5 Resources to Help Dealers Combat Bad Habits

It’s often been said in business that good habits are created during the tough times and bad habits emerge during the good times. What happens, though, when the good times are so good that we grow comfortable or unwittingly lazy? 

In today’s boating marketplace, there are very few repercussions for bad habits like mismanaging leads, skipping steps in the sales process, short-changing the pre-delivery inspection, failing to follow up with customers or botching the service cycle. 

These shortcuts often feel necessitated and are even sometimes rewarded in a high-demand environment, especially when the outcome means capturing business now vs. prolonging an inevitable sale. The reality, though, is today’s bad habits cause tomorrow’s problems— leads are lost, mistakes are made, unnecessary expenses creep into our P&Ls, the customer experience suffers, CSI scores drop, and repeat and referral business dry up quickly. What’s worse: Those bad habits become an accepted part of our culture.

While it’s safe to assume the incredible demand of 2020 will continue through this boating season, and possibly longer, it WILL come to an end. Unchecked, these lazy habits will lead to a rude awakening once the pandemic is over. Dealership leaders should be thinking about what that reality would mean for their business, and start preparing for it now.

 

Here are five ways MRAA can help dealers combat those bad habits and strengthen their business for the post-pandemic market.

1. Tried-and-true methods of running a dealership have been crafted over many decades and work well in most any market place. Dealers can tap into many of those opportunities, by way of how-to guides and useable tools such as job descriptions, marketing assets, and budgeting templates in the MRAA Resource Center. This free compilation offers the lowest hanging fruit for someone who wants to go grab a resource and shore up something that’s not working in their business.
2. Strong, adaptable dealers need a deeper understanding of the most critical challenges and opportunities, along with the solutions that can help attack them head-on. That’s where Dealer Week, MRAA’s annual conference and expo, comes into play. By way of 30-plus educational sessions on the day’s most important topics, this in-person and online event offers dealerships the insights and inspiration and tactics to stay on top of their game and adjust their business for current realities. It also keeps them on their toes for whatever tomorrow may throw at them.
3. Dealers face challenges and opportunities in all market conditions and at all times of the year, so MRAA created MRAATraining.com to offer dealerships on-demand access to the leading solutions on the topics that most impact their success. Featuring the top courses from the last seven years of MRAA’s annual conference, the platform also offers a turnkey, monthly solution for training and strengthening dealership teams: MRAA’s Training and Tactics, featuring expert-recommended courses.
4. The root of most bad habits in business stem from the lack of sound processes. MRAA compiles the best resources and training opportunities together into one efficient program to help dealers establish systems and processes that lead to consistency, team unity and customer loyalty — Dealership Certification. Through this program, dealers gain access to templates, best practices, consultants, exclusive continuing education, employee satisfaction surveys and more, all of which work together via a proven template and roadmap for running a world-class operation.
5. Having entered the pandemic understaffed, the truth is some dealers just didn’t have the choice but to cut corners. The opportunities above are all designed to help with the realities of running a small business. MRAA also recognized that dealers were dropping the ball with the No. 1 most critical need in the customer experience cycle — post-sale follow-up. So, we created the MRAA Virtual Business Development Center, a resource where MRAA and its partner Customer Service Intelligence will take the follow-up load off of dealers’ plates and do it for them, complete with great reporting and immediate transfer for hot issues.

In the midst of this high-demand environment, it’s easy to view sales, profits and other results through rose-colored glasses. But there’s a negative impact lurking in the shadows, and it amounts to the bad habits we’ve created while business has boomed. 

2021 should be the year that we focus on fixing those bad habits and developing the strengths necessary to help us capture repeat business once demand subsides. We better start preparing for that now.