Monday, March 30, 2015

Training for Valley Dealers – an Insider’s Perspective | by Michelle Stolte

Over the last month, I have attended a couple different classes offered to Valley® dealers by Valley Irrigation.

The first class I attended was Design School, where primarily new, but also some veteran dealer personnel attend to better learn how to design center pivots, corners and linears. In this class, not only did we physically design machines on the computer, but we also learned about limitations for different kinds of equipment, so we can be assured peak performance in the field. An extensive amount of time was spent on the importance of water application and the characteristics of many different sprinklers we offer. 


Service School students are learning
Valley  tower box wiring code and schematics.
The second class I attended a few weeks later was Service School. There were approximately 100 dealership personnel in attendance at this school, some of them here on their first day of work, others who have worked for the dealership for 30-plus years. It was the eighth class our service department offered this season. 

There was a strong emphasis on safety, and then, in the Basic Level (which I, of course, attended!), we focused on wiring and troubleshooting. I gained a much greater appreciation for the work that all of our service people do day in and day out. While I have determined that I probably won’t be our service department’s first service woman, I did learn a lot, have even more respect for electricity than I did before and am glad I attended the class.

Training our dealership personnel is extremely important to Valley, and these are just two examples of the different training classes we offer. We want to make sure that our dealers are the best in the country and the world, so we invest a lot of time and effort in the different education methods we offer them.

I want to thank all of those who led the schools that I recently attended – the programs were top-notch and extremely educational.




Michelle Stolte
Global Marketing Manager

Michelle has been at Valley Irrigation for more than 10 years and is finally no longer a newbie! She has spent her entire time at Valley in the Marketing Department (international and domestic) and loves every minute of it. Michelle enjoys traveling and spending time with her husband. She also likes reading, swing dancing (although she isn't really that good...), and warm weather.

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