Building a More Organized, Efficient Dealership
When Trish Rehagen first joined her family’s dealership, Diamond R Equipment, she was managing everything from technician schedules to parts inventory using QuickBooks — a tool built for accounting, not outdoor power equipment dealerships.
Trish: “I was using QuickBooks before IDEAL… QuickBooks is not an inventory program. It’s more accounting. It doesn’t track your inventory.”
As the business grew, it became clear that QuickBooks couldn’t keep up. Technicians weren’t being held accountable, inventory was a guessing game, and there was no real visibility into where their time or resources were going.
That all changed when Diamond R switched to IDEAL in 2016. The dealership started running tighter and smarter, almost immediately. Work orders became more than just paperwork. They became a way to track real-time technician activity and efficiency.
Trish: “The thing I like most about it is the work orders. I can keep an eye on all my mechanics. I make them clock in and out on work orders.”
Additionally, with the use of IDEAL, Trish was able to organize her dealership like never before.
“Now we know what we’ve got, what we don’t have. There’s more trackability. It’s changed our dealership a lot.”
What’s made the biggest impact is that Trish didn’t stop with just the basics. As she got more comfortable with IDEAL, she started exploring other tools that could help her team work faster, communicate better, and even save on operational costs.
Growing Confidence Leads to New Opportunities
One of the first areas Trish expanded into was customer communication, specifically texting. Her team was constantly fielding vague parts requests by phone, and the back-and-forth ate up time. That all changed with TargetCRM.
“We use texting more than anything. It has really helped my guys not have to pick up the phone and call all the time. The customer calls in and says, ‘Hey, I need this part,’ and we can’t figure out exactly what part they’re talking about, so we ask them to text us a picture. My parts guys love it, because they’ll just send us pictures of it. Everything is right there on the computer.”
Texting eliminated delays, improved accuracy, and gave the team a simpler, centralized way to manage customer communication, with no personal phones required.
With TargetCRM’s survey feature, as more five-star responses came in from customers, the team started to see a ripple effect in their reputation.
Trish: “I’ve seen our ratings go up with the surveys since we started using it. It’s also helped us be a little bit more productive in selling more equipment and more parts, because we’re getting good reviews.”
Over time, the compound effect of better processes and tools gave Trish the confidence to take on something she’d long wanted to fix — credit card fees.
Saving Money Without Sacrificing Service
Like many dealerships, Diamond R used to pay the cost of card processing, and it added up.
Trish: “There were times we never charged the customer the fee. We just ate it and went on.”
Now, with their operations running smoothly and more visibility into their numbers, Trish was ready to try something new: TargetPay.
Trish: “It’s nice that I don’t have to worry every month about this big lump fee coming out of my checking account. It’s all right there, and it’s actually getting passed down to the customer. I’m going to be saving money by doing it.”
Investing in the Business
After nearly a decade with IDEAL, Trish is still learning, still growing, and still discovering new ways to run her business better. Attending the 2025 IDEAL User Conference helped her unlock features she didn’t even know existed.
Trish: “I’ve had it since 2016, and I was in a meeting earlier and thought, ‘Oh shoot, I didn’t even know it could do that.’”
What started as a system for tracking inventory and work orders has become something much bigger: a platform that supports growth, accountability, and smarter decisions. Now that Trish has the right tools and confidence, she’s not slowing down.
“IDEAL will do a lot of stuff for you that you don’t realize. People don’t use it to their advantage like it should be used. But it’ll do so much more if you just dive in and start messing with it.”
