Guest Blog

Bob McCann, Director of Education, ARI – We find that most new prospects who visit a dealer’s booth at a boat show for the first time aren’t ready to commit on the spot. In fact, most sales are closed with prospects that dealers have been working with for quite a while, even as far back as past shows. Boats are ...

By Dan Coughlin, The Dan Coughlin Co. – People are often categorized into groups by things like their gender, race, height, year of birth, and nationality. Then all sorts of assumptions are made about each person based on their combination of these labels. Those labels mean nothing to me. They don’t tell me anything about the individual because the individual ...

According to recent statistics, in the month of June, 14 million U.S. mobile phone users used their smart phones to scan QR or barcodes that were found in newspapers, magazines and product packages that could be found in a store or at their residence.

Boat show season is right around the corner and winter will be here before you know it. What plans are you working on to build your own display traffic?

By Jeff Scherer, Lifestyle Integrated Inc. – When I started in marine marketing over 10 years ago, we preached the message that businesses should be less concerned with the dealership down the street, but more about the recreational activities (sporting events, vacations, etc) that all compete for that recreational spend. While there may be no argument that is still true, ...

By Dan Coughlin, The Coughlin Co. – Pride has gotten a bad rap over the years. First, it got lumped into the seven deadly sins, and then it was labeled a negative as executives and managers went in search of humility. It became the in-thing to say, “I was just lucky to be surrounded by good people, and I really ...

By Jim Ackerman, President of Ascend Marketing – In our last column we suggested that the hit-and-miss approach to referral generation is costing you money and we gave you the reasons why referral selling is so wonderful, along with recommendations for how you can execute a more systematic approach to referral generation. In this column, we’re going to reveal and ...

Don’t you love it when someone walks into your dealership and says, “My friend Alex told me all about you guys and I wanna buy a boat.”?

What does it cost you to acquire a new customer? It’s important to know, it’s easy to figure out, and it’s a good bet that not one boat dealer in 20 knows the number.

By Dan Coughlin, The Dan Coughlin Co. — Many great achievements can be traced back to overcoming disadvantages. Many great failures can be traced back to a lack of disadvantages. Be careful about complaining about your disadvantages and about assuming that your advantages will guarantee you success in life. Disadvantages can help propel you to see your situation from different ...