Traditionally, agriculture equipment dealers are a place to buy agriculture equipment. Pattison Agriculture, the John Deere dealership in Yorkton, wants to do other things for producers in the region, and one of their ventures is education, hosting the 4R Nutrient Application customer education day is part of that focus.
Shane Moore, Integrated Solutions Manager for Pattison Agriculture in Saskatchewan, explains that they wanted to take a greater role in education in order to help customers with their farms. Admitting that this is not the traditional role of an equipment dealer, Moore says they wanted to have a way to get customers connected with fertilizer people and have an educational day because of the customer’s role in their business.
“Our customers have to be successful. Our goal out of this is for them to have success, and for them to have success they have to have that education on what’s new and what’s coming. That’s where we’re coming from with this.”
While it might be unexpected for an equipment dealer to take on an education role, Moore explains that this is connected to the traditional role of a dealership on a farm.
“As a company, we do a lot of customer training. Traditional customer training is equipment. Our customer comes in, he buys a tractor, we teach him what all the buttons are, where the key is, how to check the oil, how to service it, etc. One of the things we realized is we have new customers all the time and we need to do this in a better way.”
As a result, the new dealership has a teaching theatre built in, which can seat around 85 people.
Plans are in the works for many customer education events in the future, including seeding clinics, harvest clinics, as well as teaching seminars for both customers and staff.
“This is one of many that we will do.”
As this is a new initiative for the dealership, Moore says that their focus now is finding out what people want to know and the kind of day they would like to feature.
“Right now, what we need to do is to be listening. The response to this day was because of customer requests, customers wanted this kind of day.”
