PEARL, Mississippi – For Revell Outdoor Power, being a standalone power equipment dealership was not always the plan when the company first started as a hardware store 75 years ago. But as the metro Jackson, Miss. area grew, so did Revell’s hardware store business. Now, Revell Ace Hardware has eight locations, all with power equipment lines and a mechanic that can handle some light maintenance work, and Revell Outdoor Power is the standalone dealership location that acts as a hub for the power equipment side of the business.

Ever since the company became a pandemic casualty, taken into bankruptcy in 2020, Briggs & Stratton has struggled to regain its former footing in the lawn and garden industry, and the industry in which the pre-bankruptcy company was so dominant is changing. The company’s market and overall strategic position is somewhat precarious, reflected in the instability of senior leadership: Counting pre-bankruptcy filing CEO Todd Teske, Briggs & Stratton is now on its fourth CEO in four years after it was announced in early February that CEO Joseph Liotine—on the job for less than six months—was replacing CEO Steven Andrews who had been on the job barely three years after the bankruptcy filing.

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Keeping your business listing(s) consistent and correct across the internet is the basis of local SEO. Putting your dealership information on your website is not enough anymore, because Google uses multiple directories to cross-check and validate your business name, address, phone number, and other data.

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40 Years Ago…

Zerfoss: Selling Basics Still Ring True

The February 1984 issue of Chain Saw Age contains a feature covering the efforts of a youngish Dave Zerfoss, then Southeast regional manager for Stihl, who was hitting the road with a sales seminar for dealers designed to make good salesmen better and impart some basic selling techniques.

Zerfoss noted most dealers had been in sales their whole lives and many had become very successful but very few have been exposed to formal sales training. And the two-day seminar is designed to give dealers an inventory of sales skills to use, he added.

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