When it comes time to buy equipment, the quality of the local dealer, or lack of one, has typically played a big part in many producers’ decisions. A good local dealer is a big advantage for farmers and helps drive sales. It’s a factor of which major brands are well aware.
Since its inception in 1990, Agco has grown largely through corporate acquisitions, which left it with a patchwork assortment of pre-existing dealerships. That collection of retailers needed to gradually be organized, consolidated and better structured as the company grew into a more identifiable and prominent brand. So over the years executives at Agco have often spoken about their work in developing a more cohesive, professional dealership network.
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In late January the company announced its newest dealership initiative: FarmerCore, which aims to further strengthen its improved retailer network and enhance service delivery to farmers.
“FarmerCore is a big change and a big challenge for us at Agco,” says John Rahiya, director of customer-connected distribution. “At Agco we’re aiming at being the most farmer-focused, farmer-centric OEM (original equipment manufacturer) in the market. This is how we’re going to bring that to the market.”
Rahiya says the FarmerCore program’s aim is to “revolutionize the farmer experience” by focusing on improving three core elements: the physical dealer locations, mobile on-farm services and digital services that will let farmers deal more directly with the brand.
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Agco intends to roll out the FarmerCore program through 2024 in North and South America. It will help dealers identify how to tailor their businesses to provide the best service to customers in the right way.
That means, among other things, recognizing geographically where the most and least demand for dealer support is coming from within a specific territory. That may involve relying on enhanced mobile sales and service for some areas.
“Smart network coverage is, how do we look at an area of responsibility for our dealers and identify the most dense areas where they should be putting the most brick and mortar, the most infrastructure, because that’s where their customers mostly are?” Rahiya says. “As you get into less dense areas, let’s not just go and put the same type of brick-and-mortar store. How do we maximize the efficiency of our dealers?
“On the mobile side, now that we have a strong network with the right-sized format, smaller stores in areas that demand it and larger stores in areas that demand that — how do we get more service directly to the farmer customers via mobile service?
“As a dealer thinks about growing and expanding coverage in their areas, we’re doing it with these alternative-format stores, versus just plugging and playing the traditional outlet store they might use everywhere in their territory.”
As the company and its dealers begin adopting the FarmerCore concept, Agco will share its customer data models to help dealers and put recommendations together based on that alternative coverage model.
“We can go and sit with our dealers and say this is what the science is telling us from the data set,” he says. “This is where the science combines with the art of knowing the dealer’s territory, as most dealers do. We lay it out as clearly as possible. We work tougher to figure out what implementation looks like.”
The goal is to strengthen and standardize the service Agco dealers offer farmers, who may see more physical outlets and/or enhanced mobile service offerings.
Farmers will also get more opportunities to engage directly with Agco — even arranging purchases and financing directly with the brand.
“The digital tools will still be facilitating transactions through the dealers,” Rahiya says. “There are no plans now to bypass that. Through the digital tools, we’re trying to make it as easy as possible for the customer to get the information they need. If it’s through the buying process and they want to do a 100 per cent purchase and financing online, digital signatures, et cetera, we’re working toward enabling that. If they want to do it 100 per cent with a dealer through a salesperson, we’ll enable that too.
“Even if Agco plays a larger role, the transaction will still be through a dealer. It’s just making the channel of engagement with a customer, Agco and dealer all come together as seamless as possible.”
