We’d rather lead change than respond to it. So we take it upon ourselves to find the trends and insights that can shape the industry – and our clients’ businesses – for the better.

By Dan Kirkpatrick
Director, Equipment Practice Group

Having a successful trade show appearance requires plenty of prep work for equipment dealers.

When an equipment dealer has carefully identified a trade show or outdoor event that enables them to reach the greatest number of customers, the hard work really begins: preparing for the show.

Luckily, there are plenty of resources on the web to help you with that. Many of these sites encourage exhibitors to begin preparing a year – that’s right, a year – in advance.

Unfortunately — particularly if you’re new to exhibiting — you might not have a year. That’s OK, too, if you’re prepared to put in the hours, and probably the expense, it will take to make your exhibit and your participation a success.

Work Your Resources
Don’t be shy about asking for help. As an equipment dealer, one caution you deliver to every customer is that reading the operator’s manual is key to successful ownership. Similarly, it’s just as important for you to seek out guidance in exhibiting.

If you use an advertising agency, work with them. Agencies frequently specialize in event management, and even if your firm does not, it likely can refer you to an agency that can.

You also can find many resources on the Internet. Here are a few suggestions:

• www.trade-show-advisor.com
• www.tradeshowmarketing.com
• www.tradeshowpromotionshelp.com
• http://www.skyline.com/Trade-Show-Tips
• www.exhibitsusa.com

Plan Your Exhibit
A booth design firm can help you lay out your exhibit, whether it is a small, 10 x 10-foot informational booth or a large plot with space for plenty of equipment.

If your exhibit is outdoors, consider setting up a tent for covered displays and private meeting areas. Think about padding for the ground and providing chairs and refreshments for customers and staff alike.

Remember that signs may require artwork, designing, proofing and printing, so the process takes longer than you might expect. You don’t want to set up your exhibit only to discover misspellings in your signage. Don’t wait until the last minute to think about your promotional materials.

Work with your OEMs to get sales sheets on the products you’ll feature. Many companies liven up their exhibits with games, promotions and giveaways. At the 2009 Farm Progress show, for example, one equipment manufacturer collected competitors’ caps from visitors in a glass container in exchange for its cap. The promotion sent plenty of growers off in new red ball caps and left a growing, multicolored pile of discarded competitors’ caps in the glass container as an entertaining display.

Organize Your Staff
Trade shows — particularly those targeting outdoor markets — can be physically draining. Your booth may be exposed to the elements, which will take a toll, particularly when you’re forced to remain in “meet-andgreet” mode.

Booth staff should be energetic, outgoing and, most importantly, well-versed in your messaging about all your products. Multi-day shows require more staffing than single-day events. To maintain a fresher booth staff, you may want to rotate people into the booth in shifts.

Make sure your staff conveys that energy to customers by smiling and greeting everyone warmly. Remember that different audiences relate to different salespeople. It is wise to vary booth staff by age, gender and ethnicity when possible to give customers an opportunity to speak to someone with whom they identify.

Practice Makes Perfect
The point of a show is to give you face time with customers. That means you and your staff need to be more prepared than ever to deliver concise and consistent messages about your company and your company’s brand.

Everyone in your booth represents a touch point for your brand. Before every trade show, make sure everyone who works that show will be an effective representative of the brand standards on which your company is based.

You’ll also need to lock down the message you want to deliver to ensure that a consistent experience is delivered to every customer and prospect that enters your booth. Decide which products, promotions and promotional items you will feature in your booth. Then decide who will be the “experts” on each product so that staffers know how to direct customer questions.

Finally, prepare an “elevator speech” for everyone that covers the basics about the company and its booth. This speech would highlight:

• The company
• New products
• Sale items
• Promotions

Don’t Forget the Media
Foot traffic isn’t the only audience that you can reach at these events- Make the media part of your public relations strategy. If you have a new product or announcement, alert the media that you’ll hold a press conference at your booth or the trade show’s media tent.

After that, develop a news release to distribute at the show. If it’s for a new product, your OEM or your agency — if you have one —can help you.

What’s Your Goal?
You should have a goal with a trade or outdoor show exhibit, be it a sales total or lead-generation number. Be realistic when setting this goal. Establish it by keeping in mind the costs of show, your overall annual marketing budget and the intangible benefit you might get in the community for supporting a local show.

The decision to exhibit at an outdoor show or a trade show is like buying a new quad for the first time. It’s scary. It’s exciting. And it’s somewhat overwhelming. It’s a big decision, not one to be made lightly or without research. But it’s one that can pay big rewards in the long run with proper research and planning.

By Dan Kirkpatrick
Associate Director of Public Relations

When you think of brands or branding, you probably think about the Cokes, Dells and Harleys of the world. But branding isn’t just for corporate giants. In fact, the brand values you embrace as a dealer and the brand experience you create can go a long way in determining your success in the rural lifestyle market.

If you’re serious about pursuing rural lifestyle customers, going through the process of establishing a brand for your store and business can create a key advantage. First, it helps differentiate your store from others. Second, it creates an expectation among customers and prospects of what they’ll experience in their interactions with your store. And third, it directs and defines your business by creating a brand identity that can bring consistency to the various touchpoints with your customers – from advertising to your Web presents to the total in-store experience.

A Different Customer
As you’re already aware, the rural lifestyle customer is very different from your business-to-business type farm customer. For instance:

• Most rural lifestylers have never shopped for, or purchased, farm equipment. Their knowledge base and ability to comparison-shop and define their exact equipment needs is limited.
• Rural lifestyle customers value the advice and expertise you can offer.
• Purchasing equipment is a means to an end – enhancing their rural lifestyle experience.
• The integrity and professionalism of the dealer is critical to rural lifestyle customers. Unrestricted by geography, they will shop until they find a dealer (or Big Box home center) where they feel confident in spending their money.
• Most are value-oriented, not price-oriented. Since major purchases are “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences for them, they will invest in quality and value-added products.
• Most important, rural lifestyle customers must first “buy” your dealership before they will financially invest in your products.

For rural lifestyle customers, the emphasis is more on the buying and ownership experience and less on the iron itself. This is where branding your operation can give you an important edge in the minds of these more retail-oriented buyers.

Brand Values:  What do you stand for?
One of the critical first steps in branding your dealership is identifying the core values that will serve as your brand’s foundation. These brand values play an important role in defining for your employees and teammates how your business is run and how customers are treated. Externally, the values you embrace help shape your brand identity – how customers perceive your store and what differentiates your business from the competition.

When identifying brand values, honest introspection is very important. For instance, if you believe outstanding customer service is one of your core values, you must honestly evaluate whether you’re truly delivering this level of service – from your rural lifestylers’ perspective. Are your business hours aligned with their shopping times? Do you attend to their needs promptly and professionally in both phone and face-to-face interactions? If the answers to these questions are anything but a resounding YES, you shouldn’t count outstanding customer service as a brand value.

‘Living the Brand’
There’s more involved in launching a brand for your operation than simply identifying brand values. In fact, there are several steps in the process of creating a brand platform or roadmap. The brand strategy you ultimately adopt will set the direction for the tactics you employ – advertising and promotional materials, direct mail and so on – to deliver consistent messaging that will reinforce your brand promise to your customer audience.

This brings us to one of the most important, though frequently overlooked, aspects of brand development and management – the idea of “living the brand.” The brand you invest in creating is only as strong as its weakest link, and all too often that weakest link is employees. In simple terms, the idea behind “living the brand” is to engage your employees so they clearly understand and embrace the brand values of your business. Once they do, they can ultimately serve as ambassadors or champions for your brand.

If the brand promise you create for your rural lifestyle customers is framed around expertise and exceptional customer service, a single phone call or store visit that doesn’t deliver that knowledge or professionalism your customer expects can undermine that promise.

Developing internal brand champions that “live the brand” starts by involving your staff in the early stages of the brand development process. It continues with consistent reinforcement of the brand values that define your operation. It’s also important to recognize and reward employees who consistently deliver on your operation’s brand promise. If you build brand behaviors into performance and bonus plans, for instance, it will encourage the types of actions and behaviors among your staff that reinforce – and more important, deliver – your brand promise.

The investment you make in launching your brand will help differentiate you from your competition and bring rural lifestyle customers to your store. Providing them with the brand experience you’ve promised will go a long way in determining whether or not they – and the friends they talk to – become satisfied customers for life.

Branding:  Recommended Reading
If you’re interested in delving further into branding opportunities for your dealership, here are just a couple of titles worth a read:

United We Brand, by Mike Moser – This book offers a hands-on action plan for building a cohesive brand strategy from the ground up. Drawing on two decades of experience creating brand identities for companies, Moser provides a proven template for transforming disparate, “fuzzy” brand information into a concrete guidepost for making day-to-day branding decisions.

Living the Brand, by Nicholas Ind – A company’s workforce is its most valuable asset. It is employees who translate an organization’s strategy into reality, interact with customers and determine the brand. This book demonstrates how a participatory approach can enhance employee commitment, improve service standards and focus effort to deliver business goals.

By Colleen Church McDowall
Vice President, Director of Public Relations

Understanding what makes your rural lifestyler customers tick will lead you to an up-tick in equipment and attachment sales.

By Dan Kirkpatrick
Associate Director of Public Relations

While they aren't in the market for Class VIII combines or 500-hp 4WD tractors, those 5- to 10-acre homesteads dotting the rural landscape with greater frequency these days represent a tremendous opportunity for dealers willing to re-think the way they market their stores, products and services.

Your dealership can be positioned to capture its own slice of the expanding hobby farm and rural-lifestyle pie if you’re willing to invest the energy and effort to:

• Better understand rural lifestyle customers and the key differences that set them apart from commercial farmers.
• Identify rural lifestyle prospects you can covert into customers.
• Reach out to these prospects and customers to build lasting, profitable relationships.

Inside the Head of the Rural Lifestyler
Obviously, there are significant differences between a 2,000-acre corn and soybean grower and a hobby farmer. So, your approach in cultivating a relationship with that rural lifestyler also needs to be much different.

For instance, hobby farmers view themselves as consumers, not farmers. While professional farmers invest in equipment to improve the efficiency, productivity and profitability of their operations, the equipment purchased by this segment is truly a lifestyle decision. The buying and ownership experience is of utmost importance to these individuals.
As consumers, rural lifestylers are most likely to be drawn to dealers that appear to value their business. This is where the layout of your dealership’s lot and store design play such a critical role. Combines, 4WD tractors and large row-crop tractors literally and figuratively dwarf consumer-type products such as lawn and garden tractors, compact tractors, ATVs and utility vehicles. Moving these smaller machines to the front – and displaying as many as possible – conveys to rural lifestyle customers that you’re serious about the consumer market.

Many rural lifestyle customers will be first-time equipment owners who likely don’t know the difference between a power takeoff and a three-point hitch. A dealership that can effectively ease their anxieties about equipment selection and ownership is likely to earn a customer for life. And these rural lifestylers are much more likely than farm customers to pay full retail for your expertise
Realize too that the value equation is different for rural lifestylers than for farmers. While growers place a greater emphasis on the bottom line – price, value and return on investment – rural lifestyle customers want a positive ownership experience that comes from knowing they can rely on you to deliver the whole package, from product to training to service and after-sale support. In many instances, rural lifestyle buyers may have a particular brand in mind prior to a purchase, but more often than not, the tipping point will be the sense of assurance they get from a dealer who they believe will be with them every step of the way.

Identifying New Prospects
While an attractive store and a lot full of consumer-type products are important, you need more to lure new potential rural lifestyle customers to your dealership.

Several new magazines targeting the rural lifestyle segment have appeared on the scene over the past few years. Publications such as Living the Country Life and Rural Life offer circulation lists that can be a valuable resource for helping identify leads in your market area. You can contact these publishers to rent a list of qualified names for specific area or zip code for a nominal investment – usually in the ballpark of $100 for 1,000 names. Equine organizations and publications, such as The American Quarter Horse Journal, can also serve as a valuable resource for developing a targeted database of rural lifestyle customers.
You may also want to consider developing relationships with local or regional agencies that specialize in the rural real estate market. United Country, for instance, supports nearly 650 franchisees across 44 states. Partnering with a local firm can be in valuable in helping you identify new rural lifestyle customers moving into your market area.

Another partnering opportunity for your dealership exists with feed stores and non-competitive farm supply outlets. You may want to consider joint promotions – field days, open houses – that help both operations enhance their presence and expand their reach within your area’s rural lifestyle customer base.

Building Profitable Relationships
Once you’ve identified new potential rural lifestyle customers, you need to start the process of reaching out to these potential buyers to reinforce how serious you are about earning and retaining their business.
As previously mentioned, this audience of mostly first-time equipment buyers places a premium on the expertise you provide. If you don’t already have one on staff, consider hiring a sales rep who specializes in the rural lifestyle segment. Introduce your “country lifestyle specialist” to your targeted database of customers and prospects through a postcard mailer, e-mail blast, and on your dealership’s website. Use these promotional opportunities to offer a value-added service such as a free equipment-needs assessment and consultation.

When talking equipment with a hobby farmer or rural lifestyle customer, focus less on a specific product’s features and benefits and more on the chores and tasks the buyer wants to accomplish. More often than not, the top priority for rural lifestyle customers is finding the right tools to help them get their jobs done quickly and easily.
There’s also tremendous value in displaying equipment – compact tractors, garden tractors and utility vehicles – with a wide range of attachments and accessories. A buyer in the market for a compact tractor equipped with a front-end loader, for example, may come to the quick realization that he or she could also benefit from bundling that purchase with a posthole digger, tiller and rotary mower.

After the sale, pay attention to all the little things that – added together – contribute to a great overall ownership experience. Deliver the product and provide hands-on operational training. Follow-up with a hand-written thank you card. Call your customer once a quarter to make sure the product is meeting his or her expectations.
Whether it’s product sales or aftermarket service, never lose sight of the importance of being easy to do business with. Most rural lifestyle customers are professionals who work 8-to-5 jobs. Are your store hours designed more for your convenience, or for your customer base?

If the rural lifestyle segment is truly important to your business, you’ll probably want to move to expanded hours at least a couple of nights during the week and on Saturday. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you could lose these buyers to another dealer or a big boy outlet down the road.
When developing your marketing plans for 2008, take a close look at opportunities that allow you to keep your name in front of customers and prospects, and that showcase your dealership’s capabilities. These could include anything from e-newsletters to strategic local sponsorships to a rural lifestyle open house with educational sessions on equipment selection and maintenance.

Finally, remember that your most effective form of promotion is the positive word-of-mouth a satisfied customer delivers on your dealership’s behalf. Pay special attention to every rural lifestyle customer that walks through your door, and word will quickly spread that yours is a store that understands the market.