Visiting Dealers

I had a reputation because I spent more time out of the office than in the office. I would take off and go out and get the territory managers and we’d go visit dealers. But I would hear about this when I’d go out for a golf game, particularly with the John Deere executives. He would said “Sam, what in Heaven’s name were you doing with my dealer in North Dakota?”

I’d say “How’d you know about that?”

“My dealer called and said the President of Deere has never been in North Dakota. Now the President of Oliver is calling on me. Where the heck are you people?”

He was laughing about it but I got a lot out of that, before the dark times, by just visiting the competing dealer’s lots. I could see their display area and what items they thought they should feature. I could also see the things that were competitive to ours and I had a better feel of things than I would have had by just reading some bulletins.

Dealer Advisory Council Meetings

I also did something that no one else had would even think of doing, I got the magazines to sit in with us during the Dealer Advisory Council meetings. So here were the dealers and the branch people and all of my executive board, so we’re all in the same room. So he’s sitting there getting the feel of the fact that Oliver is listening. We gave them answers right on the spot and we got more interchange from talking face-to-face and they were all top dealers and long time dealers too. So we all looked forward to that time. And Deere said “How can you afford to let the dealers tell you what you should be doing?” I said “We can’t afford NOT to.” They said “Well we wouldn’t do that.” I told them that was the difference between how they operated and how we operated. So I always felt like we had something extra going for us that nobody else had. And it didn’t cost anything other than a couple days and we got to soak up what the people that were out there selling wanted.

Check out each issue of Oliver Heritage for more facts from the interviews with Sam White!