Understanding your customer is key in any business, and the equipment business is no different. Technology, like AI, is changing how information is found and how technology is used. Everything from machine learning, like John Deere's See & Spray, to spot spray weeds in the field to ChatGPT giving human-like responses to questions asked. What used to take hours or days to find answers has been narrowed to seconds and minutes. The way the end users look at equipment is changing as well. Upgrade kits are now part of the conversation. They are taking a once old platform and making it new again. Understanding what the customer will do next requires data and lots of it. As we head into 2025 and beyond, how technology affects customers' buying patterns will make a huge impact. What they buy today will not be what they buy tomorrow, and how they buy today will not be how they buy tomorrow. As customers navigate new challenges in the heavy equipment industry, they will have needs that don't exist today. The only way a dealership will understand what is happening with their customer is to know and understand the data they are getting from the customer. A dealership needs to invest more heavily in the tools required to mine customer data and understand what the data is telling them, or else they will have a hard time being competitive through the rest of the decade. Dealerships must look at the next 5-10 years as a fundamental change in how they do business and their services. Unless a dealership makes these soon, it will be too little too late. Understand your customer's long-term generational plan, the changing needs, and, without a doubt, what your customer and industry data is telling you. A change in the equipment business is coming, and data will drive it.
Casey Seymour Moving Iron LLC
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