Trimble teaches dealers to meet customers' needs

As the latest and greatest precision ag becomes more prevalent, every part of the agriculture industry is faced with learning about new technology. Precision ag trainers such as Trimble’s Andy Bartlett are preparing people at the point of sale to be experts in their field. 

Trimble established a relationship with Colorado State University in early 2011, according to Wade Stewart, product team manager at Trimble. The company installed Trimble’s technology on the school’s equipment for students and researchers to use and has trained several thousand resellers a year at this location. Trimble has since expanded its training program to several other universities and locations around the globe. 

Bartlett, one of the precision ag trainers working in this program, isn’t new to teaching the ins and outs of agriculture. 

Bartlett grew up on a farm in Merino, Colorado, where his family has farmed 320 acres since the 1930s. He spent two years at Northeastern Junior College, later finishing his bachelor’s degree in soil and crop science at Colorado State University, and he immediately turned around to earn a master’s degree with a focus on crop management. 

Bartlett returned to school soon after, this time as a crop and soil science instructor at Northeastern Junior College. While there he worked with precision ag equipment the school obtained through a grant, but it wasn’t quite enough for Bartlett. 

“I felt I was missing the boat on precision ag,” he says. “I could see things as they came out and read up on them — maybe we’d be lucky enough to get some pieces of equipment — but I felt like the train was going by and I was trying to hop on.” 

His current position with Trimble satisfies both his affinity for teaching through technical, hands-on demonstrations and his desire to work with the latest and greatest technology Trimble has to offer. Bartlett tests some of it on his own farm to gain familiarity.

He has to be a jack-of-all-trades and then some to answer in-depth questions. Bartlett has a wide breadth of working knowledge on nearly every one of Trimble’s agriculture technologies. Bartlett works primarily with dealerships’ new hires, who possess a range of agriculture experience, to familiarize them with the technology. 

“It’s great when those folks show up at training because I’m hoping they pick up a few things, but I learn a massive amount from them as well,” says Bartlett. “They’ve seen the progression of technology in the field. They know farming operations; they know pain points.”  

Hearing about these pain points also helps him to curate the training materials for future sessions. A large part of his job is recording videos to explain and troubleshoot issues as if he were sitting in the cab with the dealer, who is striving to meet farmers’ needs. 

“We always tell them in our trainings: ‘When you leave the customer’s field or farm office that day, you should have done all the work needed to get that system going in the field. You should also sit with that farmer and make sure it’s up to their standards, and train them on how to use the system,’” Bartlett says.