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 […]
MRAA Blog
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 […]
How Your Dealership Can Stop Competing on Price
Times are tough. It’s tempting to compete on price so your team can move as many boats as possible, but it’s not the best strategy. You need a better message than “buy from our dealership because we’re cheaper than the other guys.” Even if you are cheaper than the other guys! Because sooner or later, […]
21 Dealership Insights into What’s Working Today
• Your fellow dealers share effective strategies for conserving cash, managing inventory, connecting with customers and more As a dealership owner or manager, it would be easy to view the glass of marine retailing today as half empty, particularly when compared to the spike in demand during the pandemic. Case in point, one dealer recently […]
