Dennis Biliske, Resource Auction, Grand Forks, ND

My name is Dennis Biliske. I started doing auctions in 1985. I attended auction school when I was a senior in high school, started doing auctions when I was 17, and quickly developed a successful regional auction business. Typically, we sell farm machinery, construction equipment, trucks and farmland. I think the number one thing that sets us apart from a lot of our competitors is that we’re a first-generation auction company. Having started when I was that young, I had to go out and learn what others were doing that worked. We more or less had to cast our own die and make sure that we were one step ahead of everybody else, because competition was always stiff, and it’s even stiffer nowadays. We started doing live simulcast auctions, I want to say, probably in 2001 or 2002. We had a lot of experience doing online auctions long before we started doing business with NextLot. In the past, we used marketplace services to provide online bidding for us. They would have a buyer pool that they brought with them. They weren’t buyers that were vetted by us, and we often had problems with those buyers. Of all the times that we’ve had problems, most of it was in the past when we used those services, and they were of very little help to us in trying to get any of that done. We don’t experience that with NextLot. We have issues with buyers sometimes following through, maybe not understanding what it was that they bought, or getting cold feet or having buyer’s remorse. NextLot’s always been in the car with us, helping us to get that challenge mitigated. Having been with them for over a decade, I honestly feel like they’re part of our auction family. I feel that we can call with any concerns whenever we need to, and our questions and concerns will be answered. The auction business is a difficult business, because we’re dealing sometimes with sellers that have difficult situations. In the region where we live, we have difficult weather obstacles. So oftentimes the obstacles that are included in our auctions are difficult to deal with, and it creates stressful situations sometimes. But in each and every one of those situations, they have given us the absolute best that they had to offer, and that means a lot to me. After years of doing business and working with the public, I’m savvy enough to know when someone is doing the best that they can, and maybe even a little better. I would say that I’ve felt that way with this company from day one, and I continue to do so.