The Challenge
New Holland is a global brand of agricultural machinery produced by CNH Industrial; one of the world’s largest capital goods companies which sells agricultural and construction equipment. The New Holland Agriculture product range includes: tractors, combine harvesters, balers, haying tools, seeding equipment, utility and other vehicles.
Sales have proven to be onerous in Australia due to the droughts and changing climate conditions, but more importantly due to the wide competition growing in this market. We’ve come a long way from the good old days of farming, where the only brand farmers had to worry about was the one they stamped on their horse’s rear end. Tractors have not only taken over the role of workhorses, today farming is extremely sophisticated with top class operations, and with every passing year, there are more brands and models available on the market.
Technology, comfort and price are key defining factors to buying machinery. However, all brands have great products due to technology having come a long way. Yes, there are lots of technology differences, but to keep it simple: farmers can choose between ‘green’ (John Deere), ‘red’ (Case IH) or ‘blue’ (New Holland) machinery. Amongst many other brands, and traditionally, farmers are loyal to the brands they’ve purchased in the past. This makes it challenging for the New Holland dealer sales staff to persuade customers to shift their preference.
In this environment, it is key for New Holland to support, add value and provide great offers, not only to the farmers but to the dealers, who are the ones recommending ‘blue’ (New Holland) machinery over ‘green’ (John Deere) and ‘red’ (Case IH). Dealers can influence the purchase and move tractors, combine units or balers in order to maintain and increase sales levels or grow market share in such contended conditions.
A farmer spends on average $200,000 or more on a new machine, therefore, dealers need a good reason to push such big sales items. New Holland needed to reward dealership sales staff and offer a share of the value their sales bring to the business – to provide a real benefit to them. The challenge was that to offer such a reward New Holland needed to be achieving their sales in order to sustain this incentive model.