Question for all of the former dealership owners.

What kind of customer was your best "bread and butter" customer? The farmer that came in and bought new tractors/equipment every few years. Or the guys that never bought new ,always used. Or perhaps the fellas that kind of fit in the middle, some new ,some used but no real brand loyalty. And was there more money in parts, than new equipment sales?

Bruce, I knew of a guy that would have the dealer come out and change heads on his combine. But I don't think he had the dealer help him with his girl friend and he was married. Maybe the dealer would have given him a discount if he had helped him with his girl friend.

The main bread and butter customer has changed drastically in the last 10-15 years.

When I was most active selling it was the fellow that was loyal to the dealership. Meaning we did his shop work and had first chance at his new/used equipment purchases. This was usually new every now and then but used more regularly. Then most of their part business. We usually give a volume discount on larger parts orders.

Now day the bread and butter customer is any who buys the late model high dollar trade-in equipment. The new stuff is easy to sell but the first trade stuff is much harder to move.

Bruce I work in the parts department for 37 years at my own dealership with my brother the salesman in St. Bernardin, Ontario. And contrary to my brother I had one vision of who my best customer was , very simple anyone that walk to my counter was my bread and butter whether I sold him 1.00 or 50.00 simply because I made it a point of pleasing him to the point that even though this guy had nothing to do with farm equipment or construction equipment since we had both franchise with Case he would be back for prestone for his car or you name it and I can tell you now retired that I feel I did very well whereas my brother sometime got involve in some rant with some customer because they would only buy chain from their john deere corn planter and so on. My biggest challenge was was Case did the merging with IH wow most Ih customer that lived even only 4 or 5 miles from my place and even worse those that were 25 miles away from my dealership man they were more than upset and that created a lot of stress for me since most of them would walk at the counter and ask for teeth for rake and my first question what model and the answer was it is red and then other customers would stand up in line waiting before I could show my customer the 6 or 7 different rake from the fiche because Case never supplied us with manual and so the customer had a hard time to see in the fiche to identify the machine since they all look close to the same thing. But I enjoyed every minute of it although there were some tuff time and guess what I am still learning today maybe a lot more by reading all these people on YT on the models I use sdto look for parts. sorry for the ong post. jc

Jean Claude ,I understand your frustration with the CaseIH merger. Many hard feelings from the IH guys around here.
I used to see the ads in the Ontario Farmer news paper, from Marlaeu's Garage, and I am guessing that was your dealership.
The fellow that comes to my farm to make cheese for me comes from St Bernardin, His name is Remi Levak, Herd of him by chance. He also farms, but I think he buys the green colour.

Interesting question. Sitting here thinking about this, and coming up with a small book. At least way too much to type!
Would you want to e-mail me, and then we could talk?

Hi, Remember in 1984-IH was 400 million-(negative) net worth. They were "spenders" Chuck

From a customer's point of view you'd be the dealer I'd go to for sure.In my case I have New Holland hay equipment used to be several dealers around I could buy parts from.I never bought new equipment from any of them or anyone else always bought used from private sale or auctions.A couple of the dealerships made it obvious that I was considered a
'2nd class' customer because I only came in for parts.The one dealership would give me great service
the owner actually knew my name when I came in etc.
So that's where I always went for parts just a little bit of good customer service can go a long ways.

A tractor purchase is an immediate profit from the tractor mark-up , but the parts replacement aspect shows , older tractors need replacement parts all through their usefull lives.. Parts ain't cheap...Flip a coin....

Different answer for different dealers that is for sure. The ag industry has a figure say if you sell a million dollars worth of new equipment you should sell X number of parts. John Deer and Ih both had these numbers years ago. When we started selling KUBOTAs we would look at these figures. Bottom line is Kubota dealers would starve to death trying to make a living on parts. Now in the early days my friends Ih dealers would say it was because our KUBOTA users did not use their tractors so we we would not sell as many parts. There was some truth to that for years but as the KUBOTA got larger and population got older parts sales increased to roughly 14% of NEW TRACTOR volume where other brands are higher. I always looked at it that ever customer needed to be treated the same BUT sometimes that is just not possible. One of our customers is the third larges sod producer in the US. Runs 28 Kubota units all purchased from our dealership, now I would be a fool to tell you when they break down they get service over some one with a law mower that is not going to be used for the next few days. Just part of a dealership trying to balance the customer service part of the equation. I will say this over my 30 years what the customer wants or demands sure has changed. The worst customer in the world is a HAY customer never seen one yet that did not have to have it TODAY.

jc, that was a shotgun weddin for sure ,, lot of animosity between owners ,,almost racist in our area lol , lucky us , Jacobi sales adopted case with open arms and united us against the real enemy , lol,, the green one .. just funnin , 28 F degrees this am here, whats your temp there?

jm. The ratio of new parts to new whole goods sales would be way off if you just looked at brand of equipment that offered limited lines of equipment.

Your Kubota line has just started to branch out into multiple lines other than mainly tractors/compacts. Over time the parts business will increase. People keep implements much longer than tractors.

We had this issue with many short line equipment brands. You have to make the money on the up front deal because the parts sales will not be enough in later years.

Br3uce I sure know Remi Levac I went to school with him. There were 4 of his brother that were on farm 2 miles from my dealership you are referring to Marleau Garage. His brothers were all IH people so it became an easier task to convince them of switching to Case when Case merge with IH but all the Case equipment we sold them , they always had a rant about them but I had to do more convincingand one of his brother' s sons is still with Case and still owns the firs 730 we sold him the other of his brother all retired from the farm an now are in poultry. For me once Case was bought off by Fiat nothing was ever the same I did not feel I belong to a brand because tractors did not look like tractors anymore and I could not help nobody anymore mechanically speaking since everything was becoming electronic and expensive. I just came back the other day from the local exhibit of farm machinery wow just big monster that will be costly and downtime to fix . I drop by the Case dealership around my place once in a while and last summer a big STS450 was in the shop for 3 months waiting on a bearing in the transmission which they had to tear pretty near half the tractor apart. I guess I am getting too old when you talk like I do. When you see Remi say hello for me and wish you all YT a nice weekend. jc marleau

(quoted from post at 18:18:54 03/06/15) What kind of customer was your best "bread and butter" customer? The farmer that came in and bought new tractors/equipment every few years. Or the guys that never bought new ,always used. Or perhaps the fellas that kind of fit in the middle, some new ,some used but no real brand loyalty. And was there more money in parts, than new equipment sales?

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That's an interesting question. I would think parts are the bread and butter because of the fixed markup. That doesn't mean everyone pays the same price but high volume customers pay X about of markup as compared to the guy with a show tractor who buys a set of plug wires every so often. But there is still a certain amount of markup. I have a friend who is the former manager of a FORD NH dealership who swears up and down that at times they about broke even on sales of equipment after the sales persons commission. He says they did that to get really good customers to buy new or to get someone to switch brands. With the newer farmers and equipment they also got a lot of the tractors and combines in for repairs and yearly services.

Rick

We have Land Pride and a Tennessee brand called Taylor Way . Woods guy came buy and the boys wanted to take it on in one of our stores. I cannot see any long term parts loyalty with woods. They are in ever Co-Op , and any place they can dump a load. We took it but I still try to sell Land Pride cutters and implement first. Some folks say at a new car dealership the back (service) will pay the dealerships overhead. If a guy can do that in a farm implement business I would like to meet him. Parts profit yes, service just have to give away too much to satisfy the customer. Work on the pto or rear of tractor and next week it quits charging and they will swear it was something the shop did.. LOL

We had a mix as I recall our business, but the local power company was the largest with a sale of 29 backhoes, even the town here bought 2, so industrial and construction was far better than ag, though ford tractor sales were good, a diversification of all the products sold, made up for weaker areas. Parts sales seemed to be steady and as I recall, there were always tractors in the shop, older series, for repair, service etc. We had an expansive parts room that spanned 2 stories, lot of stock. We also had a lot full of tractors, and the lot was 400' foot long.

I know the mark up on the backhoes was good, as was any industrial model sales, we did take in trades, a buddy of mine owns one our dealership sold new and was traded up for something in the thousand series.

I even believe, our long time friend and farmer would demo once in awhile, but he stayed with JD for the most part, however, if he could find a better deal and increase profits, either brand would go down the road for sure, he looked brand loyal, but the bottom line was a significant factor, mind you the product still had to perform well and parts/service support was key. He stayed with JD til the end, but it was not all brand loyalty, the dealer here was an expensive ordeal at times, and it seemed to cover their needs, and without other choices nearby, he did spend quite a bit with them at the end too.

I recall service being a big thing with us, we had some great mechanics back then, and I remember going out on calls, hauling with the tilt bed etc.

(quoted from post at 20:29:56 03/06/15) Bruce I work in the parts department for 37 years at my own dealership with my brother the salesman in St. Bernardin, Ontario.

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I was there a few times years ago... I live near Martintown... small world. I miss the experience some of the good parts guys had with the old stuff I use. Different world now I guess