There Because We Care
Associated Equipment Dealers — an industry trade group formed to support and inform heavy machinery distributors — held its annual summit this week in sunny Orlando, Florida, and Vsimple made a big debut to a very large and receptive audience.
While the industry is growing and in a great place, it’s not without challenges — big ones that we address with our service and our product. For starters, many dealers and distributors still rely primarily on the office suite (emails, spreadsheets, word docs, shared drives, etc.) for internal workflows. Moving deals from quote to cash doesn’t need to be cumbersome, inefficient, manual or reliant on institutional knowledge. Vsimple is helping companies better understand their processes and how they can be streamlined.
Another industry headwind is people. They’re retiring, they’re scarce, they’re more expensive than they were a year ago. By simplifying workflows and eliminating manual, repetitive tasks, Vsimple can offset the need to bring on additional headcount to grow. It also frees up salespeople to do more selling and less clerking.
Finally, leaders and owners now have visibility to their internal operations: how long things take, who is involved, what locations are performing the best, etc. There was a clear match between what we do and what the industry is prioritizing, and we were excited to see all the ways we can position them for sustained growth and profitability.
Show Up, Show Out
In typical Vsimple style, we wanted to have a big presence at AED which started with our display at Condex — the two-day show floor bringing solution providers, manufacturers and dealers together in one room. Armed with Vsimple swag and literature, conversation-starting business cards, a bright and colorful booth design and top shelf bourbon, we immediately made our presence and warmth felt by everyone who passed by. Yes, we make software. But we’re a people business. (See the business cards with our giant faces and personal commentary as evidence.)
And with bourbon being part of our brand, we had plenty of conversations initiated by the display of giveaway bottles on our booth shelves. Which leads us to the evening…
A Southern Experience
We’ll never just “show up” to an event and go through the motions. It was important for us to tell the world (the AED world, at least) who we are and what we’re all about, which is their success. What better way to do that than hosting a happy hour with an open bar, music, hors d'oeuvres and an amazing raffle lineup of high-end bourbons and a trip for two to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail? (Shout out to our very own “Katie from Kentucky” who told every person within a 1 mile radius of our booth about the event.) Attendance was phenomenal, relationships were started and opportunities to support one another were created. A fair amount of bourbon was also consumed. We can’t think of a better way to let the AED members know we’re not your run-of-the-mill software company only looking for what we can get out of it.
The Future (of Work)
The future of work, today. We’ve really embraced this tagline in recent weeks and it’s never rang truer than during our time at AED Summit. We not only started incredible friendships, we were able to start working with like minded companies who see where the future of distribution is heading and want to fast track those efforts. The entire Vsimple is beyond grateful for the warm embrace from the AED community and looks forward to the years ahead of growth and success together.
