lines of lawn and garden equipment and sold around 30 lawn mowers a year. “I thought we were doing alright,” remem- bers Eric Schnelle. “We added two more lines shortly after the expansion and found we were selling more than 600 lawn mowers a year, corporate wide.”
Farmers have known S&H for years. But with the region becoming more rural consumer-oriented, it had to become more visible to a whole new group.
tomers that much. We’ve always sold compact tractors. But the light really came on for me during our manager’s meeting in the Winter of 2010, when we looked at our numbers for the past year. It was intriguing that we sold more dollars worth of lawn mowers that year than we did round balers. At one time, we were New Holland’s big- gest round baler dealer.
“From that point on, there was no doubt that the rural lifestyler was a critical segment of our business and it was one that needed to be managed in order to grow.”
Before S&H picked up the Mountain Grove and Joplin stores it had a couple
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Buying on Service As the typical Rogersville clientele have become rural consumers and pro- fessional landscapers, store manager Mike Wiles says, “The rural consumer usually has already done the research, and we don’t even have to push the product. Once, when we took on a brand that was also sold at a nearby chain store, we’d have people stop in and ask, ‘What’s your price?’ We have the same pricing as the box stores. Then they’ll want to know if we do the service here, which we do. Many of them understand the value of buying from a servicing dealer, and that’s often what makes the sale.”
For S&H, service can mean a lot of things. “We sold a brand new tractor and a new baler to a fellow who had inherited the family farm but had anoth- er business in town. It was 100 degrees out when he called the service manager and said, ‘My baler’s not putting any twine on the bale.’”
The Rogersville service manager tried to work through the problem on the phone, but the caller admitted he wouldn’t know what he was looking at anyway. So, while the caller waited it out in the tractor’s air-conditioned cab, a technician was dispatched.
“He quickly discovered the baler had run out of string,” says Wiles. “I think things like this are going to hap- pen more and more. People may love to farm, but they don’t have a clue. We can’t ignore them, though. They have money to spend on good equipment.”
Benchmarking Turns One of Eric Schnelle’s goals for the
Rogersville store is to work harder at benchmarking its used and new equip- ment turns. “We’ve always promoted that we have a lot of parts on the shelf, and that’s difficult to do when you’re trying to turn parts quickly,” says Eric
Schnelle. “Through the years, Dad’s done an excellent job of having a lot of parts on the shelf. In Lockwood, people will drive two hours and pass a lot of other dealerships to get parts from us. They know we will have it on the shelf, whether it’s a new mower part or an older Ford tractor part. That’s been a huge sales driver. But now that we’ve grown to this size, we know we need to continue that but we also need to oper- ate smarter. Increasing our parts turns has been a big push lately.”
This year, S&H controller Linda Fix and Eric Schnelle developed a budget based on each store’s average growth in a 3-year period. They have a month- ly target for new and used equipment sales as well as parts and service sales. “Having the budget in place is encouraging us to pay more attention to turns,” says Wiles. “Before, I never looked at benchmarks. In sales, you want to get every deal. We’re starting to watch those numbers and it leads to a little friendly in-store competition.” Having a concrete goal is helping everyone stay focused on moving equip- ment and parts, says Fix. “Everybody’s buying into it because they’re talking amongst themselves — ‘Did you see we hit 100% of our goal this month?’ So it’s more tangible, it’s getting out to all the people to see.
“There are certain benchmarks out there that we look at and sometimes looking at our product mix we just have to say this might work for a traditional New Holland dealership, but it’s not for us,” says Fix. “As long as our numbers fall within an acceptable range, then that’s what works for us. Our banker has been very good at understanding our business. When we meet with him I explain why we’re in certain ranges, so they’ve been very accommodating when our business looks like it’s a little off from a typical dealership. Our bank- er looks more at our trends, rather then all of the financial ratios you would look at for a traditional farm equipment dealership.”
Diverse Product Range For S&H, the challenge in comparing its benchmarks with other dealerships
10 RURAL LIFESTYLE DEALER DEALERSHIP OF THE YEAR SPECIAL REPORT JUNE 2013
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