Get FinancingEquipmentfacts: The Next Best Thing To Being At A Live Auction
There’s nothing like the energy and entertainment of a live auction, where bidders can enjoy the social aspect of the event and literally kick the tires of equipment for sale. At the same time, auctioneers can reach a wider audience and potentially higher selling prices by holding an auction online. By combining the two, Equipmentfacts gives buyers and sellers the best of both worlds.
Webcasting To The World
Equipmentfacts is a mobile-friendly, online bidding platform that lets local auction companies simulcast audio and video from their live sales to interested buyers around the world. Equipmentfacts is also available as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices.
Bidders can use their smartphones, tablets, and computers to watch and listen to a sale, view photos and descriptions of items on the block, and place bids on items as if they were attending the auction in person. Since 2018, Equipmentfacts has expanded from agricultural equipment, construction machinery, and commercial trucks and trailers into livestock, horses, hay and straw, and even real estate and farmland.
Dedicated Support
Sandhills Global endeavors to give auctioneers everything they need to conduct a successful Equipmentfacts auction. The platform’s bidding management tools make it easy for sellers to accept bids from anywhere in the world.
As a turnkey solution, Equipmentfacts provides state-of-the-art on-site audiovisual and networking technology to livestream high-definition webcasts of auction events to users everywhere, tremendously expanding the bidder pool.
Powerful software gives auctioneers the resources they need to input inventory and photos, create sale catalogs, and manage sales.
Sellers can also obtain equipment valuations using the free Value Insight Portal (VIP) in the Sandhills Cloud. Powered by FleetEvaluator, VIP delivers the most accurate pricing available in the transport, heavy machinery, and ag equipment industries.
Equipmentfacts offers support staff with technological expertise to manage video, audio, and network configuration on the sale day. Staff is also available to take over time-consuming bidder management tasks such as uploading the sale catalog, handling bidder registration and approvals, submitting online bids to the auctioneer, answering bidders’ questions via online chat, and even clerking the sale.
Key Cross-Marketing
A major benefit of using Equipmentfacts is the potential for pre-sale publicity through Sandhills’ industry trade brands. For example, when a dealer lists tractors, combines, harvesters, balers, lawn mowers, specialty crop equipment, turf equipment, or other assets for sale on Equipmentfacts, each item is automatically cross-posted on AuctionTime.com.
Auction equipment is also advertised on corresponding sites including TruckPaper.com, TractorHouse.com, MachineryTrader.com, and MarketBook.com—all from a single upload, with no need to re-enter equipment for each site. Equipmentfacts items appear in premium listings at the top of user search results, with the option for additional reach with advertisements in each print publication.
This multi-channel marketing, both in print and online, provides unmatched exposure in the weeks before the sale. It is invaluable for attracting interest in key lots and pulling in pre-bidding activity, which tends to result in higher selling prices on auction day.
Bidder Features
It’s easy for bidders to register for free at Equipmentfacts.com or in the mobile app. Users can review auction results of equipment they’re interested in and browse items coming up for sale. The site and app offer powerful yet intuitive keyword and category search capabilities, as well as a more in-depth, detailed search feature.
Users can filter their results by online auctions or on-site auctions. Registered users can save individual listings or entire auctions to a personal watch list and set up email and text alerts when bidding is about to begin, they’ve been outbid, and other events take place. The platform can also let bidders know when newly posted equipment matching their needs comes up for sale.
Bidding & Selling
The Equipmentfacts.com homepage displays current and upcoming auctions in order of sale date and time. Sales that are currently underway have a red progress bar to indicate the percentage of items that have been sold. Clicking a auction’s Sale Catalog button (book icon) reveals the entire catalog. The Enter Auction button allows users to read and agree to the auctioneer’s terms and conditions for the sale. Once the auctioneer accepts each user, they can place bids on items for sale.
Each asset listing has links at the bottom for Sandhills partner services, namely FR8Star for lining up transport for purchased items and Currency for competitive financing options for equipment and more. Winning bidders receive an email notification with convenient links to pay for each item and add appropriate assets to their Inventory Management app in the Sandhills Cloud. End users with assets to sell can use Equipmentfacts’ Find Auctioneers feature to locate a vetted, professional auctioneer nearby.
Auctioneer Resources
During a live sale, Equipmentfacts makes it easy for auctioneers to notice when a buyer is about to bid, when an online bid comes in, and when a bidder is outbid. Auctioneers can also view bidders’ locations and other information, and send alerts to online bidders via the Auction Messages function.
After the sale, auctioneers can see where their bidders were bidding from on the Equipmentfacts Bidder Map app in the Sandhills Cloud (available in the Store). Similar to the AuctionTime Bidder Map, the app allows sellers to home in on particular sales periods and areas of the map, as well as on specific packages or product categories.
New! Auctioneer Page Updates
Equipmentfacts has made a few beneficial changes to the way it lists its auctioneers and dealers. When customers click Find Auctioneers and View All Auctioneers, the page now includes any dealers who have had a sale within the past six months, even if they do not currently have any upcoming sales. An auctioneer’s View Auctions button now displays both their upcoming sales and the results of their past sales on the same page.
Get Started
Ask your Sandhills representative how to put Equipmentfacts to work for you.
A version of this article first appeared in Sandhills Magazine. You can find the current issue and back issues in the Sandhills Magazine Archive.