Blog Spotlight

By the Water Sports Foundation All over the country this upcoming holiday weekend, boaters will be cruising to popular gathering spots for watersports, to raft up, drop anchor and swim, enjoy barbecues and cap off festivities with spectacular fireworks celebrations.  “After a year of Covid restrictions, boaters are out on the water in force, soaking up plenty of sun and ...

By Steven Graham Ensuring a loan package is funded quickly is important to your dealership’s business. It takes all three parties – you, your customer, and your F&I team – working in step to make it happen smoothly. Yet, every loan is unique in some way, and requires specific instructions based on the customer, lender, and dealer. So, how do ...

By Wanda Kenton Smith With new and used boat sales soaring to record highs in 2020 to first-time boat buyers, boating safety stakeholders are taking extra measures to communicate and promote safe boating practices in advance of the busy summer boating season. “The pandemic literally saw hundreds of thousands of newcomers join the ranks of first-time boat owners, so we’re ...

By Ezequiel Arredondo Are you struggling to connect with your online audience? Does it seem as though even the most carefully crafted ads fall short of achieving your marketing goals? If your ad campaign ROI isn’t where you need it to be, take a long, hard look at who is seeing your ads and whether your ad content fulfills the ...

By Frank Peterson I started my career in sales, spending over 13 years at Mobil Oil Corporation, before opening my own business. I know, personally, the importance of hitting quarterly and annual sales goals and turning a profit. But I also learned how important it is to plan for the long haul. In fact, it was that long term planning ...

By Ezequiel Arredondo Have you noticed in the last year how we seem to use our phones and other digital devices much more frequently? Last year’s surge in digital usage has resulted in our digital interactions becoming more fragmented and sporadic. But did you know that many of these seemingly meaningless interactions are opportunities to connect with motivated buyers? These ...

By Myril Shaw As a provider of F&I and Compliance excellence, we are always looking to make the best better. As part of that quest for continual improvement, we get excited when we find dealers who are hungry for growth. We find them most often in 20 Groups. Full disclosure here before we go any further. We do not facilitate 20 Groups.  ...

By Mark Overbye Want to stock up on Virgin Cola? Gone. How about buying some Virgin Vodka? Also long gone. Care to purchase an automobile from Internet retailer Virgin Cars? Shuttered in 2005. Perhaps you want to book a flight on Virgin America Airlines? Can’t do it. And you get the idea. Super entrepreneur Richard Branson has started over 100 companies. And he’s ...

By Ezequiel Arredondo We’ve said it before, and we’ll gladly say it again: Shoppers contact your dealership to shop for boat models, but they stay for the customer service. As the buying process becomes increasingly digital, how does this impact dealers’ approach to serving their customers? It turns out consumers have an increased expectation for boat dealers to provide digital ...

By Myril Shaw “We need to make sure our store meets compliance standards, we need a Red Flags Manual.”  Well, unfortunately, having a Red Flags Manual does NOT make a store compliant. In fact, it doesn’t even, by itself, demonstrate a “good-faith” effort to address compliance issues. So why does any of this matter? Nearly 60 million Americans have been impacted by identity ...