From sales to branch manager, Bobcat of Lima’s co-owner Dave Shepherd worked in every possible part of a dealership.

In 1993, he went to work for a Bobcat dealer and when the owner retired in 2007, him and co-owner Eric Fritz purchased the dealership. In 2019, they were selected as one of Bobcat’s top 15 dealers in the country.

In addition to Bobcat, the dealership carries Husqvarna power equipment, ICS diamond tools, heavy-duty Cronkhite equipment trailers, and more.

Top ASPEN Feature:

• Easy to compare reports on a month-to-month or yearly basis

What are some of your favorite features in ASPEN?

Dave: I like the ease of looking at the income statement reports. I look at just a few reports, whether it’s the income statement to see how many rentals we’ve done for the month or for the year and comparing it to the year prior. It’s easy to click back and forth between those reports and just take a quick glance.

What are some long-term goals for the dealership and how do you envision ASPEN helping you achieve them?

Dave: I feel that TargetCRM is going to allow us to market things more digitally. I’ve got a daughter that’s been here now three years after she got out of college, and we do a lot more digital marketing or social media stuff.

We realized, and I would’ve laughed about that six years ago, we realized that it reaches people way, way more. It reaches more people quicker, faster than anything else we do, and as cost efficiently as anything else we do.

What’s something no one tells you about working in a dealership?

Dave: That in our business, equipment breaks.

When equipment breaks, a customer can get angry, upset, frustrated, and you as an individual can’t take that personally because it just happens, and you have to learn how to deal with that negativity. So, when you say about the one thing that no one talks about, it’s those bad days when something happens, and you get yelled at or you just don’t know how to make the person feel better because they’re going to have to spend some money on something that they didn’t plan on.

Fun Fact:

Dave: I raise and market about 5,000 pigs a year. We get baby pigs when they’re three weeks old and we raise them up to be mamas and then ship them all over the United States. I’ve done that for 20 some years.”