2020 Spring Farm Outlook

Page 34 2020 Logan County Farm Outlook LINCOLN DAILY NEWS March 19, 2020 Coers jumped back in, “I would definitely say the people that we deal with day-to-day, business-to-business, would be more women. But when we go out and interview farmers, there’s a lot more men there. There’s a couple of couples, but it’s mostly men.” “We do a lot of different things here,” at CIA, Coers said. “I would say anytime you see Central Illinois Ag, like the vision of it or anything like that, comes from our office.” She quipped, “Now I can say the ‘Marketing Department’ because there’s two of us.” “When Dawn came on board, we just work together very well. We do a 40-page magazine twice a year where we go out and interview farmers, take photos, and put it all together.” Irwin chimed in, “We also do articles to highlight the products we sell.” The magazines the trio create include testimonials from the customers and rising technology, “Ag technology is huge right now,” said Coers. “We just had a new tractor, for instance, come out and we did a big article on that. We just did a campaign on that tractor so we had worked with our salesmen to gather, who do they think would be most interested, and then we touched base with those farmers. So a lot of that touch-point comes from us. “We handle emails. Anything from our parts department has sales going on to our salesmen, our equipment, and if we’ve got financing offers, we are the ones pushing those messages out. Social media, graphics, inventory, all those things are us,” Coers said. Believe it or not, social media is huge with farmers. “We are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,” said Coers, “Ag Twitter is huge. It is so big right now. “At Christmas, we do a campaign called “The 13 days of Christmas.” We put up a Thunder Creek trailer, and within three hours someone was in inquiring about the rebate on it. It’s crazy,” Coers said. “We put a lot of our inventory online. We put all of our new stuff online. If you think of it like a car dealership and you are searching for a car, that’s how we see this. You might be searching for a tractor,” She added, “Every aspect of the tractor, from the radio on the inside, to the remotes on the outside, is included. It’s new and used equipment that we do.” “It’s really just a lot of touching the customer and the salesman, and being that middle point,” Coers noted, “We are always making a positive image for CIA.” Without hesitation, Coers credits the management, “I’ve worked in different places and nobody even compares to Michael and Steve Schmidt. They are family through and through. Their leadership is like they want us to succeed. Sometimes Michael will throw me a project and he just puts it in our hands and he will let us figure it out. He wants us to move forward and to help ourselves.” And when needed, “He works with us. That helps a ton.” Something newer, which Zinser started from the ground up, is the CIA Ebay Store and E-commerce online. Irwin said, “Most of our Continue 4