Join Us for the Fall Convention in Oklahoma City
Register for the 2021 Marketing & Distribution Convention! Sign up before Aug. 16 and save $200. See the schedule here.
by Kristi Ruggles
Our reunion in Kansas City, as sweet as it was, was incomplete.
Our Canadian members could not cross the border without quarantining. Dozens of member companies still had travel restrictions. Others simply were reluctant to elevate their risk of infection.
Since then, we’ve turned a corner in the pandemic and the industry. Business is booming, and with the boom comes questions around supply chain, labor, product pricing, and more. Your answers await.
It is time to reconnect in numbers that we knew prior to 2020. We have much to learn from one another during this extraordinary moment in the industry. This convention, which is Nov. 2 to 4 at the Omni Oklahoma City, offers you:
- A peek into the future.
- Strategies for finding employees, keeping employees, and reducing your dependence on labor.
- Opportunities to learn from your peers.
- Tips for supporting the the marketing work of your distributors and dealers.
- Networking events to meet with marketers and distributors and find new channels for sales.
- Expert insights on global trade, operational excellence, how to prevent product liability claims, and more.
Watch Shortliner for continual convention coverage, and get to know your fall convention speakers here.
Anticipating the Future
Jack Uldrich is an author and a futurist who helps businesses gain the crucial foresight they need to create a successful future. His work is based on the principles of unlearning—or breaking free from obsolete knowledge and assumptions as a strategy to survive and thrive in an era of unparalleled change.
He is a former naval intelligence officer and Defense Department official. His most recent book is Foresight 20/20: A Futurist Explores the Trends Transforming Tomorrow. His forthcoming book is Business as Unusual: How to Future-Proof Yourself Against Tomorrow’s Transformational Trends, Today.
He speaks about technology, change management and leadership. Uldrich appears frequently in major media outlets and contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired Magazine and BusinessWeek.
Finding Solutions to the Labor Problem
Many of you met Gene Marks in Little Rock in 2017. He is a writer, speaker and small business owner who focuses on issues relevant to small businesses. (Find a story from Marks on tax incentives for building your labor pool in this issue.)
He will discuss the labor pinch in the context of politics and the economy. He also will offer strategies he has seen his consulting clients use to find and keep employees and offer tips on lower-cost technologies that can reduce the need for labor.
A former columnist for both the New York Times and Washington Post, Marks’s work appears weekly in The Guardian, The Hill, Forbes, and Entrepreneur.
Understand What Distributors Need, Improve Sales
Get inside the minds of equipment dealers and distributors during this session focused on what marketers need to successfully sell your products.
If you joined us in Kansas City, you likely heard Bird and Baier discuss findings of a survey they conducted on farmers’ buying beliefs and behaviors. A follow-up survey in the “Â鶹app’s Buying Journey” series is in progress now to explore how dealers are marketing to farmers and how manufacturers can best support dealers, wholesalers, and independent representatives in their marketing and e-commerce efforts.
In Oklahoma City, John Anderson will join the stage to discuss survey results. Anderson is president of Fastline Marketing Group, an agricultural marketing agency with a 43-year history in the industry and a member company since 1995.
Bird is CEO of Spindustry, a digital agency focused on e-commerce and enterprise websites and a member company since last year. He wrote an article highlighting the findings of the earlier survey in this issue.
Baier is an audience and marketing strategist and researcher with Audience Audit. She is one of the most sought-after attitudinal segmentation researchers in the U.S.
Operational Excellence in an Industry in Flux
Steve Wilson will continue his series on operational excellence. You should have met Wilson at Supply Summit 2020 in Albuquerque for the first of his five-part series, which is designed to take members further in exploring the vast topic of operational excellence.
In the absence of in-person get-togethers in 2020, we launched the series with a webinar in March, when Wilson spoke about the state of readiness. Find that webinar at .
In Oklahoma City, Wilson will focus on operational excellence in the current context of unstable inventories, supply chain disruptions, price unpredictability, and too few workers.
He is an operational excellence consultant, coach and trainer who has worked with hundreds of companies, including Deere, Union Pacific, and Heinz. He will speak at a breakout session that runs concurrently with a session on trade.
Tips for Mastering Trade
Heather Ranck specializes in the farm equipment export business. She is based in Fargo, N.D., with the U.S. Commercial Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
She brings expertise on resources available to shortline manufacturers seeking to enter the trade market as well as tips for researching export markets and optimizing your website to globalize your sales. She will speak during a breakout session that runs concurrently with the session on operational excellence.
Preventing Product Liability Claims
Attorney DJ Warden, who is with Association partner Nilan Johnson Lewis, will discuss risk management, specifically field management strategies and design, manufacturing, and compliance practices.
Warden specializes in defending product liability cases and commercial litigation. He also was scheduled to be part of Supply Summit 2020.
This breakout session will run concurrently with a yet-to-be-decided discussion. Amid such instability, the Association wants to remain nimble in case a topic surfaces that is especially timely. Stay tuned for details.
Spouse/Guest Tour
Spouses and guests will tour Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, which honors the victims, survivors, first responders, and all who were affected by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.
The group will break for lunch then board a Bricktown Water Taxi, which offers a tour of the city floating down the Bricktown Canal.