General Sessions

Steve Goreham: I’d Like to Keep My Pickup Truck and Diesel Tractor:
Goreham is a speaker, an author, and he speaks and writes about energy, industry, agriculture, the environment, sustainable development, economic trends, climate change, and corporate environmental policy. During his general opening session, he will discuss hydrocarbon and renewable energy, climate, net zero, electric vehicles, and technologies, with implications for the agricultural equipment industry.

Richard Hadden: Recruiting and Retention in the New World of Work:
Hadden is a Certified Speaking Professional who focuses on connecting people to profit. He is co-author of the popular Contented Cows leadership book series. His presentation will teach you what organizations must do to attract, retain, and engage a willing and enthusiastic workforce in 2024 and beyond. We’ll explore the keys to landing the best people on your team in this worker’s market.

Brandon Dempsey: Scaling Sales with Less: In this session, Dempsey will delve into innovative strategies employed by leading manufacturers in the current sales landscape. Discover how to scale your sales operations efficiently using automation, AI, and scalable systems, all while maintaining a personalized and relationship-driven approach. Learn how to achieve exceptional levels of personability, foster high-touch interactions, drive substantial growth, and enhance profitability, even with constrained resources. Join us to unlock the secrets of successful expansion in manufacturing with fewer people and greater impact.

Breakout Sessions

Derek Wagoner: Business Transitions: Wagoner, is a CPA from Pinion and will lead a session focused on transitions in management as well as ownership, giving tricks to help better plan and manage the transition. He specializes in consulting businesses in the Construction, Food and beverage, and manufacturing markets including optimizing entity structuring, financial planning and analysis, as well as traditional tax and audit services.

Rick Rosenhagen: Sales and Marketing — A Unified Objective: Rosenhagen, Association Member, will discuss the importance of an intentional focus from both the OEM and the supplier perspectives to leverage the enhancements and value propositions of their products and their parts and to unify their sales and marketing messages and approaches. A sneak peak of his Fall Session will be provided which will dig deeper into the sales and channel marketing strategies including communications, branding, etc.

Trent Johnson: Terms and Conditions of Purchase/Sale: Johnson of Foley and Lardner, LLP will return to educate members on best practices. He counsels manufacturers on issues involving channel structure, drafting key contractual provisions, state and federal antitrust law compliance, contract administration and enforcement, e-commerce issues, distributor and dealer performance, product pricing, discount and rebate programs, product purchase disputes, etc.

Dan Zastava & Mike Johnston: Insurance Trends in Building Valuation & Cyber: Zastava from Sentry leads a corporate underwriting and product development team at Sentry, where his team develops, implements and monitors commercial lines, product offerings, and results. This session will focus on recent insurance trends within commercial property and cyber insurance coverage and discuss ways to address them. Ensuring that your building limit is set to an appropriate value is critical to avoiding pitfalls – coinsurance penalties – which can reduce the total amount that you may receive in a loss.

Johnston leads an underwriting team that focuses on Property and Casualty lines for manufacturing and whole good markets. Predominant sectors include metalworking, plastic/rubber goods, food processing, and distribution of the like. He recently took the role of managing Sentry’s FEMA Underwriting team given his experience with underwriting various metalworking risks. He comes with 11-years of property underwriting experience with Sentry and will join Dan Zastava in the discussion surrounding property trends, the causes to these trends, and how property insurers are needing to react to ensure appropriate coverage for their policyholders.

2020 Public Policy Analysis

By late March, we will be immersed in campaign season, and Ray Starling will join us to help us make sense of the candidates and the issues most relevant to small manufacturers and the shortline industry.

In 2017, Starling joined the White House staff as special assistant to the president for agricultural policy. In 2018, he became chief of staff for USDA’s Sonny Perdue.  He returned to his home state of North Carolina in 2019 to serve as general counsel to the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce. In spite of his remarkable career, Starling said the experience in his life that has most shaped him is growing up on a family farm.

Starling will offer analysis of how national and state election may influence the economy, the regulatory environment, trade, and taxes. 

Operational Excellence

This year we kick off a new service for members: a five-part instructional series on continuous improvement intended to offer a deep dive into the work. Steve Wilson will make the first of three convention appearances. In between conventions, he will host two webinars that tie together the content.

His first session will focus on readiness—achieving it and sustaining it in your pursuit of excellence.

Wilson is a consultant, coach, and trainer who has worked with hundreds of companies, including Deere, Union Pacific, and Heinz.  He’s also worked as an operations manager with Federal Express, a service manager in the automotive and IT industries, and a quality improvement manager for a healthcare provider.

Learning from Legacies

The Association will bring back a series it introduced in 2018 in which members learn from other members who have had extraordinary staying power in the industry. This year, we will hear from executives at Sukup Manufacturing and Osmundson Manufacturing, who will share their insights to the challenges and rewards of running a family business with a focus on transitioning from one generation to the next.

Representing Sukup will be President and CEO Steve Sukup and daughter Emily Schmitt, who is the company’s general counsel. 

Also on stage will be Heather Bruce, who assumed ownership of Osmundson last year and represents the fifth generation of company leadership.

As this Association prepares for the biggest annual gathering of shortline farm equipment manufacturers and the industry’s marketers and distributors, we are naturally drawn to that famous line from Peter Drucker.

The annual Marketing & Distribution Convention is designed specifically to connect the innovators to the marketers, and we are excited about what’s in store for the 2019 convention.

When we gather at the Hyatt in St. Louis from Nov. 5 to 7, we will offer a combination of structured, introductory time and independent meeting time for you to get to know fellow Association members as well as members of the Equipment Marketing & Distribution Association (EMDA).

We also will provide a standout roster of speakers to give you tools you need to bring your business to the next level. Educational sessions include:

Building an Influential Brand

John Hall has been rated by Forbes magazine as a No. 1 “must-see” speaker. His presentations focus on how to stay top-of-mind with customers, gain their trust, and influence their decisions. Hall will explore strategies for shortline manufacturers seeking to raise their visibility with farmers and farm equipment dealers.

State of the Industry: What’s Next for Ag?

Neil Caskey is vice president of communications for the National Corn Growers Association. His career began on Capitol Hill, and through roles as employee or consultant, he has worked with organizations such as the American Soybean Association, Monsanto, and the USDA. Caskey has been a key player in national conversations on the ethanol issue and the Bud Light Super Bowl commercial that misled consumers about corn syrup. He will offer his thoughts on the state of the ag industry and what lies ahead.

Ask the Lawyer:
Workplace Policies on Social Media, Marijuana

David James is a labor and employment attorney with Nilan Johnson Lewis, a partner firm to this Association. James will explore answers to frequently asked legal questions related to employees’ social media use and, as marijuana becomes legal in more states, how employers should respond.

The Future of Digital Marketing

Dustin Johansen, vice president for Osborn Barr, and Steve Kozel, a group strategy director for the firm, will talk to attendees about the future of digital marketing. Expect to learn more about research tools available for the shortline industry, data analytics, trends in content, such as podcasts, blogs, and web site strategies, and how to identify and engage appropriate partners to serve as influencers.

Autonomous Farming and the Shortline Industry

The Association will bring together a panel of experts representing distinct pathways to the autonomous farm, and each will offer his perspective on what this emerging technology means for implement makers.

Panelists are:

John Anderson, founder and president of JCA Electronics, which he began in his parents’ garage in 2002. He is an engineer with a background in mobile equipment design. JCA collaborates with manufacturers in developing complete control systems, from the physically installed components to software for equipment. This allows manufacturers to customize their requirements.

Gary Thompson is the COO of GUSS Automation in Kingsburg, Calif. He grew up on a dairy farm in Arizona and became acutely aware of the labor crisis in agriculture. In 2017, he moved to California, began farming almonds, and joined the in-its-infancy GUSS team, which builds the world’s first autonomous orchard sprayer.

Cory Beaujot is managing director of marketing, sales & communications at SeedMaster Manufacturing and Dot Technology Corp. He is also an owner with the rest of the Beaujot family. SeedMaster features a line of application equipment from the Nova Cart to seeders that use metered seed flow rate, load cells, and controlled tank distribution. The Dot Power Platform is an autonomous farming apparatus designed to operate in conjunction with a variety of farm implements

Colin Hurd has founded two agriculture companies. His first company developed the planting product TrackTill. He more recently founded Smart Ag, which offers plug-and-play systems for users in the field who are able to flip a switch for autonomous operation of their current tractors. Smart Ag also provides a software package to monitor and control autonomous grain carts.

Moderating the discussion will be Emily Smith, a customer service and marketing manager at Art’s Way Manufacturing. She is focused on spreading the news about machinery solutions that improve farm operations. Prior to joining Art’s Way, Smith worked with her dad developing farm equipment and entering new markets.