A Day in the Life of a Sales Professional at RDO Equipment Co.

A career in sales can be a great thing. Often, these roles give you opportunities to help your business, earn a living and build relationships, all while growing your career. 

However, becoming a successful salesperson isn’t done in a vacuum. The best of us have mentors and support systems to help us when we need it. 

Working for a company that shares your values, offers a fair compensation structure and prioritizes your growth is another component of a salesperson's success. 

I’ve found these things at RDO Equipment Co., and I’m confident many others can, too. 

However, as you know, choosing a company to work for is a big deal. It’s best not to take this lightly. 

In this article, I’ll describe a day in my life as an RDO Sales Professional to give you a better understanding of what it’s like. 

What Does a Sales Professional Do at RDO?

At RDO, Sales Professionals sell new and used heavy equipment manufactured by companies like John Deere and WIRTGEN GROUP. 

These team members are responsible for the entire customer lifecycle, from finding and prospecting new leads to creating bids for opportunities and helping current customers. 

This is a front-line, outside sales role, meaning we frequently travel within our territories to find and secure new business opportunities. 

What Does a Typical Day Look Like In This Position? 

There’s a lot of variety in my days. Each day, it’s up to me to decide what I need to get done.

My sales territory is in Southeastern Minnesota. It is divided into five sections (four counties and a metropolitan area), and I try to focus on one section per day. 

Planning out my days in advance has helped me be successful in this position. 

That way, I always wake up knowing who I will see, talk to and visit that day. This keeps me productive in a role where no one is telling me what to do — this is important to keep in mind. 

While it’s difficult to succinctly describe a typical day in this role, because there’s just so much I could do. 

Instead, I’ll say this: On any given day working in these five territories, I’ll spend time prospecting, working with customers, working with my team and doing administrative work. 

Here’s how much of this shapes out: 

Prospecting

This includes finding, reaching out to and making contact with companies that would be a good fit for RDO’s products and services. Here are some of the things I do when prospecting: 

• Research companies in an area
• Use company lists to plan my outreach
• Cold call companies
• Travel to company locations/job sites
• Get to know each company’s business needs 
• Build relationships with business owners 

This is a crucial stage for filling a healthy sales funnel. I would say the majority of my time each week is dedicated to prospecting and developing new relationships. 

Working With Current Customers

As a sales professional, your customers always come first. In reality, your relationship is just beginning when you sell someone a machine in this industry. And that’s great. 

To ensure each of my customers is taken care of, I meet with them at regular intervals each year. In these meetings, I touch base to make sure we’re prepared to help them in the months ahead and to build the relationship further.

In addition, I’ll often be the point of contact for questions, requests or issues that pop up. 

Working with current customers to make sure their needs are met takes up a good portion of my time — maybe 30-40 percent.

Working With My Team

Teamwork is a big part of working at RDO. As a sales professional, you’ll work with all kinds of people throughout the organization. 

In a day, I might meet with my manager, ask questions of our parts department and collaborate with our service teams on a customer repair. 

Working with other salespeople and members of our field support departments is also common. 

Administrative Work

Another main category of work I do every day is some form of administrative tasks. 

This means doing all of the things I need to do to keep the ball rolling in my role, including: 

• Answering emails
• Building quotes and proposals
• Scheduling meetings
• Aligning my schedule
• Participating in product training
• Attending internal meetings

What Are the Best Parts of Being an RDO Sales Professional?

This is a great job. When I joined RDO, I moved a couple of hours to do so. So far, it’s been a good decision. 

Truthfully, I’ve always been someone who’d like to own a business. The idea of owning my time and building something to be proud of has always intrigued me. 

This job fills this for me. It’s a very entrepreneurial role, meaning your efforts directly create outcomes for yourself and your customers. The harder you work, the more you get out of it. 

Another thing I like about the sales professional career at RDO is that every day brings a new challenge. I enjoy solving problems and in this job I get to use my problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. It’s a very rewarding career. 

What’s Most Challenging About This Job? 

Just like others, my job has challenges. Although they can also make the job fun — trying to solve them, trying to work through them, etc. — you should be aware of them before you join the team. 

First, there’s a lot you can’t control in this job. You can’t control whether a prospect is ready to purchase and what the market does (where prices go, how much inventory there is, how many machines are sold). This can be frustrating. 

Another challenge of this role is that you’re usually the decision-maker when things need to be handled. This can be intimidating (you don’t want to make the wrong decision), especially when a good customer relationship hangs in the balance or you must deliver bad news. 

Luckily, I’ve also received support from leaders and other salespeople when challenges like these arise.

Who’s a Good Fit For This Position?

The final point I want to touch on in this article is who makes a good fit for this position. After more than seven years in the sales professional career path here, I have seen people be successful in it and others struggle.

Here’s what makes someone a good fit for this job: 

• Constant thinker: You must always be on your toes in this career. Being able to work through problems and come up with solutions is important
• Self-motivated: No one is telling you what to do as a Sales Professional at RDO. You have to be able to plan your work and work your plan to keep the ball moving. Aim to make one percent progress every day, and you’ll be in a good position. 
• Flexible: Just when you have a good handle on what you want to do in the day, something will come up and your plans might change. Being able to work through this by being flexible is important.
• Background with heavy equipment: It’s tough to come into this job without an equipment background, whether as an operator, in sales or another form. Learning the language to speak it with customers and each piece of machinery is undoubtedly challenging — even with this background. Usually, the most successful heavy equipment sales professionals have a background in/around this industry. 

Start Your Career as a Sales Professional: Your Next Step

To this point in my career, the Sales Professional role at RDO has been great. I’ve found it professionally and personally rewarding as I work to service customers and grow RDO’s presence in my territory. 

This role comes with great freedom, income potential and stability, but you need to be flexible and self-motivated to succeed in it. 

Do you think it could be a good fit for you? 

Get started in your sales career with RDO. If you have any questions, contact our careers team through our contact form.