The NCAA College Football Playoff National Championship has been decided, as top-ranked Alabama dismantled No. 3 Ohio State 52-24, and in doing so, secured its sixth title in the last dozen years. That’s impressive, to say the least. What’s probably even more inspiring is the team cohesiveness of both the Crimson Tide and the runner-up Buckeyes. Because, to be successful together, teams must understand one another, communicate clearly, trust, show respect, be supportive and find the drive to accomplish the most grueling tasks in order to win.
It’s not that much different for marine dealers like you. While your team may not be donning helmets and pads, you are, together, developing game plans, strategies and “play calls” to provide the best sales, service and marketing to your customers. Your team also seeks to win, not just to participate, and even strive to be the best in the industry. We understand that it’s also challenging to find the time to practice, to study your craft and do so as a team, especially with COVID-19 still lingering. That’s why the MRAA will introduce a new monthly training program for Silver and Gold Members called Training ‘N’ Tactics — or TNT, for short. The series, which as the name suggests focuses heavily on training and tactics, will share educational growth tools and guide dealers in team development.
Silver and Gold Members have access to a wealth of MRAA resources, but in this series we do the legwork for you to create a training plan for your team as we revisit sessions from MRAA’s archives. These sessions are broadly applicable within the dealership, whether it’s a single department or employee or together as workforce. I say that because even though football teams train together in practice, they also must work individually in their specialty areas (e.g.: kickers, quarterbacks, linebackers) to hone skills that will prove beneficial for the entire team and its success come game time. For marine dealers like you, we know that every day is game day! That’s why, we as guides are offering a program to help you find relevant training topics that you can more easily commit to continuous improvement. We know many of our Silver and Gold dealers are already in great shape, but good teams can become even greater when they bear down.
How you use the series is up to you. Do you provide lunch for your employees while they learn? Do you watch individually and then discuss during a team meeting? Ideally, you’d “huddle up” and discuss each topic before and after watching the video. You can then focus on areas of improvement for both individuals, departments and the entire dealership team.
As you go, we’ll provide guidance on the types of questions you should be asking. What did we learn? What are our objectives? How do we hold each other accountable moving forward? And even though we will have a specific video for you each month, don’t forget that as a Silver or Gold Member you have more than 120 sessions from which to select on mraatraining.com.
The monthly training starts Tuesday, February 2, with “A is for Attitude” by Sam Dantzler, speaker and co-owner of Wheelhouse College. Dantzler dives into attitudes, environments, science, positivity and massive thinking. It’s an ideal topic and course for the start of 2021. The following month features educator and VRZ Consulting’s Valerie Ziebron with “Attract and Keep Techs.” The next topic is as timely as ever — with the entry of so many new first-time boat owners — as service teams and strong tech support will prove to be a game-changing focal point in 2021. The remaining monthly content will include timely subjects like content marketing, video and digital efforts, navigating difficult customers, the pre-owned boat market and more.
Above all, we want you to take the tactical expertise from the TNT sessions and use them to “explode” out of the gate in 2021 and improve your dealership’s game plan and team management. To implement the tips, tools and best practices to find even more success and beat the competition. While your team may not be able to hoist a championship trophy, like ‘Bama, it can definitely walk more proudly and work more confidently and do so with a championship attitude. That’s a win for your team and the industry as a whole.