There is a lot of buzz today about entrepreneurs and start-ups. The twenty something programmers who are trying to create the next Facebook while living off of Ramen noodles and Red Bull are getting plenty of press. Successful entrepreneurs are willing to work long hours and are incredibly focused. Business owners and managers have been talking about trying to recreate that culture within their companies for some time now. Is it possible? Or more importantly is it desirable?

I was compelled to look at this issue within my own company when I began to get the sense that some of our people were simply coming in, doing their job and leaving. For some, a sense of passion seemed to be lacking. More importantly it forced me to look within and evaluate how I was communicating with the team and how the team communicated amongst themselves. Then someone on my team handed me a document showing “What employers think employees want” and “What employees really want”. Read More

A common pitfall that RV and Marine Dealerships often fall into when servicing their customers is the silo effect.  Many different departments responsible for providing different services to the same customer can trip up most organizations.  Without the proper tools and processes in place, the customer is left feeling like they are dealing with an entirely different business each time they do business with a different department.

When dealing with the corporate world we deal with this lack of interdepartmental communication regularly.  Just because you have a checking account at a major national bank, doesn’t mean that the teller can help you with your mortgage. “I’m sorry that’s a different department”, is the frustrating response we often hear.  The same is true when a customer arrives at your service counter but you have no record of his unit inventory purchase or his stay at your Marina last summer with all of his information.  How can your business better address not only the strain on customer satisfaction this type of disorganization provides but also the amount of associated lost revenue?

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RV and Marine businesses usually invest in a wide variety of advertising channels.  The key is to track the performance of each of those channels and the value of the investment in them.  Before planning your annual budget or implementing a new marketing plan, make sure you have a process in place to measure the results of your marketing efforts.   Each person that contacts your business found out about you somehow. The important piece is finding out how, and figuring out how much it cost you to get that lead.

What brings more traffic into your store, online marketing or offline advertising?  What is the quality of that traffic?  How effective are your sales people at converting that traffic into a sale?  These are a few metrics that help determine the return on investment of any advertising budget.  Configure your Dealer Management System and your Customer Relationship Management System to report and easily track data that you need to accurately measure the results of your advertising efforts.

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I woke up one morning and realized things weren’t right with my blog. A blog is like a living organism that evolves and grows if fed, or withers and dies if starved. Furthermore, if no one is providing guidance, a blog can lose focus and spin out of control quickly.

This is precisely what happened here. I needed to find my focus and my purpose for this blog. Learn from my mistakes so you can avoid this problem in your own business or personal blog.

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Has your sales process kept up with the rapid changes in technology?  RV dealership and boat dealership salespeople are finding themselves texting and emailing with their customers as often as they are talking to them on the phone. Does your business facilitate this communication effectively?

It takes a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage all of the incoming traffic available to your business.

On any given morning a Sales Manager may receive email leads from your website, manufacturer websites, online listing services, and classified advertisements in addition to phone calls and foot traffic to distribute to the appropriate sales staff. How does that process work in your business?  Is there a streamlined system designed to get the RIGHT leads to the RIGHT salespeople?

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There is a perfect storm brewing and if you are reading this it is very likely that you are caught in it. The storm is the convergence of cloud computing and the meteoric rise of smartphone usage. If you have a smartphone (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc) odds are that you surf the net with it. According to a study commissioned by Google*, 81% of smartphone users browse the internet. Furthermore, nine out of ten smartphone searches resulted in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.)

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I attended the Florida Yacht Brokers Association meeting in Ft. Lauderdale this month as a panelist. The topic was Issues Facing a Broker in 2011. I was on a panel with experts from the industry and I can assure you that I was the least experienced person on that panel (at least as far as selling boats goes). There were brokers, attorneys, insurance agents and state regulators on the panel who make a living brokering yachts and ships. Me? I run a company that makes marina management software and RV dealership software who has made every mistake possible in the area of e-Marketing, lead nurturing and social media. Read More

The greatest obstacle for most businesses today is figuring out how to convert an interested lead into a buying customer. Research shows the buying cycle for the average customer takes 7 “touches” for a sale to occur – no different for a Marine Business or an RV Dealership. Of course, there are the handful of customers that come into your business, know exactly what they want to purchase, you have what they want, you negotiate a fair deal and head to the bank to deposit your profits.  But what about the other buyers?  Most customers spend time doing product research, checking your business reputation and comparing prices and features after interacting with your business.  They are likely to buy from you, or one of your competitors in the future, but have clearly been classified as “not ready to buy today”.  Are you still engaged with your customer during these times?  Is your idea of “lead nurturing” having your sales people call the lead until they won’t answer their phone? Read More

We have talked about how to use YouTube to improve your marketing, improve SEO, and to easily communicate sales and marketing messages to your customer. There are also some very powerful ways to use this tool to vastly improve service to your customers, save money, and increase the accuracy of communication.

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Nostalgia: We humans seem to be drawn to it. Most of us have a soft spot in our heart for the good old days. Remember when vinyl was in and you would sit around as a kid listening to your favorite bands, staring at the album cover, the inner liner, the record sleeve and so on? Read More