This past week, I had the opportunity to speak at the PSU Turf Club meeting. A few weeks ago, there was a post on Twitter asking if anyone wanted to put their name in for consideration. After spending the weekend prior to the talk putting together some Power Point slides, my goal was to not be the guy (which drives me crazy) reading the slides word for word! The title was "Understanding the Equipment Piece of the Equation". The main focus was to talk about how to sell your needs to your club or facility. The one thing that really jumped out in my mind, as I was working on it, was some of the examples that I know locally, in the Philadelphia area, that are really good at this skill. I mentioned to the Turf Club how Superintendents Like Matt Shaffer, Paul B. Latshaw (Merion GC), John Gosselin (Aronimink GC), Dan Meersman (Philadelphia Cricket Club) and Greg D'Antonio (Concord CC) have been successful at understanding what the clubs leadership goals are and then being able to communicate what is required for them to meet these goals. All the men listed have had their clubs make major investments recently and I would believe they would all agree it is a long process.
We also talked about leasing equipment, GPS Sprayers, autonomous mowers and some other topics. I spoke for about a half hour and then we spent about 20 minutes answering questions.
I really enjoyed the chance to speak to some guys who are just getting started in the Turf Industry. Realizing that this is my 30th year working in the Turf Business, I guess now I am one of the old guys....
WJC
