How Mow Power Turned Simple Text Messages into Shop-Wide Efficiency Gains

Founded in 1996, Mow Power has established itself as Arizona’s East Valley’s premier supplier of equipment rentals, repairs, and sales. Over the years, the dealership has established a reputation for delivering exceptional customer service and offering an extensive inventory of top-quality brands.

In February 2024, Mow Power transitioned from tedious and time-consuming pen-and-paper methods to implementing Ideal Computer System’s dealership management software, along with its full lifecycle CRM and messaging platform, TargetCRM.

At the 2025 Ideal User Conference, General Manager Jordan Royal shared how these technological advancements have transformed their business operations, resulting in more efficient internal processes and significantly enhancing their customer communication and service delivery.

1. What was the onboarding and training process like to get you up and running with Ideal?

Jordan: “The onboarding process was a little bit daunting from a management standpoint because we did start maybe three weeks before the actual training for our entire company started.

We opted to have an on-site trainer come in for three days along with all the online live training classes, and I do feel that that was absolutely a must, especially coming from pen and paper. None of us are technology-savvy people, so watching a video of how to do something and even getting your hands on once or twice, it gives you the baseline or the foundation. Then having somebody from Ideal, a trainer, to dive into the weeds a little bit and actually go through some of the processes specific to our dealership made it all seem very well.

We didn’t have a ‘today’s the day we go live’. At 10 o’clock one morning we said, all right, we’re flipping the switch and just naturally progressed our way to being Go Live over a course of three days. But I think definitely having a trainer on hand, at least in our experience, it would have not been as easy without that and probably wouldn’t be anywhere near where we’re at without that.”

2. What do you like most about Ideal?

Jordan: “I’m a metrics guy, so reports and being able to see stats coming from pen and paper, where everything you thought you knew is either proven correctly or proven incorrectly with Ideal, has been a fun experience to go through in year one.

We’re able to see cyclical patterns of products. With seasons in Arizona, landscaping is a year-round thing, but it does have seasons where certain items and pieces of equipment are more popular. Getting to refine exactly when those seasons start, when they end, and when we transition—as opposed to just going by calendar and going by feel—has allowed us to maximize profit windows during certain seasons and minimize expenses by carrying products into the out-of-season time frame where we didn’t need to.”

3. How has Ideal changed your life?

Jordan: “I can work from anywhere. We’re on the Cloud, so I’m here in Florida right now at the conference, but in the mornings and evenings, I’m still doing my day job, whereas a year ago, I was not able to do that. That, in and of itself, is pretty substantial.”

4. What has TargetCRM done for your customer communication?

Jordan: “It’s increased it. We have a lot of phone call volume that we don’t always get to the phone, so putting people on hold has a very negative effect over time. With TargetCRM, it’s picked up the efficiency for our mechanics to communicate.

We have it set up to send estimates and dollar values. Our mechanic can just simply type what it is and how much it is. As well as when the product is finished, it also allows us to keep in communication through the whole process.

If we have to order a part, it sends them a text message and lets them know, so we’re in constant communication, which is just a better alternative than a customer dropping something off and a week or two later getting one call saying it’s ready. It’s just a more thorough communication process.”

5. How has your experience been with TargetCRM’s broadcast feature?

Jordan: “Broadcast has been fun. We started doing the automated survey side of things back in June or July. Since then, we have increased to 80 Google reviews, all five stars, as well as the opportunity with the surveys of the negative results to reach out to those customers and try to fix it.

Nobody’s perfect, but it’s how you go about fixing the bad experience and recapturing that customer. That is more rewarding than always taking care of a guy the right way, and they immediately give you a five-star review. It gives you a chance to correct where you were wrong and learn from it.

We wouldn’t have grown 80 Google reviews in a year, and the fact that we did within a seven-month window, and that’s always going. Anywhere between one to 200 people come into our shop a day, and if we can get two of those people to make a Google review out of their transaction with that survey, that’s substantial numbers.”

6. How has TargetCRM improved your processes and efficiency at your dealership?

Jordan: “It’s definitely created less downtime for the mechanics. They’re able to get their hands on wrenches more. More than 60% of the stuff in our shop is because it won’t run, and those are kind of general tune-up type quotes that can just be handled with 10 seconds of a quick type and text as opposed to a phone call.

A lot of people don’t answer their phones, and even more don’t check their voicemails, so most of the time, when you do leave a voicemail, your message goes unheard. Whereas everybody sees a text message. It’s definitely picked up response time from customers and mechanics’ time.”

7. What advice do you have for someone considering coming to the Ideal User Conference based on your experience?

Jordan: “If you’ve been able to teach yourself or use the Knowledge Base for the entry-level and intermediate stuff, you’re going to get a lot more fine-tuning here and pinpoint things to adjust and build off of, so it’s very, very knowledgeable.

As the person that implemented Ideal once all the training staff went away, I thought I knew a lot, and then just in three classes yesterday, I realized that I barely scratched the surface myself.

The networking last night was fun, and then I also enjoyed the efficiency in the service department class yesterday. That’s an area where we plan on stretching our legs with Ideal a little bit more in this year, so getting any knowledge and ideas from that was the one I’ve got the most notes from and have already sent emails back home about.”