawns from that.
But, but talking about that, you know, and kind of giving everybody a preview of what ourconversation today is going to be about when George and I were going back and forth about
potential topics for today.
I mean, we're covering everything from sales, inventory management.
(04:01):
change management, absorption rates, rental, as well as we always get is some goodphilosophical life lessons.
Uh, so we're covering a gambit here, but considering all of the industry experience youhave and knowing that right now we're in early 2025, the economy, the ag economy,
especially is a little slower.
(04:23):
Let's start out with the juicy stuff and let's get into sales.
Uh, so
You know, especially here lately at TractorZoom, we spent a lot of time thinking aboutwhat makes a dealership sales team just really effective.
How can they, they best utilize their resources?
When you look at a lot of teams, how do they spend their times?
(04:44):
Whether it's customer calls or their focus on accounts, like what is the best use of theirtime?
My traditional approach has been account assignment, but I think you need to back up alittle bit on that question.
that is, what's the sales manager's strategy for handling the business?
(05:13):
Are they looking to penetrate the existing market?
Are they just looking to hold on to what they have?
That has a lot to do with where I think the balance is in how they assign accounts tosalespeople.
(05:34):
So are they doing 75 % customers, 25 % prospects?
Or are they doing 75 % prospects and 25 % customers?
What are they trying to do with this?
Once you know what the sales sales manager is doing, then we go to the question of what'sthe salesman going to do.
(06:04):
Salesperson.
But you know, I've got a sales manager years ago that told me he was hired right out ofcollege and he was given X number of counties and he went out and just did a bang up job.
Next year they cut his territory in half.
(06:27):
Being a young kid, he said, I'm not going to let them, you know, keep me down.
I'm going to show them.
So the second year with half territory, he did the same business.
Third year, they cut his territory in half.
He went out and did the same business again.
Wow.
(06:48):
What did that tell you about the sales manager and their perspective of their informationabout what was in those counties?
Sales manager didn't know the business.
So what's the sales manager, uh, information and do they know the accounts that are outthere prior to
(07:17):
Us using CRM's customer relationship in a management software.
Did the sales people know all the accounts that were there?
Did the sales manager know all the accounts that were there?
(07:40):
Probably not.
Well, I was going to say on that topic, and maybe you're getting to this.
So knowing everything that's out there and then splitting it up appropriately.
I mean, you had mentioned like the 25 75 split.
So 75 if you're working 75 % prospects, you're growing the business.
But even knowing how do you know what's out there?
And then how do you go about that account segmentation?
(08:03):
Breaking, you know, farmers or potential customers into high priority, low priority?
How do do that?
Certainly we expect the salespeople to bring information back.
But we need that information in a place the sales manager can look at it, organize it,decide what to do with it.
(08:27):
Do you want the salesperson calling on every one of those accounts?
Now, if that prospect has one small 25 horsepower tractor to take care of their garden, isthat some place that the salesperson should be going weekly?
(08:55):
Or should they be spending their time at a farm that has 14 tractors and a whole lot ofimplements?
Okay.
Where did the salespeople put their time?
As we've looked at the business over the years, and this particular uh discussion appliesto almost any industry, but it's
(09:24):
appropriate here also.
My experience has been 40 % of the potential revenue out there is maybe done by 1 % 2 % ofyour accounts.
You've got large producers in your area that bring you or your competition a lot ofbusiness.
(09:52):
Then you've got maybe
the next 30 % of business might be 10 to 12, 15 % of your accounts.
Well, notice here, at best, we've got 20 % of the accounts and they've done 70 % of yourbusiness.
(10:12):
As a sales manager, are you assigning those accounts to salespeople?
But in talking about those,
top accounts, I'm not saying customers, I'm saying accounts.
Because prospects are accounts and they can be just as big as your current customers.
(10:38):
Are your salespeople calling on the big prospects at the same frequency that they'recalling on the big customers?
Or are they spending their time on the 65 % of the customers and prospects that bring you10 % of your business?
(11:02):
Hey everybody, quick break from the show and then we're gonna get you right back to theconversation.
But I wanted to take a moment to let you know how TractorZoom is partnering with all ofour dealership partners to fuel their dealership growth.
We're doing that with TractorZoom Pro to give people better valuations, faster access toit, and the ability to manage their inventory using AI, using large data, even if the
(11:23):
dealership doesn't have the capacity to develop the AI and the large data themselves.
It's all there within TractorZoom Pro.
And also with Anvil Pro.
integrated business systems solution.
You can actually cut costs by integrating solutions, not paying for all these extraone-offs and keep people in the same solution so you're not constantly switching screens.
And then you could optimize your workflows, do a lot of things with automation thattechnology should be able to do right now.
(11:48):
So just two ways that TractorZoom is working with our dealer partners to really help themfuel their dealership growth.
Okay, you can check out some links in the show notes.
You can also go to TractorZoomPro.com to check all that stuff out.
but we'd love to at least show you all the different ways that we're helping ourdealership partners.
Okay, let's get back to the show.
Hope you're enjoying it.
How do you go then about, let's say if you're not sized, kind of like you had justsuggested with that stratified uh prioritization, if you're not broken down like that, how
(12:21):
do you think about assessing accounts in dealership?
you just straight geography?
Do you go off of previous past relationships?
How do you get to that point if you're not there?
Generally, I think we need to have a balance because I want the accounts to begeographically clustered for good use of a salesperson's time.
(12:49):
I don't want them driving 75 miles for a single account when everybody else is closearound them.
OK, so how do you cluster
the accounts, but then how do you look at getting the best coverage for the high volumeaccounts and not having a salesperson spend too much time or maybe even equal time on low
(13:24):
volume accounts.
If a salesperson has potential for
Like for illustration, let's say five calls a day.
He's going to do five, he or she is going to do five calls a day, five days a week.
(13:44):
So I've got 25 calls.
I'll even be generous and say maybe only 20 calls, but they do this 50 weeks a yearbecause they got two weeks of vacation.
So I've got a thousand calls potential for the year.
from that single salesperson out.
(14:06):
How frequently do I want that salesperson calling on the big accounts?
And how frequently do I want them calling on the one piece of equipment accounts?
What I call the D accounts.
Well, I probably want them monthly at least.
(14:31):
on my large accounts, maybe bi-monthly on my second level of accounts, B accounts, and myC accounts maybe quarterly.
Well, I would expect the same thing in allocating the call frequency as uh the number ofcalls.
(14:59):
So if I
If 40 % of my business is those large A accounts, then I want 40 % of my calls on the Aaccounts.
If I do those guys monthly, I could get about 30, 33 accounts in 400 calls with monthlycalls.
(15:23):
I've done the math.
Likewise, if I did
30 % of my calls, or 300, on my B accounts, and I'm gonna see them every other month, Ican get about 50 B accounts for that salesperson.
(15:45):
Now I'm gonna do quarterly calls for the C accounts, and I've only got 200 calls forthose.
So again, I've got about 50 accounts.
And I might have 100 calls left after that allocation.
And I'd probably use those for emergencies.
(16:08):
Somebody calls in, somebody emails, somebody goes to the website that we didn't have onour list, and I need to take care of it.
But if I add that together, I've got 133 accounts that salesperson can cover.
(16:28):
Now, if I look at three counties and we know how many accounts we have,
Do we have more than 133 accounts?
Because if we do, what's going to happen is we're either going to be weak in one of thosethree categories, or we're going to ignore a whole bunch of accounts that are in those
(16:56):
counties because we didn't have enough sales people to cover them.
So when you start to look at it, not by how many counties do I have and how
is the salesperson going to cover it.
But you look at how many calls the salesperson can do, all of a sudden, three countiesmight be too much.
(17:25):
Four counties might be fine.
You know, how many acres does each farmer have and how many county, how many farms arethere within the county?
Now I start looking at, can I get good coverage from a salesperson with these parameters?
(17:48):
And am I going to cover that county correctly?
or that group of accounts correctly.
I might need two salespeople for three counties.
In other places based on large farms, I might need one.
But in the past, we've looked at geography because we didn't stop and do the math todetermine what sort of coverage we wanted.
(18:22):
So it sounds like, mean, to run that kind of organization, you need, first of all, to keeptrack of what everybody's doing and then also give them a process.
So I imagine that's where CRM ah would really add value.
But then you're also laying out the strategy of here strategically is what you're after.
And then you're working back to figure out tactically how many salespeople, what kind ofcoverage you need.
(18:49):
And I don't think many salespeople have done that.
And frequently the sales managers are responding more to the manufacturer's insistence onaccount coverage because they want market share.
But they're not measuring it based on salesman's time.
(19:13):
They're not measuring it based on geography.
The manufacturer just wants share.
And to them, what that really means is that's keeping their production line busy.
That's why the manufacturers care about share.
(19:33):
It has nothing to do with the dealer's profitability or the salesman's effort.
Hmm, right.
And so we often find that there's a lot of uh there's a bit, you know a push and a pullthere to make both parties happy
(19:53):
And so that conversation and that strategic setup was a lot about, you know, sales effortand outbound sales effort.
But what about inbound?
And so inbound leads are fantastic, right?
Somebody's warm, they want to buy from you already, but it's not always clean cut.
(20:15):
So what would you say when you have either an email, a text, a call in coming in throughthe central hub?
ah What's your take on commission fairness?
But I mean who answered the phone whose County it was in who had the existing relationshipthat may have already brought that person in How do you manage that mess?
(20:40):
First question is what's the sales manager's strategy and how do they want to handle it?
I've seen some sales managers that would pass that unsolicited phone call off to anin-house salesperson to handle it initially.
(21:05):
And then once they've quantified that account,
Then they may choose to hand it off to a local salesperson or they may just handle thatsale in-house until they know more.
Other people are going to directly pass it off to a salesperson based on geography.
(21:31):
To me, the question still comes back down to, you know, dealership strategy.
What do they want to do?
It's not going to be one solution handles, you know, the situation for everybody.
Having that clear defined strategy articulated down into a process ahead of time oftenavoids a lot of those issues.
(21:58):
Now we had just talked about the importance of the CRM system and just your the processesand the management of executing the strategy which at the core basic gets down to data.
How is it structured?
How is it organized?
And you had plenty of years at a DMS company and then uh every other position after that,I'm sure you dealt with data and data utilization.
(22:28):
So how do you put that dealer data ship to work?
And maybe a more pointed question is what common data sets within dealerships do you thinkare overlooked, underutilized or potential gold mines?
think is the current
(22:52):
is so questionable what's going on.
I think we need to look at some of the data for salespeople and consider what's thepurchasing cycle for an account.
Do we have a farmer that buys every seven years or every 10 years?
(23:19):
Now, it may be different
cycles for tractors than it is for implements.
Okay, but what's the purchase cycle for an account?
And to do that, you got to go back in history.
(23:39):
You got to look at your data.
So you've got a dealership that's in the third generation.
They've been on a
computer software system for the last 50 years.
So let's go back to when we're only 25 years into the 21st century.
(24:02):
Uh, we go back to 75 and there were some computer software, 40 or 50 years, but let's lookback at all the invoices of what we've sold to that account.
during that last 40 or 50 years.
(24:23):
How many tractors did we sell?
What size, what model, et cetera?
What implements have we sold?
What's the replacement cycle for those accounts?
So I want to use the historic data of the account to prompt the salesperson on when theyneed to plan the next
(24:50):
tractor or implement sale.
Likewise, based on the history, does the customer buy new or do they buy used?
And what equipment do we currently have, especially with this tariff culture that we'redealing with right now?
(25:15):
If the customer has bought new in the past, but we have late model, well maintainedequipment on the lot outside, should that be something that we're pushing to the customer
because tariff is not going to impact used equipment predominantly?
(25:38):
If anything, it's going to drive the price up.
Right.
Okay.
But
the customer doesn't have a tariff charge on used equipment.
So is that the type of value that that customer would like to pay?
(26:01):
It's not going to be the same answer for every customer.
is that something else to think of?
So we get a look at the turnover cycle for our customers.
Is there any way to look at turnover cycle for prospects?
(26:24):
How would you do that?
be quotations.
If we have quotations that long ago,
If we've been calling on that account and keeping records, we might have, you know, quotedwork, quoted uh equipment that didn't sell.
(26:47):
But that's the reason we have CRMs.
Which gets to the importance of data governance and collecting good data and not justbeing you know transactional with the data and just using it for the here and now and then
shutting it in a closet How would you use that call data getting to maybe tariffs or achanging?
(27:12):
Environment how would you use any of that historical call data plus whatever else isexternally streaming in to adjust call frequency?
Or would you?
I'm probably going to make a comment here that's not going to be comfortable to everyone.
(27:35):
But as I said, my normal approach is to put more calls in the large accounts, less callsin the small accounts.
So one question would be, how many pieces of equipment
(27:56):
does an account have?
Now you probably need to balance that between tractors and implements, but you know, ohhow many acres do they have?
How many tractors do they have?
How many implements do they have?
Where are you going to put your effort?
(28:18):
ah Because one guy has the potential to buy
One tractor a year, somebody else has the potential to buy 12 tractors a year.
Well, I definitely want to go with the amount of calls and the effort into that largeaccount.
(28:44):
So I want to look at it.
There's a strong relationship between the revenue volume and potential, the number ofpieces of equipment, and generally the number of acres.
Okay, so I've got a specific question on that because this conversation actually just cameup with a colleague of mine here at Tractor Zoom and then a dealer that we're working
(29:12):
with.
How many dealerships do you think have great data on their customers in terms of thecustomer's fleet and the number of acres?
I think the number is small.
I don't have any specific information on it, but I think unfortunately the amount ofdealers that have good information is limited.
(29:41):
Yeah.
Yep.
But doesn't make that data any less valuable.
In fact, it probably makes it more valuable because it's a rare commodity.
So George, my next question is one that I don't know if it makes me a complete hypocriteor it, you know, it stabs me a little that I love spreadsheets.
(30:02):
but I also understand that there there's problems with them.
And so how, you know, now that we're talking about collecting this data,
and using it and making decisions off of it.
How should dealers balance that potential love of spreadsheets with more of a systematicprocess or a platform?
(30:29):
My experience with dealerships in a variety of industries is pretty much the same of whatI saw when I worked in an ag dealership.
And that is salespeople have been allowed to do their own thing for so many years thatconverting them to a CRM takes time, challenge and commitment.
(30:58):
If the dealer principal is committed to doing it and the sales manager is committed todoing it, you've got to start showing salespeople that you're using the information in the
CRM.
Otherwise, they're going to do their own spreadsheet.
(31:21):
They're going to use their day timer.
They're going to use Outlook, whatever they've done in the past.
And each of them does their own thing.
the dealership is paying salespeople to go out and talk with accounts, to gather data sothat
(31:46):
we can do a better job of selling.
The more information we get into the CRM, the better our information and oh analytics canbe.
But in order to get to encourage and convince salespeople to do it, sales management,ownership, and anything else in the company has got to show salespeople that doing the
(32:19):
work in the CRM has value.
And that means I want to see a weekly meeting with what we did in our dealership.
We had a weekly Tuesday morning sales call and we had six branches.
(32:40):
had 18, 20 salespeople.
Everyone called in on the telephone.
did at this is pre COVID.
We didn't have video calls yet, but everyone called in on the telephone and sales managerwent through.
(33:02):
what was in the CRM, what the open quotes were, what the contact activity was withsalespeople.
But the whole point was to show salespeople that what they're putting into the CRM hasvalue and we're utilizing it.
(33:23):
If you don't demonstrate that to salespeople regularly, they're not going to put theeffort into
put it into the CRM.
Once you get a salesperson converted to doing that, all of a sudden they start to realizethe opportunity and the information they have.
(33:45):
And they start going back and saying, can I get a list of all the service work that's beendone on this account?
Because that'll start to tell them some things.
But you've got to get them converted
from my dad used something called Day Timer and he used it religiously.
(34:08):
He'd put appointments for next week, he'd put appointments for the end of the year in hisDay Timer and he'd keep track of it.
Well, CRM's just the same thing.
We're just doing it electronically.
He didn't have that back
(34:30):
1950.
Thank you everyone for joining us in this episode of Beyond the Hood with Tractor Zoom.
In my conversations today with George, we talked a lot about sales leadership, salesmanagement and efficiency.
If you're not yet aware of how Tractor Zoom is helping equipment dealerships across theUnited States, go to tractorsoompro.com and you can learn a lot more there.
(34:54):
Now, this is also part of a much larger conversation I had with George.
In the next episode, we'll be talking about optimizing inventory management andensuring...
effective data utilization.
I hope to see you there.
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