Maximize Your ROI at Boat Shows
It’s daunting to manage boat show logistics along with the sales, marketing and the lead management required to accomplish your business goals, especially without a strategy in place. To overcome common challenges, it’s important to focus on tactics that enhance your pre-show preparation and effective post-show follow-up. You need digital marketing efforts, captivating booth experiences and solid lead management systems that help you attract and engage potential customers.
With the proper best practices in place, boat shows can not only help you connect with enthusiasts, but also convert show attendees into clients and better ensure that the time and money you’ve invested helps you move inventory and your business grow. Now is the time to maximize your ROI at boat shows!
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Guide Your Customers’ Boat Show Journey
Let’s face it, not all boat show plans are on the same level. Typically, this means doing the necessary things to find some level of success at the show and after the event ends. But what about BEFORE the boat show even begins? By adding value to your customers’ path to purchase beforehand, you gain a competitive advantage before the event even starts.
We spoke with marine industry innovator and MRAA member Len’s Cove Marina of Ontario, Canada to learn more about why they built their own boat show guide directed at boating consumers. The high-value content not only helps consumers confidently navigate boat shows but also make informed purchases they’re happy with. Learn how a free resource like this can help demystify boat shows for boaters in your area.
Use High-Value Content to Generate Leads Before the Boat Show
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4 Turnkey Tips to Maximize ROI at Boat Shows
Your participation in boat shows drive sales and marketing. This is especially true during industry down cycles, because you bring together a concentrated audience of potential buyers. Boat shows allow you to promote innovation and engage with new and existing customers to build trust or re-establish brand loyalty while also generating leads. But how can you be sure you’re doing the correct things to maximize your ROI at boat shows? Use these four tips (highlighting innovation, marketing to new boaters, offering incentives,and conducting market research) from the Discover Boating team to help your team stay in front of market trends and consumer preferences.
DATA
Dealer Feedback – Boat Shows
You need boat shows to continue to produce leads for your dealership. Knowing tactics and strategies for success is helpful in dialing in your own approach to the 2025 boat show season. The recent MRAA Pulse Report, in partnership with Baird and Soundings Trade Only, surveyed marine retailers about their spending plans and strategies for the year ahead. How does your business compare?
MRAA Members ONLY:
Not an MRAA Member? Reach out to Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership, at sherri@mraa.com.
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Dealers Share Boat Show Best Practices & Strategies
As a decision-maker at your dealership, you understand boat shows — and the leads they generate for your business and sales team — play a pivotal role in the success of your business. That’s why it’s important to have strategic planning put in place best practices for boat show success. Along with managing the show logistics, you need your team to emphasize follow-up, customer engagement and to use structured processes for better results. Dealers recently shared with us some current trends and strategies they have in place for boat shows in 2025.
TRAINING & EDUCATION
Pro Tips for Anticipating and Negating Consumer Objections
Preparing for a boat show can be both exciting and challenging. It’s an opportunity to connect with potential customers and showcase your products, but it also comes with its own set of hurdles that can make sales feel inefficient and ineffective. That’s why understanding common objections and knowing how to address them proactively can help maximize your sales opportunities.
We recently spoke with Jonathan Dawson, Founder of Sellchology and Dealer Week Educator, to capture his wisdom and effective boat show sales strategies. He understands this can be a pain point for some sales teams out there, so he created four videos to help you engage prospects, handle objections and create more meaningful conversations that lead to sales.
VIDEO 1
VIDEO 2
VIDEO 3
VIDEO 4
Want More from Jonathan Dawson?
Register for Dealer Week Online to watch both of his recent educational courses for marketing tips and best practices in sales.
Have any Dealer Week Online questions? Reach out to Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership, at sherri@mraa.com.
RESOURCES
25 Tips to Enhance Your Boat Show Tactics
We understand your time is limited, so we’ve combed through the MRAA guide below to gather a couple dozen evergreen tips to help your team find more boat show success.
MRAA’s Guide to Boat Show Success
Navigating the boat show season is an annual occurrence for your dealership. Chances are you’ve had certain levels of success, but often wondered how to create a system that helps your team generate better results. Whether it’s an in-person event at a convention center, an in-house expo at your dealership or a virtual show, the “MRAA’s Guide to Boat Show Success” offers numerous tips and tactics to navigate this busy time and create numerous opportunities to connect with your customers.
MRAA Members ONLY:
Not an MRAA Member? Sign Up Here.
EDUCATION
Boat Show Sales Best Practices
Dealerships that are game changers are not afraid to disrupt the status quo, re-invent or totally innovate to stand out. While they swim in the same ocean as everyone else, their ability to think and and act different and take a different approach to how they interact as a boating business, helps them row together and stay ahead of the pack. But how what can your sales team do differently from everyone else out there to set you apart and, not only that, but earn your customers’ trust?
You can capture some critical boat show best practices from two Dealer Week 2024 educators in Marcus Sheridan and Jonathan Dawson. Both share unique methods for enhancing dealership sales tactics.
Sheridan’s course teaches your team how to:
- Respond to any prospect concern or doubt with confidence and trust-building techniques.
- Distinguish between effective and ineffective questions to enhance discovery and understanding.
- Achieve trusted advisor status through deeper discovery questions.
- Build immediate trust and authority through powerful verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
- Manifest a presence that stands out to your prospects and earns you respect as a sales professional.
Dawson’s course teaches your team how to:
- Become a proactive sales professional using a five-step process.
- Implement a simple-to-use, easy-to-understand method for uncovering buyer motivations.
- Close more sales using customer-centric psychology.
You have until March 1, 2025 to register for Dealer Week Online to watch both of these sales courses and the other 18 educational sessions.
Have questions? Reach out to Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership, at sherri@mraa.com.
EDUCATION
Set the Stage for Boat Show Success
You have a lot on your plate and a lot riding on boat shows. Now imagine if you could maximize your preseason sales by improving your entire boat show process and how your team prepares for the event(s). Your success depends on your proactive and strategic effort. That’s why it’s crucial to plan for every show you participate in, from external events to your in-house boat shows. You need build and execute a plan, from top to bottom, that allows you to hit your objectives and create sales momentum for the selling-season ahead.
This MRAATraining.com course with Liz Keener, MRAA Director of Deal Development, provides you with proven best practices. You’ll learn create clear goals, help your attending staff to excel, understand the various buyer types and establish a post-show follow-up system to drive sales.
Silver & Gold Members ONLY (Log in required):
Not a Silver Member? Reach out to Sherri Cuvala, MRAA Director of Membership, at sherri@mraa.com or learn more about MRAA Membership.
EDUCATION
Improve Sales Productivity by Focusing on the Customer Interview
with Bob McCann
Chances are your sales team has moments of brilliance and at other times have struggled during the past few months to convert leads into customers. It can be frustrating when you capture leads, but cannot carry the prospect to the next level and make the sale. That’s why now is the time to invest in sales training.
This session from veteran dealership consultant and sales trainer Bob McCann, helps train your salespeople to improve their interviewing skills. Not only will they learn to build better rapport, they also learn the customer’s wants and needs while building rapport. Bob is a big fan of role-playing, so you’ll gain insights on using this powerful skill to your advantage before using it with a customer.
Silver & Gold Members ONLY:
Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!
EDUCATION
Selling Value & Experience in the New Economy
with Ryan Estis
Today’s sales teams must become more sophisticated to earn customer access from a position of expertise. When boat buyers are considering a purchase, they can do most of their research online. That means consumers enter sales conversations with more knowledge and objections, which mandates a new, value-based and deeply customized approach to the sales experience. It’s vital to show up prepared with competitive readiness and the ability to earn customer relationships that can sustain growth longterm.
This session helps your sales team win in this constantly changing and complex world. Learn to: Get more customer access, position value over price, elevate customer confidence from a position of expertise and drive decisions to close.
Silver & Gold Members ONLY:
Not a Silver Member? Learn more about Silver Membership!
