King Kutter, Inc., has named Jon Sherrod as its new sales manager. Sherrod will oversee a team of sales professionals throughout the United States.

Sales managers need to abandon the conflict avoidance mindset and embrace productive conflict. Without this mental shift, they can’t push their salespeople to achieve their full potential.

Sales managers have a difficult relationship with luck. They love it when it's helping their teams, but they know how unreliable it is. They've seen it occasionally give a lift to morale, but they're probably familiar with studies showing that attributing success or failure to random outside factors drains salespeople’s willingness to try new strategies.

The recent merger of two John Deere dealerships into one not only makes perfect sense, but offers customers the expertise of Mike Hendy, Judy Austin, Scott Bair, Andy Giroux, and the staff. Both businesses will be under the new name Mountain View Equipment LLC.

A few years ago, when the housing market was booming and people were flocking to the country for their piece of the rural life, small sprayers were flying off the shelves at equipment dealerships.