MINNEAPOLIS – Yamaha Marine Group has been named the exclusive sponsor of the “Service Plus” Track at the upcoming 2013 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo.
The Service Plus Track is one of three educational tracks to be offered at the MDCE, which will be held Nov. 17-20 in Orlando, Fla. This track offers six in-depth educational tracks, with a heavy emphasis on helping dealers strengthen their service department.
“Service work is a cornerstone of any profitable dealership and therefore has been a cornerstone of our educational sessions every year at the MDCE,” explains Liz Walz, Director of Membership & Education for the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, who co-produces the MDCE with Boating Industry. “We’re honored to partner with Yamaha to bring such an outstanding educational line-up to this year’s Service Plus Track.”
Yamaha Marine Group, based in Kennesaw, Ga., is not only sponsoring this track, but is also providing the knowledge and expertise of Valerie Ziebron, one of the most highly acclaimed presenters in the history of the MDCE. Ziebron, a Yamaha University instructor, will present twice at this year’s event. Her first session, which will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 10:15 a.m., is titled “Culture: The Secret Path To Higher Service Profits”; and her second session (4:15 p.m., Nov. 19) is titled “The Profitable, Proactive Parts Department.”
“The MDCE is one of the best venues that dealers can access to find quality educational opportunities,” explains Martin Peters, Communications and Dealer Education Manager for Yamaha Marine Group, “and we’re happy to not only be able to help bring this education to life but also to offer Valerie into the mix. She has successfully educated thousands of dealers on how to strengthen the back-end of their operations and continues to earn rave reviews at the annual MDCE.”
In addition to Ziebron’s two sessions, the Service Plus Track will feature four other sessions:
- 8 a.m. Tuesday: Best Ideas Panel, featuring dealer best practices in service and other areas of the business.
- 2 p.m. Tuesday: Mastering Yacht Brokerage
- 8 a.m. Wednesday: The New Finance Landscape
- 10:15 a.m. Wednesday: Put Your Service Department to the Test
In all, the MDCE offers nearly 30 educational sessions, broken out into three tracks, workshops and special presentations, to help dealers gather ideas and best practices for improving their businesses. For those dealers that want to dig even deeper into the factors that will most impact their businesses in the year ahead, the newly added MDCE Pre-Conference Workshops to be held Monday, Nov. 18th, will enable them to construct a plan in areas like dealership management, boat show sales, service menus, search engine marketing, and the customer experience. Over the following days, individual sessions in the MDCE’s three educational tracks will help attendees enhance their plans for 2014.
The MDCE is scheduled for Nov. 17-20, 2013, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. It has attracted an increasing number of dealers every year since 2007, and this year, the event attracted more than 250 registrants prior to May 1, a record for the event. The most registrants MDCE had ever accumulated prior to May 1 was 92 in 2012.
About the Marine Dealer Conference & Expo
The Marine Dealer Conference & Expo is the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas’ annual conference and member meeting. As the marine industry’s only dealer-specific educational conference, the MDCE features an in-depth line-up of educational topics, a full-featured expo hall, and a series of fixed networking opportunities, all of which are designed to help marine dealers connect with and learn from others who can foster their success. The MDCE is co-produced by the MRAA and Boating Industry, and it offers pre-conference workshops, a keynote presentation, three tracks of educational content, and more than 20 sessions in all. It will be held Nov. 17-20 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. Learn more at www.mraa.com/event/MDCE.