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JJ Wise

Wise Auction Service

IAA Board of Directors

When I joined the board, I was hoping to work closely on helping the auction business world versus the bid-calling contests/ fun stuff. It is my hope that we can get some feedback from our membership as to what you would like to see from our association to help your businesses grow and bring awareness to the general public about what it is that we do as professional auctioneers and why the auction method of marketing is superior to all other options.

How do we promote our industry to the millions of potential customers and clients that don’t know anything about the auction method of marketing? The million-dollar question. I am a businessman and I have spent almost a decade building my auction business and have heard many things over the years about our profession. To some people, auctions leave a bitter taste for one reason or another. They had a bad experience at an auction. They swore the auctioneer was a crook. If it’s being sold at auction, it must be distressed property or a last resort. When someone leaves an absentee bid and they say “I bet you’ll make sure it gets there too!”. Good grief, I’ve heard it all and I’m sure you have too. But I always ask myself “Why do they think this?”. Is it really from a first-hand experience? Old stories passed down from years ago?

People are conditioned to think these things. They aren’t born with disdain for auctions or misinformation about our industry. And if they are taught this, why can’t we be proactive to the future generations by teaching them all of the great benefits of auctions? As our businesses grow and we gain new customers, I have noticed a disturbingly large amount of people that have no clue what an auction even is! They don’t know how they work or what an auctioneer does. How many of you have posted your auction ads on social media and then some people start commenting “$5”, “$10”, etc.? Then we go on to explain that this is a REAL auction and you either need to attend our live event or register on our websites to bid. These people were conditioned/taught to think this is how an auction works. So, how do we teach/condition future generations to choose auctions first?

Several other state associations have great marketing campaigns (Michigan sticks out in my mind) that help promote our industry to the general public. Let’s not forget, that the general public is where our next clients and customers come from. We need to condition them to think of auctions as being a first choice instead of a last resort. Is the auction method of marketing not superior to tag sales or estate sales? How many of you have been contacted to sell the remaining items from a tag or garage sale? Or they tried listing everything on Facebook Marketplace. Why did these people think a tag or garage sale was the best way of handling their situation? There is a reason why they didn’t consider an auction first. What is that reason and why do they think this and what are we doing to correct this mindset? How can our association help? Can we run a marketing campaign to build advocacy? Can we start using a hashtag in all of your social media posts similar to #auctionswork?

I believe in the auction method of marketing wholeheartedly and want to bring awareness to our businesses and illuminate the expertise we bring to our clients. This will be a team effort and your input will be extremely valuable. Bring us the issues that you have seen. Bring us your ideas for marketing campaigns to showcase our profession and why we are the best choice. Together we can make the word “auction” a household name again.

Curtis Dosland

Dosland Trucking

IAA Board of Directors

Let me start by saying this is being typed in the midst of gearing up for one of LPAs biggest sales of the year. The Annual Customer Appreciation/ Special Pumpkin Sale, so my thoughts may jump around a bit.

It has been an interesting transition from sale barns and online-only personal property auctions, to selling a produce sale, three times a week. It can take some doing to keep everything else juggled. Let me just say that had it not been for that ground-pounding, 20+ hour days in the back of those sale barns, and the general knowledge gained from being in a livestock market, the transition to selling/marketing a produce auction would have been a very bumpy cross over.

When first approached about the idea of selling and marketing for the LPA I was excited about the idea of being able to market produce on social media. The Concept of marketing seemed like such an easy thing to do, yet you will always run into those few naysayers who refuse to accept a new idea into their business model (if a horse & buggy drawn operation qualifies as a business model). It took some doing but we eventually were given the green light to toss a few FB ads out there and the return has been incredible.

The next thing we had to do was break the older seasoned buyers of some of their old habits. Examples include moving product without showing us a printout invoice that coincided with the stickered boxes of product. They wanted their bleachers back so they could haphazardly bid the auction (sorry folks, we tossed those down the cliff) and finally get them accustomed to the idea of a buyers premium being attached to a produce sale, that’s right, I said it, and we did it, successfully (surprisingly enough had the least amount of resistance to this).

Here we are days away from the largest sale of the year for these guys, a new location, and a new team working the sale. We are forecasting to more than double what they had done the previous year in terms of the total volume of product, several participating bidders in the market, and of course gross sales.

Mike Witten

MW Auctions

AAI Board of Directors