Are You Ready to Be a Distributor? The Challenges Rental Companies Face When Adding Equipment Sales

You’ve built a successful rental business. Your fleet is running strong, customers are coming back, and revenue is steady. But lately, you’ve been hearing a new question: “Do you sell these machines?”

The idea of adding equipment sales and becoming a distributor is tempting. It could generate a whole new revenue stream and help you attract more customers. But if you’ve tried to move in this direction or even just considered it, you already know: it’s not as simple as it sounds.

The Challenge

Selling new equipment isn’t just another line item. It adds a new layer of complexity to your business. Now you’re not just tracking equipment that goes out and comes back. You have to manage how much inventory to stock, and what happens after a sale. Where is that machine now? Who owns it? How do you keep up with service schedules, warranty work, and parts sales?

The Risk to Your ERP

This is where many rental companies hit a wall. If your ERP wasn’t designed to handle equipment sales, things get complicated fast. Your team ends up running a different system, juggling spreadsheets, manually updating serial numbers, and double-entering data.

Companies using disconnected systems face slower response times and a higher risk of errors, which directly impacts profitability. Without a single integrated system, you lose visibility into the full picture.

The Hidden Challenge: What Happens After You Sell

Here’s what most rental companies don’t realize until it’s too late: selling equipment creates a whole new set of tracking problems that your rental-focused ERP probably can’t handle.

How long has the unit sat in my inventory?  Once that machine leaves your yard, where is it?  Who’s servicing it? When was the last maintenance? Is it still under warranty? How do I file a warranty claim?  These aren’t just nice-to-know details — they directly impact your bottom line.  Without proper post-sale tracking, you lose out on parts sales, service contracts, and warranty work. Worse, when that customer needs another machine or wants to trade up, you have no idea what they currently own or what condition it’s in. 

Meanwhile, dealers with integrated systems automatically schedule service intervals, track warranty claims, and maintain detailed equipment histories that keep customers coming back for parts, service, and their next purchase.

At Fame Rental, we’ve built tools to make this process seamless. Rental companies can become distributors without fear or concern.  All aspects of a sales cycle are handled as seamlessly as your Rental sales, ensuring that each sale is both timely and profitable without adding extra administrative burden.

Where to Go from Here

Adding equipment sales doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. The rental companies that succeed at becoming distributors do it by using an ERP system that handles rental, sales, and service in one place.

When you have a single platform, you can track a machine through its entire lifecycle — from the day it enters your inventory, through its rentals, through being sold, through all of its service – continuously tracked even if it is purchased back or traded in. You get one source of truth, one cradle-to-grave history. Your team works faster, and your customers get better service.

By running rental, sales, and service on one connected platform like Fame Rental, you can build a more profitable business, create stronger customer relationships, and stay competitive with dealers who already have sales infrastructure in place.

Joe Lewis
CEO
Fame Rental

Fame Rental improves rental businesses and the lives of their employees and customers. We do this because we care more deeply, listen more intently, and act more methodically than anyone in the rental industry would ever expect from a software company.

Contact us at sales@fameintel.com to schedule a demo.