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Ryan Molitor, the former director of customer experience at Raven Industries, was recently named CNH Industrial’s new director of precision technology for North America.

In today’s episode, Molitor talks about his new role and how CNH is taking a new approach to precision technology to better support its dealers.

Watch the video replay of this podcast.

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Full Transcript

Michaela Paukner:

Welcome to the Precision Farming Dealer podcast. I'm Michaela Paukner, Technology Editor at Precision Farming Dealer. In today's episode, Ryan Molitor, CNH Industrials new Director of Precision Technology for North America and former Director of Customer Experience at Raven Industries, talks with me about how CNH is taking a new approach to precision technology to better support its dealers.

Ryan Molitor:

So my name is Ryan Molitor and I joined the CNHI team here just a few weeks ago as the Director of Precision Technology for North America.

Michaela Paukner:

Congratulations on the new position.

Ryan Molitor:

Thank you.

Michaela Paukner:

Could you tell us a little bit about what your role now entails?

Ryan Molitor:

Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different functions on the team. We are responsible for the support and training of precision technology with CNHI dealer network in North America. We also have a team that their goal and what they focus on is working with dealers, that could be customers as well, on just overall understanding of Precision Technology specific to that market, or geography or dealer, or even down to the customer level, and which technologies are a good fit for their operation. That team can be looked at as almost like a precision technology consultant that a dealer could lean on to say, Hey, I've got a customer that is interested in this type of an application, what would be the best technologies that we have for them? They'll work alongside the dealers as well as Case IH and New Holland territory sales people to really help drive more technology into the geography and channel.

Michaela Paukner:

Is this a new position that CNHI has created?

Ryan Molitor:

It's a new approach to Precision Technology. The position itself has existed, but we're changing a lot of the roles, responsibility, and structure underneath the Precision Technology Team.

Michaela Paukner:

What is your vision for how you and your team will work with the dealers and how they'll go about getting in touch with you?

Ryan Molitor:

A lot of the same ways that they do today, right? They can call. They can send email. We'll be implementing the ability to text messaging and things like that. As far as how they get ahold of us, there's not going to be a lot that'll change. What'll change is our approach to service will be very proactive, in that we'll be working with the Dealers in the off season to really help them understand, maybe we had a new software update that came out and added several features. Can we work with you and the team to make sure that they understand what those are, what the benefits are. Really how to optimize and get the most out of the technology, or maybe we've got a new product that's coming out. The dealers can expect a much more proactive approach to how we provide support and training and precision technology adoption.

The other thing is today, you have a team that really covers all of North America. On the support side, we're actually splitting into five support pods. There'll be a much more embedded field to that support team from the dealers that are in that region. They'll understand not just the technology, but that specific geography that the technology is being used in as well as the dealership themselves and the people within that dealership on those technologies. They can expect a more proactive approach. They can also expect this team to feel like they're almost embedded within that dealership and a really tight partnership with our dealers.

Michaela Paukner:

Great. I'm sure that'll be welcomed by a lot of your dealers to have that kind of support behind them.

Ryan Molitor:

Yes. We've talked to several dealers about this at a high level. We're just kicking it off now. I would say there is definitely a lot of excitement around this new approach. It's been very well received.

Michaela Paukner:

That was something I wanted to ask about how you guys went about deciding to restructure this role and take this new approach with dealers?

Ryan Molitor:

What we decided to do was look at how things are being done today, but we really started with a clean whiteboard and said, maybe there are some elements of how Raven does things and how CNHI does things that we could incorporate. If we're starting over, how would we do it? This is really where we landed on. We wanted a tighter connection with the dealers. We want them to really know that we understand their business and which technologies are going to actually provide value to them and their customers. We started with a clean slate and built it up from the ground. We didn't bring in any legacy practices or policies or anything like that. It was a really fun project to work on and CNHI has been very supportive of it.

Michaela Paukner:

Can you talk about your previous roles with Raven and how that's informing what you're doing now?

Ryan Molitor:

Yeah. Prior to joining the CNHI team, I was at Raven for just over 17 years and had a similar role. Director of Customer Experience leading a lot of the support and training and Precision Ag Specialist functions within Raven. With that, Raven had a lot of Case IH and New Holland dealers that we were familiar with and worked with. There's a lot of familiarities that I have with the role, but also some of the channel partners that we're going to be working with.

Michaela Paukner:

When will this all start taking effect for dealers?

Ryan Molitor:

It'll start this fall. Dealers are going to start to feel it pretty immediately. We do have a lot of staffing that we're adding. It'll take us a while to build the team up, but we have existing team members that are going to be day one, starting with this. The dealers are going to start to feel it this fall. Our goal is by planting season of next year, we're fully up and running.

Michaela Paukner:

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What are your priorities with this role?

Ryan Molitor:

Priority one for me is getting the support team built up and casting that vision to that team so that there's really good alignment on what we want to accomplish. Then immediately start partnering with our dealer partners on the approach. What's working well, what's not working well. You know, along this journey, we'll have to make some changes along the way and ideas that we thought were good might not turn out and we'll pivot when we need to. My priority is really forming a very tight partnership with the dealers so that they can help us build it to what it needs. That its truly adding value to them and to their customers.

Michaela Paukner:

What do you think that you'll need from dealers to help everybody form this tight partnership?

Ryan Molitor:

I think what we are going to need from the dealers is going to be just good, open dialogue. There's things that I know have been very well received, but along the way, we might stub our toe. Hopefully we've got a good enough relationship and partnership with those dealers so that we can have a good, open dialogue about what's working well and what's not working well. To me, that's going to be a really critical piece of this being successful.

Michaela Paukner:

Are there any particular products that you guys are going to focus on right out of the gate in terms of supporting dealers and customers?

Ryan Molitor:

Nothing specific as far as products. We're really looking at the entire Precision portfolio. One of the things that the dealers should be able to feel is they've got a partner and a team that they can count on. Regardless of the question, we may not have all of the answers and quite frankly, we aren't going to have all the answers, but they can count on us to find out what those answers are and get back to them in a timely manner. Really streamlining the experience that they're going to have from a Precision technology support and being able to count on us to follow back up with them and get them an answer in a timely manner.

Michaela Paukner:

Will the dealers, I know you mentioned there will be different regions now. Will they all have one point of contact within their region?

Ryan Molitor:

Within that region they'll have a central point of contact. There's obviously going to be a team supporting that. Each specific region will have a hub, if you will, that they can lean on for support on the Precision Technology. We're starting it in North America. I don't know the global rollout plan, but as we get this up and going, definitely the other regions around the globe are going to keep a close eye on what we're doing here in North America. There may be all of it or elements of it that we could replicate in other regions around the world.

Michaela Paukner:

What advantages do you think that CNHI dealership network has over your competition?

Ryan Molitor:

I think CNH obviously they make outstanding products. Their channel has just an incredible reach, not just in North America, but globally. The channel itself is extremely strong. The thing that is hard to measure, but that I've already seen in the channel and I do have experience with it myself is they're extremely passionate about their customers. They want to make sure that if you're a Case IH or a New Holland dealer, they form really tight partnership with their growers in their region. What they want to do is make sure that they're providing value to that grower and not just pushing the latest and greatest thing onto them. They want to make sure that the grower understands the technology and really understands how to optimize it and get the most out of that technology.

I've got experience with it, but it really sticks out to me that the passion that the Case IH and New Holland dealers have for their customers. That's hard to measure, but that's also hard to infuse into a channel. That's kind of an intangible, I would say that the Case IH and New Holland dealers have. It's contagious, it's fun to be around them and understand what makes them tick. I'm very excited about it.

Michaela Paukner:

It's hard to measure trust, but the impact that it has on customers and the business is hard to replace and hard to beat in any manner.

Ryan Molitor:

Absolutely.

Michaela Paukner:

Was there anything else you wanted to add that I haven't asked you?

Ryan Molitor:

I would just add that there's a tremendous amount of excitement and energy around this, both within the dealers that we've already talked to about it. Just seeing CHNI as a whole, there's a lot of excitement around this initiative and this new approach to doing things. I think the dealers are going to feel the impact here really quickly, which is good. They'll realize the benefits of this approach pretty immediate here.

Michaela Paukner:

Thanks to Ryan Molitor for joining me for today's conversation. The full transcript and video of this episode are available at precisionfarmingdealer.com/podcasts. You'll find our full library of past episodes there too. From all of us here at Precision Farming Dealer, I'm Michaela Paukner. Thanks for listening.