Prepare Your Dealership for 2024: Leadership

As a leader within your dealership, your actions can make or break your team’s approach to change. It’s imperative to create a strategic plan for every department that helps the business navigate the current marine industry marketplace. Manage your staff with sound tactics and add innovative methods to help your team adapt so you can endure marketplace uncertainty and continue to produce world-class customer experiences.

A cohesive team with recognized principles and watertight processes can tackle any challenge with precision and poise. Eliminating communication breakdowns is critical to your success and will help you establish and maintain an efficient operation. Staying informed about fresh procedures and implementing these best practices with patience yields greater flexibility and helps to not only build a strong culture, but also a pathway of success for your dealership and our industry.

Survey: Prepare Your Leadership for 2024


Learn from other dealers and use the same tactics they are using to deal with the obstacles that affect dealerships.

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4 Ways Succession Planning Helps Boat Dealers Overcome Challenges

In the challenging, competitive world of marine retailing, succession planning is not just about preparing for your departure — it’s a multifaceted strategy that equips your business to overcome various hurdles.

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Relationship Building: The Key to Success

Great leaders surround themselves with strong peers and those they can look up to for an example of success. They call on these connections for help, but also give as much as they take. Time after time we’ve all heard it from inspiring business leaders, inside and outside the marine industry: Relationships are key to success.

Head shot of MRAA President Matt Gruhn in a blue collared shirt in front of wood backdrop
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Learn From These Mistakes

MRAA’s challenges with incorporating new technology is a cautionary tale for boat dealers everywhere.

Good technologies can propel your dealership to great success. Human error, however — caused by poor preparation and leaving processes undocumented — can sabotage the well-intended decision you made to invest in your future.

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Cultivate a Culture of Excellence Through High-Integrity Leadership

Leadership is more than just being someone’s boss, giving directions and doing boss-like things. Authentic leaders have values and characteristics that not only inspire others but also generate results. Recognized by Thinkers 360 as one of the Power List of the 200 Biggest Voices in Leadership, John Spence, shares significant characteristics he believes a leader must possess in a recent blog.

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MRAA Certified Dealership Program Helps Your Business Reach New Heights

A winning strategy includes precision tactics to help you soar higher than everyone else. When you have refined processes in place and a plan of attack, you can make your dealership into one of the best in the marine industry. The problem is you’re busy and have a lot on your plate. That’s where the MRAA Certified Dealership Program can aid you in your efforts to improve the critical facets of your operation. As a Certified Dealership, you stay composed and more resilient to change, even when facing market uncertainty. 

Dealer Week 2023 Leadership Speakers & Courses

You want a plan to adjust to the changing customer and marketplace, a motivated team that works well together and tactics that help solve your biggest issues. You need to solve communication breakdowns throughout your dealership and stay up to date on how to drive success in the current market conditions. These Dealer Week 2023 Leadership Pathway sessions, Dec. 4-7, in Tampa, Fla., are designed to prepare you for whatever the future could hold.

DEALER WEEK 2023

Expert Quick Tip

With Marcus Sheridan

Being a decision-maker within the marine industry is challenging for many reasons, including the need to manage operations, hiring and experiences for your customers. That’s why you need need to know the best practices for success to enhance your marketing and sales, streamline your service offerings and, ultimately, satisfy more customers with solid, implementable tactics. This expert tip from MRAA Dealer Week 2023 Subject Matter Expert Marcus Sheridan shares insights with you about being a leader to help you and your dealership become more prepared for 2024!


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Training ‘N’ Tactics

Prepare Your Dealership for the Disruption Ahead

Your team has seen a number of significant disruptions that last few years. And we know that new disruptions are likely ahead. That’s why it’s important for you to evaluate your current situation, using sound tactics and planning strategies, to determine your next course of action. 

This course encourages you to gather your team together to discuss and plan ahead so your dealership is in a better spot so you can face disruptions with confidence. Learn to identify your triggers and canaries in your dealership’s coal mine and create buckets to help you begin making the necessary changes to help your business as you prepare for 2024.

Featuring speaker Sam Dantzler of Wheelhouse College and TNT Host Jerrod Kelley


Silver & Gold Members ONLY:

Not a Silver Member? Learn more about

Online Courses to Prepare Your Leadership for 2024:

How to Excel as a Dealership Leader & Manager

Course Package with online training from Sam Danzler, Valerie Ziebron, John Spence, Tony Gonzalez, & Ty Bello

Whether you’re a leader and manager in your dealership today – or you’re preparing to become one – you want to perform at your best.

That’s the purpose behind this package of e-learning courses: To give you the insight and tools to expand your management and leadership skills, allowing you to grow professionally and therefore contribute at a higher level to your dealership.

Silver & Gold Members ONLY:

Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!

Manage Promises, Not People: How to Create a Self-Managing Team course package

with Eric Papp

Learning Objectives: 

  • Discover the three-part process to manage a promise and not a person;
  • Gain confidence in having difficult conversations and giving feedback;
  • Develop the skills to conduct two-minute coaching conversations;
  • And identify three values that create a culture of ownership and accountability.

Silver & Gold Members ONLY:

Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!

3 Tools to Lead Your Management

with Michael Rees

There’s a lot of training out there to help you hold your employees accountable, but how do you hold your managers accountable? While each group presents its own unique opportunities and challenges, the formula for success is surprisingly similar: First, set clear expectations. Then, provide the training, tools and resources they’ll need to fulfill those expectations. Finally, be consistent in holding your managers accountable for meeting them.

Owners and general managers will gain three powerful tools to help follow these steps, improve your coaching skills, and boost your dealership performance, regardless of its size. Department managers will learn how to deliver industry-leading results by holding yourself accountable to a higher standard.

Silver & Gold Members ONLY:

Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!

Get a Grip on Your Business: Don’t Let Your Business Run You

with Jill Young

As a dealership owner or general manager, the past few years have offered lots of disruption to keep you busy. You’ve probably had few opportunities to focus on getting your business running consistently, smoothly and efficiently, never mind transforming the spike in consumer demand into sustainable growth. With the prospect of a market slowdown ahead, the need to do so is becoming more and more urgent.

In this online version of her 2022 Dealer Week session, she will focus in on the key tool shared at the event that will do the most to help you get a grip on your dealership: the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS. 

Silver & Gold Members ONLY:

Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!