As rollout of the fourth year of the Continuous Certification Curriculum approaches, the Marine Industry Certified Dealership program team has taken feedback from participating dealers and worked to develop continuing education courses that are more customizable and flexible to the business needs of today’s marine dealers.
The updated program will require current Certified Dealers enrolled in Continuous Certification to complete two in-depth courses, “How to Raise Your Game as a Leader & Follower” with John Spence, and “Become a Trusted Dealership in the Eyes of Today’s Customer,” with Marcus Sheridan. These courses will be similar in composition to those offered in the 2018-2020 Continuous Certification Curriculums.
Where the 2021 program differs, is that dealers will have the opportunity to choose two additional courses in the areas of Service Efficiency and Marketing. Both topic areas offer 5-6 courses that dealers can choose from in order to customize their learning. Dealers are welcomed to watch as many sessions as they want, but only one from each topic area will be required.
“While dealers tell us they’ve appreciated the high level of education we’ve provided over the past three years with Continuous Certification, they have also expressed that they each have unique needs and would like to tailor their dealership-wide training to those needs,” said Certification Manager Liz Keener. “This revamped program will allow us to share two exclusive, high-impact courses with dealers annually, and then give dealers the flexibility to choose from a number of courses on specific topics that will best benefit their business, their employees and their customer experience.”
Additionally, dealers will have the opportunity to get a head start on the 2021 Continuous Certification Curriculum through MRAA’s 2020 annual conference, Dealer Week. Four educational sessions that will be featured as part of this year’s educational line-up will be eligible to fulfill two of the program requirements. Register for the conference here.
“The Continuous Certification program was launched in 2018 as a continuing education program in response to dealers looking for more value from Dealership Certification. While the program has been extremely successful, one of the cornerstones of this format is that we can continually adjust to dealer feedback, and the program can evolve as they evolve,” said MRAA President Matt Gruhn. “This improved program is the result of the MRAA responding to their needs but also to the needs of today’s market place with timely, relevant and impactful topics. Dealers will continue to find this program valuable as they seek solutions to their individual challenges.”
The 2021 Continuous Certification program will kick off January 1st with the course “How to Raise Your Game as a Leader and a follower,” with subject-matter expert, John Spence, and those dealers who attend Dealer Week 2020 can work ahead by attending “How to Catch-Up in Service” (for the Service Efficiency Credits) and any one of the following educational sessions (for the Marketing Credits): “How to Build Your 2021 Marketing Plan With or Without a Boat Show”; “Grow Your Customer Base with Facebook Ads in 2021”; or “Using Digital to Personalize the Customer Experience.”
Dealers who are interested in the Certification program and how it can improve their business can reach out to MRAA Director of Business Development Allison Gruhn at 763-458-8036 or allison@mraa.com.
