General Sessions
But I’d Like to Keep My Pickup Truck and Diesel Tractor
Steve Goreham is a speaker, an author, a researcher on energy and environmental issues, and an independent columnist. His program will discuss hydrocarbon and renewable energy, climate, net zero, agriculture under pressure, electric vehicles, and technologies, with implications for the agricultural equipment industry.
Steve is the Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and an advisor to The Heartland Institute. He has been speaking to business, industry, and educational organizations for more than a decade. His past appearances to industry include agriculture, engineering, materials, metals, oil and gas, transportation, and utility groups. He has spoken at events of the American Foundry Society, the American Galvanizers Association, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, the Association of Iron Technology, the California Grain & Feed Association, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the National Institute of Oilseed Products, the Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association, the Valve Manufacturers of America, and many other business and industry groups.
Goreham is an author of four books on energy, climate change, sustainable development, and public policy, including his latest, Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. More than 100,000 copies of his books are now in print.
Steve’s session is on Thursday, April 4 at 9:30 a.m. Attend will hear a common sense approach to energy trends and their effects on equipment industries.
This session is sponsored by Pinion.
Recruiting and Retention in the New World of Work
Richard 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, including his latest book, Contented Cows STILL Give Better Milk, and also the book Rebooting Leadership.
During Hadden’s learning luncheon on Thursday, April 4 at 12:15 p.m., you’ll learn what organizations must do to attract, retain, and engage a willing and enthusiastic workforce in 2024 and beyond. We’ll take you inside the mind of today’s worker and explore the keys to landing the best people on your team in this worker’s market.
Here’s part of what we’ll discover:
- What’s changed, and what hasn’t in the world of work (hint: Employers of Choice still outperform the competition).
- Where all the workers have gone, and why it’s so hard to find people.
- What the pandemic has taught us about how work gets done.
- The best recruiting tool in the world.
- How to conquer the unique challenges of the hybrid workplace.
- How to market your employer brand to be a destination employer.
- What the “careers” section of your website MUST do (and probably doesn’t).
- Why your onboarding program isn’t helping build commitment in new hires, and how to fix it.
- How to create and nurture an organizational culture that keeps talented people producing for you for years to come.
You’ll leave excited to implement the practical and actionable ideas you’ll gain on recruiting, retaining, and engaging your workforce, in this insightful, high-content, and entertaining presentation.
Scaling Sales with Less
In this session, Brandon 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.
Brandon spends as much time exploring the world with his wife and daughters while/or riding a BMW motorcycle as he can. When he’s not riding he’s collaborating with the owners of industrial companies to help them reposition their company and unlock their growth. A serial entrepreneur, Brandon owns a marketing firm goBRANDgo!, actively develops real estate, and teaches at Washington University St. Louis. He is a published author and regular keynote speaker.
He’s not all business; locally Brandon helped found a high school entrepreneurship program that has doubled in size every year for 4 years and globally; he serves as the Global Membership Chair of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) working to bring entrepreneurial tools, community, and support to entrepreneurs all over the world.
Don’t miss Brandon’s session on Friday morning, April 5 at 9:00 a.m.
Thank you to our convention sponsors!
Breakout Sessions
Business Transitions: Association Partner, Pinion, will lead a session focused on transitions in management as well as ownership, giving tricks to help better plan and manage the transition.
A certified public accountant (CPA), Derek Wagoner specializes in consulting businesses in the Construction, Food & Beverage, and Manufacturing markets working on a number of types of projects, including: optimizing entity structuring, financial planning and analysis, as well as traditional tax and audit services.
Derek grew up in a small town outside of Wichita, KS where he gained an appreciation for family-owned businesses. Passionate about enhancing people’s lives and helping them accomplish their goals, he deeply values the personal relationships he creates with those he works with.
Sales and Marketing…A Unified Objective: Discover, Integrate and Showcase Supplier parts that enhance the reliability, quality and value of the OEM equipment.
Rick Rosenhagen of member company Unified Resources 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.
There will be a sneak preview of the Fall Session “The Perfect B2B Marketing Ecosystem” where we will dig deeper into the sales and channel marketing strategies including communications, brand development, training, incentive execution and more.
Terms and Conditions of Purchase/Sale: Trent Johnson has concentrated on product distribution law since the beginning of his career at Foley and now devotes the vast majority of his practice to counseling manufacturers on many of the key facets of their resale relationships. Trent routinely advises his clients — from Fortune 100 companies to smaller private organizations — on issues involving channel structure (including multi-channel networks), drafting key contractual provisions, state and federal antitrust law compliance, contract administration and enforcement, e-commerce issues, distributor and dealer performance, negotiating relationship modifications (both individual and system-wide), transfers of control, product or territory withdrawals, product pricing, discount and rebate programs, product repurchase disputes, and other issues.
Insurance Trends in Building Valuation & Cyber: Dan Zastava 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. In the commercial property space, the cost of building materials and labor continuing to rise, where 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. In addition, cyber exposures continue to fill news and media publications, with manufacturers certainly not being immune to such events. Establishing a risk management framework to address loss exposures before an incident can be critical to eliminating or reducing the time that your business may be down. During the session, we’ll also discuss how insurance products and services can assist policyholders in addressing both of these areas.
Mike 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.