In the August 2024 MRAA Pulse Report, a monthly marine retailer survey we partner with Baird and Soundings Trade Only to produce, we found that 2024 continues to be challenging due to soft retail demand, high inventory levels, inflation, consumer hesitancy to purchase and more. This has led to a continuation of negative industry sentiment […]
MRAA Blog
5 Benefits of Installing & FOLLOWING a Sales Process
Natural talent and abilities can only take you so far. All one has to do is look at some of the most elite athletes in sports. Talent can take some of them to all-star status. Hard work and additional effort, day in and day out, can then make an all-star into an all-pro or shape […]
Adding Value to Your Sales Retail Extended Service Contracts (Extended Warranty)
A guest blog by Jason Cochran, Vice President, Global Product Protection In any economic climate or retail market, dealerships that adopt best practices prevail. One example is structuring your organization to offer as many goods and services as your customers need to participate in boating. If you are selling boats, retail finance is a critical […]
Year-Round Strategies for Marine Dealership Financial Planning
• To help build resilience in the face of unpredictability, marine dealership owners can consider adopting adaptive forecasting and flexible planning. By Victor Rivera, Chief Sales Officer, Huntington Distribution Finance† Financial planning and budgeting are often viewed as annual exercises for marine dealership owners – a start-of-year activity that carries throughout the year. However, in […]
Drive Up Your Service Revenue in the Coming Year
[Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of the two-part blog exploring more strategies to improve your service department from Bernie DeGraw, MRAA Senior Education Developer] In part one of this special blog series on boosting service revenue, I shared three things to do now, or as soon as possible, to help your dealership. In this […]
Drive Up Your Service Revenue Now
As dealers, we have all heard a lot this year about diversifying our revenue and increasing our income streams. We hear a broad range of ideas on what to sell and how, how to market and when, and where to get financing and floor plans with different rates. During these unusual times a main area […]
FTC Non-Compete Ban Blocked
Yesterday, August 20, 2024, Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lacks legal authority to implement its “non-compete” rule. As we have previously alerted you in previous updates, on April 23, 2024, the FTC voted 3-2 along political party lines to approve […]
Fuel the Future: Invest in Local Trade School Scholarships
It was early July and the back-to-school advertising started. Back to school can mean a lot of different things. For parents there may be a sigh of relief, for teachers a gasp of “uh-oh” but in the marine industry it signals that the sales will likely slow and the preparation for the offseason gets into […]
Confessions About Fishing and Your Newly Improved Dealership Assistant
I have confession to share with you. Back in the early 1990s, a buddy and I went fishing quite a bit on an Iowa farm pond. Our boat of choice was a flat-bottom, two-person vessel, similar to the PELICAN Boat Bass Raider 10E. We powered it with a trolling motor. Even though it was not […]
7 Steps to Take to Conserve Cash
Developing and maintaining sufficient cash on hand during an economic slump is critical to keeping your dealership healthy. When revenue is lower than expected, leading dealerships balance revenue growth efforts with exploring and implementing cash conservation methods. Here are seven tips for conserving cash shared within an MRAA Ask the Expert webinar with Pat Kennedy […]
