INTERVIEW
OPE +: How about pro buyers? The pro market is interesting, and you can’ t go direct to them, but I know Husqvarna has done a lot on the pro sales side. Rangert: Yes, and I think we talked about it last year. We had an organizational change that we tried to go more pro, split up the pro and residential customer focus. And now we have changed back. So we are only one organization now, which works better for us. Not taking away the focus on the pro side. But, overall, we sell the whole portfolio. We have some direct channels. I mean, we have tree care; we have some governmental business as well. But the organization we had when we sat here a year ago, we had just changed that. The one we have now works better for us.
OPE +: How do you help dealers with sales training? Is it different between a homeowner with a large property and a small landscaper with a couple trucks? Gent Simmons: We have online training as a starting point for our dealers. It actually starts with our sales team so that they can help on the front lines with our dealers in the training. There’ s nothing better than actually getting the hands-on, face-to-face training that our territory managers bring. So we make sure they’ re up to speed on all the different technologies, trends in the industry, selling points, features, et cetera. But then direct to the dealers and the channel partners we also have an online training with Husqvarna University. It brings feature-benefit training, and certification training when it comes to our service side. Part of the journey we’ re on right now is to enhance that. There’ s been a lot of discussion internally about what we call PACK training, Husky PACK, harkening back to the days when we used to call ourselves proudly the Husky organization. Husky PACK is about products and customer knowledge. From that, we want to expand into webinars for our dealers and channel partners; and other ways we can empower the sales teams with training tools. We were talking just yesterday about having sales aides and training tools our territory managers can take around with them and have face-to-face discussions. We need to empower our dealers and our channel partners and our sales teams so they can make sure they’ re bringing the right product to the end customer. Rangert: We also introduced a function a year and a half ago called the MDR, or Market Development Representatives. These are people in the field— typically young people, early in their careers— and they perform both demos and training sessions and help our customers arrange dealer days or whatever it may be.
OPE +: Can we talk about your people? I’ ve had conversations with a few manufacturers here who say,“ We’ ve got new people from Husqvarna.” These are anecdotes, but when I hear them a couple times, I need to just ask. Is there anything to add to that or say about that? Rangert: First of all, there’ s a lot of rotation in our industry, right? We recognize people here that have been working for us. We also have some people with us that have worked for other companies. But, yes, we have made reductions, not in the last one and a half years. But before that, we had to cut back a little bit, and of course that made people seek other opportunities. And that’ s fine. We’ re on a different path now. We see some development in the right direction and we want to also capture the good people. Simmons: Andreas is humble. He’ s been in the North American organization now for a year and a half. I think Andreas has brought a stable situation back to Husqvarna North America. And I think you can pick it up in the spirit of the team here, with both the field teams and the Charlotte office. That stability sets us up to take the next step and start accelerating again.
OPE +: I’ m curious about Red Max. Why is that a standalone brand, and is it doing what you want it to do? Simmons: I will just jump right into a question we get a lot. What is the future of RedMax? And the future of RedMax is strong. For the foreseeable future, we have a RedMax brand. We have innovation investments planned for RedMax. And the reason why it’ s going to remain a separate brand is because that brand actually has a completely different identity. Husqvarna has a core history on the forestry side that we have expanded well into the landscape industry and the landowner customers. We have our innovations in robotics on the Husqvarna side. But the RedMax brand brings
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