As the CARES Act stimulus program was running out of money last week, nearly 60 percent of the boat dealers that responded to MRAA’s research reported that they had applied but had yet to receive their funds.

 

As noted in an early-April survey, close to 90 percent of boat dealers had already applied or planned to apply. This, according more than 450 survey responses.

 

By the end of last week, more than 420 dealer responses showed that 57 percent of dealers had applied and had still not received their funds, while 30 percent of the respondents had already received their funds.

 

Nearly 60 percent of boat dealers who applied for a federal loan under the 
U.S. stimulus program have yet to receive their funds.

 

 

“We were told we should have the funds next week,” reported one dealer.

 

“The SBA approved us, but we have been waiting over seven days for loan documents from the bank,” said another.

 

“How long should this take?” asked another.

 

Many of the dealers who had not received their funds reported frustration and confusion with the process of applying and receiving their loans.

 

“We are approved and have a loan number,” noted one dealer. “Since we have this info, are we guaranteed the money?”

 

“This is taking too long,” commented another. “The process, as far as communication, is very poor!”

 

“The SBA has funded us, but now it’s on to the necessary bank documents before we get the funds,” said another. “It’s been weeks and a damn-convoluted process.”

 

“My CPA said that since I have not received a PIN number yet to re-file,” one dealer explained. “She said the SBA sent a memo out that if no PIN was received that the business should re-file. Some applications got lost in confusion.”

 

MRAA wrapped up the survey results the day the CARES Act ran out of money. Yesterday, the U.S. Senate approved a nearly half-trillion-dollar additional aid package that includes $380 billion for small businesses. There’s hope that the U.S. House of Representatives will pass the bill later this week.

 

Thirteen percent of last week’s respondents reported that they had not applied, which falls in line closely with the combined 12 percent of early-April survey respondents who said they were undecided or didn’t know enough about the loans yet or that they did not play to apply.

No matter what your dealership’s situation – business as usual or otherwise – in most places around North America, traffic is likely to be slower than normal for a while as the COVID-19 crisis runs its course. While it’s certainly not the time to take your eyes off of finding revenue, there’s always time to train your team and today’s slower environment may offer you the perfect opportunity to do just that.

 

In our efforts to help dealers strengthen their teams and come out of this slowdown stronger than they were when they went in, MRAA has made all of its standard educational courses at MRAATraining.com FREE to any dealership personnel – MRAA Member or not — through the end of May 2020. We believe if your team taps into these courses, which have received world-class net promoter scores, you’ll be able to ramp up more quickly when the economy begins to rebound. (Learn how to access the courses on the home page of MRAA.com)

 

Theresa Syer’s Customer Experience Workshop from Dealer Week 2020
is one of the top-four most purchases courses at MRAATraining.com 

 

 

So, to help you get started, here are the four most popular courses dealers are watching on MRAATraining.com as well as the four courses I personally think they would find equally, if not more valuable. (Please note: In order for the links below to work, you must be signed in at MRAA.com).

 

Here are the four most-popular courses right now:

 

A Is For Attitude

If ever there’s a time that your attitude is critical, it’s in the midst of a crisis. Sure, there’s a lot on your mind today, but if you’re walking around letting fear or anxiety show up on your face, that’s not going to work for anyone. A crisis like this calls for a leader with a positive attitude and lots of optimism. Tap into this course to learn how the beliefs and attitudes of you and your team members will directly impact the rest of your team, your customers and your company’s bottom line.

 

Master The Write-Up

Many brick-and-mortar boat dealer locations these days are operating only their service and parts departments. And there are times where it looks like the service department is the best opportunity to drive revenue in today’s climate. So getting your service department to operate at its highest level of effectiveness is critical. Check out this course to learn how master service advisors build rapport, identify needs, make recommendations address concerns and reach agreement with their customers, one write-up at a time.

 

Service CSI & Upselling: Not an Either/Or Proposition

Today’s intense focus on driving service revenues and profitability has many dealers turning to this great course by service expert Valerie Ziebron. When done right, a service department’s CSI and profitability go hand-in-hand. This course will give you insights into the strategies that top service and parts advisors use to improve both metrics at the same time, and you’ll learn the key elements within an advisor’s control that can keep the customer loving your dealership with each service and parts experience.

 

Supercharge Your Customer Experience Workshop

One of MRAA’s newest courses, this in-depth workshop shot at the 2019 Dealer Week, will share 7 Key Emotional Motivators that can shift the tide emotionally for customers. Noted customer experience expert Theresa Syer will also show you how to develop your own Key Emotional Drivers that will affect those Emotional Motivators and keep your dealership’s customers coming to you, working with you and ultimately buying from you.

 

 

There’s no denying that those are four great courses that you could learn a lot from. But here are four courses that everyone should be watching to help them navigate today’s market place:

 

The Agile Dealership: Confidently Responding to Change & the Unknown

The original description for this said, “no one knows exactly when the next recession will hit…” So, let’s start with an update: It’s quite likely we’re in the midst of a recession as I type this. And this course was designed specifically to help you through such a scenario. It will help you identify, monitor and respond to the key issues you face now and into the future. It covers the characteristics of agile leaders, concerns employees have during change and indicators you can use to ensure your business is on track.

 

Buyer Motivation: The Key to Building Value

In any sales environment, the key to closing the deal is building value. In today’s abnormal marketplace, it’s even more critical that you understand buyers’ personal motivations. Through this course, you’ll learn the four main buying motivations that govern most purchases, how to translate features into personalized benefits to those motivations, and the six magic words to use as a transition statement for personalized presentations. Now’s the perfect time to refine this critical sales technique. And you’ll be impressed with the format and comprehensive approach of this course, which mimics our Dealership Certification continuing education.

 

Master Your Time & Stress

In the new work-from-home world we’re living in, particularly with health concerns surrounding us, there may no better time to learn how manage both your time and your stress. In this course, you can learn how to gain control of your day, manage stress that can improve your job performance and satisfaction and avoid the most common dealership time crushers – even if you’re not quite back into the dealership full time yet. Please note that in addition to this great course, we recently published a guide to working from home, complete with resources that will help you manage your time.

 

Increase Closing Rates with Content Marketing

As dealers look for ways to cut costs with the sudden market slow down, they typically look to non-revenue-producing departments like marketing to make that happen. Experts like highly regarded Marcus Sheridan advises differently, and in his course here you will learn how content marketing can be the greatest sales tool in the world. In the ever-blurring lines between sales and marketing, you need this course to help you learn the powerful effect that great content has on the buying process, as well as how it impacts leads, appointments and closing rates.

 

Tap into these courses — FOR FREE — to help you power through this downturn and into a brighter future.

 

Over the course of the last month, MRAA has been in touch with thousands of dealers, through one-to-one contacts and surveys that are keeping the pulse of their businesses throughout today’s market place. It became clear in week one that the top concern on their minds was their cash flow. It makes sense — it’s the simple question of whether or not they have enough to pay their bills … and for how long?

 

But through our charting of every conversation, every email, every question on our dozen-plus webinars to date, and more than 1,000 open-ended responses to our weekly surveys, we’ve identified the five most critical issues on dealers’ minds. I encourage you to think about how your business can support dealers in these areas:

 

1.     Cash Flow
It’s the topic on every business leader’s mind today. How much cash do I have? How much cash will be coming in? And how long can I keep my business running under various scenarios … scenarios created using greater levels of uncertainty than ever before. MRAA responded with a series of webinars to help dealers manage cash flow, but they’re looking for other creative ways their partners can help them through this crisis. It should come as no surprise that three of the other four hot buttons (if not all four) directly impact their cash flow.

Dealer Insight: “Independent dealers are going to be most concerned about money. Cash flow is drying-up and debt payments are due and will soon become the most significant disrupter in their business.”

 

 

2.     Government Support
The first three stimulus programs are out, and while the Paycheck Protection Program has run out of money, there’s hope that a fourth stimulus may arrive as soon as this week. The programs are directly aimed at helping small businesses – with fewer than 500 employees – get through this downturn, providing for funds that can be applied to payroll, health care benefits, employee compensation, mortgage interest, rent, utilities, or importantly, “interest on any other debt obligations that were incurred before the covered period.” READ: Floorplan financing interest. Read MRAA’s analysis of the stimulus programs here, including an FAQ.

Dealer Insight: “My worries are about my business being able to pay the flooring interest as we go on hold. And as we go back, will there be an economy that will give people confidence to buy? I cannot sit on inventory for long periods of time.”

 

3.     People
There’s a really difficult balance right dealers are striking at the moment. Through the workforce crisis of the last decade, they have worked hard to build great teams. They want to keep them on the payroll. They also have to navigate the risk of people working in a public setting and potentially being exposed to the virus. How does one balance the safety of their employees with the needs of keeping those employees paid? How does a dealership keep employees on the payroll if they are deemed “non-essential” businesses and are not allowed to work? There’s a lot to figure out. MRAA’s Legal Insights Ask the Expert webinar, along with our FAQ on the subject can provide some of the answers.

Dealer Insight: “We work really hard to hire amazing people. We don’t want to be in the position where we can’t employ them. How can I keep our awesome employees if we aren’t working? I need to pay them. How do we balance, we want to keep people safe AND work/stay afloat?”

 

4.     Industry Support
MRAA has heard a steady rhythm, particularly in the early days of the slowdown, of dealers wondering how their partners would rally to support them. While many announcements on that topic have circulated and the support has become clearer (and we’ve included those we’ve gathered on this page), the questions have slowed. Still, like it did in the midst of The Great Recession, the sentiment remained that it will take strong dealer-supplier partnerships to help companies through this crisis.

Dealer Insight: “We need to bring the industry together — manufacturers, dealers and lenders — to all take a breath and think this through. We can win, collectively, and it will help with calming those who are panicking.”

5.     Best Practices

This crisis hit so fast and so hard that dealers didn’t have much time to react. And every time they adjusted their business, external conditions changed, and they were forced to react again. Mix in the fact that brick-and-mortar retail’s No. 1 ingredient for success is to have customers swing open the door, and today’s “essential-business-only” mandates make for an extremely confusing and challenging environment. Dealers need answers on how to conduct business under these new rules of retail. Check out the resources and blogs MRAA created to highlight such best practices.

 

Dealer Insight: “What are creative ways we can float through this time but keep the business somewhat active (while being shut down)?”

 

MRAA’s Action Guide for Responding to Today’s Crisis is
jam-packed with best practices and resources for dealers.

 

 

As dealers continue to navigate these challenges, they can turn to MRAA’s Action Guide for Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis. They can tap into MRAATraining.com – for FREE – which is packed full of best practices and insights. They can access all MRAA webinars that were specifically produced to help them sell, service and market their business during this crisis. They can access numerous best practices and insights on the opportunities available to them today. And if you have resources available for them, we’d be happy to include them on our Industry Support page.

 

 

 

I’ve spoken at numerous events over the last few years telling the story of how author Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” has impacted me, our team and our overall business here at the MRAA. The bulk of the message in this book, aside from the guide to creating your own “why statement” is that people don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it.

 

At MRAA, starting with creating our why statement has been the guiding light for everything we do — from who we hire, to how we invest in new and current products, and frankly all the way through to providing us with the know-how for our team to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s a powerful tool that can serve as a guiding light for you and your team in all market conditions.

 

In your world, that means they don’t buy a boat from you just because you sell boats; customers today want a deeper connection than that. 

 

Start With Why has had a profound impact on MRAA’s work.

 

 

If you’ve never gone through this process of creating a Why statement, now is the time. We never gain a clearer picture of who we are and what our business really stands for than when we’re fighting for our survival. And through a crisis like this one, those leaders and organizations who truly know why they exist will be the ones who prevail in the best condition.

 

Further than that, while life has slowed down and the majority of us find ourselves working from home, the state-of-pause provides the perfect time to re-start our organizations with a defined “Why.” The exercise will not only help your team rally around a common mission, but will also give your customers and your partners a clear, powerful understanding of why they should believe in you.

 

Having gone through this exercise with our team, here’s my advice on how to do it:

1. Read the book Start With Why by Simon Sinek. It offers deep insights and his expert know-how for creating your own why statement. (Note, he also authored, Find Your Why. A practical guide for discovering purpose for you and your team.)
2. If you’re skeptical, you just don’t like to read or you want to give your brain a head start before your book arrives, check out Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. 
3. Provide these same resources to your team, which would mean buying them the book, and including them in the conversations you will have.
4. Start the conversation by calling a meeting. In the meeting, explain your desire to create a Why statement and that you’d like the team’s input. Ask them to engage the resources you’ve provided.
5. Outline the advice from the book for them as a reminder and ask everyone on the team to write the company’s why statement from their point of view and email it to you.
6. As you collect the statements, compile them in a document without the team member author’s name attached to it.
7. Before your next meeting, send that document to the team for their review.
8. Then, gather to discuss them. Have someone read each statement out loud and then have a brief discussion on what people liked about that statement and even what they didn’t like or don’t agree with. The debate will be a great tool for narrowing down on the company’s overall Why, so make sure to capture key words or phrases that you and the team prefer.
9. Once you have the direction from this meeting, it’s your time to go to work. Sit down with the statements and the key words and phrases and assemble them into a Why statement that you can stand on. It’s important to remember that this isn’t just about today’s market conditions, but rather a statement that can serve you at all times.
10. As the entrepreneur, you need to weight your belief for why your business exists most heavily, but never underestimate the power of including the thoughts and opinions of your frontline workers – the ones who work directly with your customers. Not only can they share insights from experiences they’ve had, but they can oftentimes help clarify your thinking and terminology. Every experience I’ve had with this exercise has provided significant insights from our team members.
11. Once you’ve had time to create it and then tweak it over a short period of time, bring the team back together and share it with them. I would caution you to not share it with them as though it’s the final, final version. But rather, share it with them and ask them to poke holes in it. Does it resonate with them? Will it provide something your customers and partners can believe in? Are there pieces that can be strengthened? Done right, this should become the defining statement for you and your team to power through this downturn and accelerate your growth afterward. It’s critical that you don’t short-change the exercise.
12. Refine the statement, create a final version and then share it with everyone: Your team, your partners, and your customers.
13. And then LIVE IT. You can’t create a Why statement and let it remain words on a page. You have to live it and talk about it and make sure that you’re making decisions based on those words. Make it a part of your culture and ensure that your team knows it and can recite it. One exercise we use to make sure that it’s engrained in all that we do is to randomly bring a blank “Why” statement sheet to our team meetings and ask everyone to – without cheating – write the statement and turn it in. It gives me clear understanding of whether or not we are living our Why.

 

I truly don’t know where MRAA would be today without having that Why statement serve our team. This book, which was recommended to me by Bill McGill at MarineMax, Inc., has had a profound impact on our organization and the focus we bring to serving our industry. I hope you’ll give it a shot yourself.

In our work with dealers over the last few months, the two biggest concerns they’ve had surrounding their cash flow challenges are, as one could imagine, their two largest expense categories: their people and their floor plan expenses.

 

With the stimulus package loan proceeds beginning to refill dealership bank accounts, it’s clear that the intent of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and its aptly named Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were designed to help keep people employed. But many dealers don’t realize that the proceeds can be used for other expenses, as well.

 

The biggest question on dealers’ minds is: Can the proceeds be used to cover floor plan expenses? And the answer, according to the experts we’ve spoken with, is “yes.”

 

Buried in the law itself where it describes the PPP, under Title I Section 1102(F)9i)(VII), the law outlines that the proceeds can be used for “interest obligation on any other debt obligations that were incurred before the coverage period.” Additionally, last Thursday, April 9^th, the Small Business Administration (SBA) released their “Interim Final Rule” on the loans, outlining the intent of the statute, giving themselves the opportunity to clarify further. Section 2(r)(vi) of the rule answers the question of how PPP loans can be used related to interest on debt other than for real estate mortgages. As with the CARES Act, the rule broadly states that dealers can use the loan proceeds to pay for “interest payments on any other debt obligations that were incurred before February 15, 2020.” More info and analysis on the stimulus programs here.

 

“What that means is,” explains Kevin Timson, an Associate at Bellavia Blatt PC, a dealer-focused law firm and long-time partner of the MRAA, “if you signed an agreement for floor plan financing before February 15^th and you continued to make interest payments on that obligation, you should be able to use the loan proceeds for the interest portion of those payments. Both the statute and the rule refer broadly to allowing payments on interest for ‘other debt obligations’ which should reasonably include floor plan financing. Also, there’s nothing in the statute or rules that state otherwise to excluding interest on floor plan financing from such a broad category of debt that could be incurred by dealers.”

 

In an MRAA Ask the Expert Webinar held yesterday, Timson outlined the same, noting that he has spoken with counsel at trade organizations for auto dealers, with lenders and with CPA firms, all of whom have taken similar positions in interpreting the CARES Act to allow PPP loan proceeds for payment of interest on floor plan loans, subject to the borrower’s obligations on such loans to have been incurred prior to February 15, 2020.

 

The thing that dealers should be aware of, however, is that the SBA has not provided any guidance on whether payment on floor plan interest can be forgiven under Section 1106 of the CARES Act. The Act states that interest on mortgages of real property or personal property can be forgiven. However, it is not clear whether the SBA considers floor plan financing a “mortgage of personal property” for the purposes of loan forgiveness under Section 1106. We expect the SBA to be providing further guidance on PPP loan forgiveness in the coming week and hope that such guidance will provide more clarity on this issue for dealers. Keep in mind that even if floor plan interest can be included in any forgiveness amount, dealers are limited in how much they can allocate such interest, or any non-payroll expense, for forgiveness. This is because the rules state that at least 75% of the total amount forgiven on any PPP loan must be for payroll expenses.