For Andy Flint, his career in the equipment industry is a far cry from his first job: running a country club restaurant at 16. During his years as a chef, he catered for the governor of Wisconsin and the princess of Thailand in a cutthroat, fast-paced environment. He says it taught him soft skills that he now uses as the general manager of 2-store Wisconsin John Deere dealership Proven Power.

“Learning to work with people was probably the biggest thing,” he says. “Even if you’re 16 years old, there was zero tolerance for mistakes, and you were expected to perform. It was definitely stressful. But anything after that is easy. Not exactly ‘easy,’ but it’s easier.”

Proven Power General Manager Andy Flint says that over the winter, the dealership sold $100,000 worth of parts through their holiday parts special. Photo: Ben Thorpe

Fast forward to today, and April 2023 will mark Flint’s 13th year at Proven Power. He first interviewed with Rural Lifestyle Dealer back in 2018 when he was the service manager for the dealership’s Oconomowoc, Wis., store, and he spoke about working with the Veteran Administration to bring veterans in as technicians. Since then, Flint has seen Proven Power’s other unique practices and programs grow and elevate its aftermarket business.

Extra Cash from Holiday Parts Special

One of the dealership’s recent aftermarket successes was an employee-led winter parts sales program born out of a weekly team meeting discussion. Flint says Proven Power targeted its top customers at the end of 2022 with texts advertising a 15% off coupon code for parts and ultimately netted $100,000 out of the process. 

“In December, we all got together for a team meeting that we have every Monday and Tuesday at each store respectively, and one of the parts guys said, ‘We’re behind in revenue year-over-year,’ which we expected we would be,” says Flint. “And he came up with the holiday 2022 special that we ran. I think we had 150 orders using that code. And it was a half-cocked scheme, but the team put it together. It was their idea, and they ran with it. Just this morning, he said to me that we’re actually almost even with last year.”

In addition to texting and calling, the dealership ran a Facebook ad for the parts program that Flint says brought in about 15% of the sales the holiday parts special saw. 

Looking at some of the dealership’s recent Facebook posts, Flint remarks on the different interactions they get from their customers and how they’ve learned through trial and error.

“We’ve had some [posts] that failed, too,” he says. “We had some zero turns that were getting long in the tooth, and we figured, ‘Let’s launch those things out there and boost it.’ Well, we did that in December, and nobody’s buying zero turns in December. But we’re using those failures to figure out what we should have done. We did a similar post for the baseline X350, a little lawn tractor with a snowblower on it. And we had a guy show up less than an hour after we posted it and said, ‘I saw this special. I want it.’”

Looking at 3 of Proven Power’s January promoted Facebook posts, the dealership’s holiday sales promotion (middle) saw the most traffic with 355 link clicks from $251.99 of promotion. Another post (top) advertising zero-turn mowers got $329.99 worth of promotion but generated one quarter of the reach. Photo: Proven Power

He adds the dealership has learned to select the audience they promote their posts to vs. letting Facebook choose the audience, such as focusing on homeowners or newlyweds. 

Flint’s philosophy is to not wait for the sales to come to the dealerships, particularly in the current dynamic economy. 

“There’s still plenty to go out there and get, it’s just not going to be as easy,” Flint says. “We’re going to have to work twice as hard to get what we got the last couple years, but there’s still the opportunity to be successful, no question. You don’t want to sit and wait, or you might be waiting a while.”

Growing Winter Storage Program

Back in 2016, Rural Lifestyle Dealer sat down with Proven Power President Bill Brooks to discuss the dealership’s winter storage program as a way to build off-season revenue. Today, Flint says the program has grown significantly, from only a handful of machines in its first season in 1997 (when the dealership first opened) to nearly 900 in 2022.

“We make around $350-$400 per machine depending on what program they do,” he says. “If it’s a new machine, the price is less, because they don’t need to have all the maintenance done. We’ve got a basic program that only does things like lubricate the machine, change the oil and filter and sharpen the blades on it so it’s ready to go. 

“In the premium package they do everything, including a full inspection. Because a machine that’s got 100 hours on it should get all the work done as far as maintenance is concerned, and then any other per-service-interval maintenance that needs to be done as well.

A quick breakdown of the numbers reveals just how much the program contributes to the dealership’s bottom line. At an average price of $400 per machine, and a conservative estimate of 800 machines brought in for last year’s program, Flint estimates the program brought around $320,000 in over the winter. For reference, Flint estimates the dealership saw $14-15 million in gross revenue in 2022.

The program helps Proven Power in a couple ways, not the least of which is avoiding a springtime rush of work.

“The beautiful thing about the winter storage program is it helps take the burden off the shop during spring and gets the machines out of the customer’s garage so they have more room for their own equipment,” he says. “The third benefit is it keeps our technicians busy year round. A lot of smaller places might not have the option to do that, just because they don’t have enough work and have to send their folks home during the winter. We don’t have to worry about that if we have a year like we’ve got now, where there wasn’t any snow until mid-January. We’ve got options to keep everyone busy.”

Flint says that while most customers bring their equipment in over the course of October, some customers were still calling as of mid-January to use the program.

Demand has risen so much for the program over the years that the dealership has had to get creative with storage options at its 2 locations. At the Waukesha store, they’ve begun to utilize more vertical space as horizontal space becomes limited.

“We’ve got bigger warehouses at our Oconomowoc store, but we had to use some of our vertical options here in Waukesha. We actually built all these crates,” Flint says. “Another thing we try to hang our hat on is that we do a lot of fabricating work, as opposed to having to buy more storage space. We try to use what we’ve got, and we copied what the new units come in and just built our own that are a little more flexible. If we can get those larger machines up in the air, it makes a lot of sense.”

Mentorship in the Service Department

Proven Power has 10 technicians, with 6 at the Waukesha store: 2 devoted to ag equipment and 4 devoted to rural lifestyle machines. But Andy says they’re still in the market for one more small engine tech if they can find one. Currently, one of their techs is a part-timer coming out of high school.

“It’s cool to get some of the younger generation in here and train them up,” he says. “He is actually a relative of one of our employees. We’ve had a lot of luck with that, hiring friends or family of employees. If someone recommends an employee to us — friend, family or acquaintance — and they stay for a year, the person who recommended them gets a $1,000. Obviously, hiring is a challenge for a lot of folks, and we’re very blessed that we’ve stayed pretty much fully staffed.”

One of the pillars of the Waukesha shop is Joe Vogt, the shop foreman and an ag equipment technician so experienced that Flint says John Deere calls him with questions.

Shop Foreman Joe Vogt (bottom) at work in Proven Power’s Waukesha, Wis., location’s shop with John “JD” Murphy (top). General Manager Andy Flint says Vogt has been integral to the dealership’s customer loyalty. Photo: Ben Thorpe

“He takes extremely good care of his customers, much along the line of the Macy’s Santa in the movie Miracle on 34th Street. He’s built a loyal following because he will recommend a course of action that is in the best interest of the customer, even if we don’t get a sale from it,” says Flint. “We can service many types of machines, even if we don’t sell them. Yet, every season, before the machine would be needed, the shop’s full of equipment for off season repairs. And that’s because of him. He’s been doing this since I think his mid-teens. He is now moving into semi-retirement but fortunately his mannerisms have rubbed off on the rest of the crew.” 

Since Vogt is now in his 60s and approaching retirement, the dealership has him mentoring someone Flint calls the “new Joe”: John “JD” Murphy. He, like Vogt, has a true love for the ag equipment world that Flint says goes a long way with customers.

“Joe has a protégé who’s really come into his own,” he says. “JD is basically Joe Jr. He totally loves the lifestyle. If he gets to go home and operate a tractor, he loves it. It’s nice to have people who actually enjoy the field, not just the work as well. The customers appreciate that too. Most shops don’t let customers talk to technicians, because of the ‘If they’re not billing time, they’re not making money’ mentality. 

“But Joe’s got a customer over there as we speak who he’s talking with. We obviously don’t just let anyone talk to him, but there’s a long line of customers who trust him 100%. They will do what he recommends, and he doesn’t ever abuse that trust. So it’s cool to see that relationship. He built that. We had no part in it. He brought that reputation when we bought Burlington Farm Implement, and he was one of the employees there.”

One benefit of pairing Vogt with a younger, up-and-coming technician, says Flint, is that JD has been trained on more tech-heavy equipment than Joe was, allowing him to fill knowledge gaps.

“JD came up through his training when all of the new technologies were coming along,” says Flint. “Joe got a lot of that equipment from the 80s to the 2000s, and now JD is actually the master on the new equipment. In the past, JD would always have to defer to Joe for his wisdom. Now Joe’s like, ‘I don’t know about how this works, JD, what are you thinking?’ And JD knows the answer. 

“It’s the ultimate compliment when you see the student becoming the master. Our intention is to have JD take over Joe’s role and then give him a trainee to bring up. We’ve got a couple people in mind and some of them are coming out of school.”

Setting & Reaching 2023 Goals

Flint has multiple documents outlining the dealership’s department goals for 2023, including some fairly simple ones.

“Each department needs to have 30 Google reviews by the end of the year. And that should actually be easy to do,” he says. “That’s something I don’t think our competitors are quite as up to speed on. If you do some shopping around and look at their Google reviews and their volume, not everyone does it. But for instance, if someone looks for a Cub Cadet dealer near me, we pop up, and we’re not a Cub cadet dealer. We’re at the top because of our Google presence.”

The dealership is also looking to reduce non-billable hours in 2023 and account for all the unbilled time it can’t reduce. One of the dealership’s goals for 2023 it to “Make waste our enemy.”

“It’s great if you can account for all those hours. However, if there’s a lot of time unbilled, we want to reduce that if we can,” Flint says. “Some of it is training, and you have to make time for training. But there’s some of that you can control. You can reduce down-times of your trucks by making sure they’re maintained.

“Service has a focus on checklist completion on our work orders, making sure that everything gets the inspection it’s supposed to have and that the checklists are being filled out neatly, so we can read them. That also helps us follow up with the customer down the road.”

In the parts department, Proven Power is looking at reducing its inventory of slow-moving parts and improving its first pass fill rate.

“We are using a lot of suggested ordering. We don’t just order what sold and replenish that,” he says. “We know we need to have baler parts in before first cutting. You can’t bring them in during hay season, that doesn’t do you any good. You need to have this stuff in there, because we’re also trying to get our first pass fill rate up. We’re trying to get it closer to 85%.”