By Glenn Roller, The Roller Institute

When sales are as hard to come by as they have been the last two years, dealerships can’t afford to let any leads slip away. That’s why every marine sales person will want to hear Glenn Roller’s top five secrets for closing sales, one of the cornerstone presentations of the Sales & Marketing track of the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, scheduled for Nov. 14-17, 2010 in Orlando, Fla.

These secrets have never been contained in any sales training program that Roller, author of “The Seven Evolutionary Levels to Profound Selling,” has conducted. Until now. And the most significant principle attendees will walk away with is that sellers have the choice to focus on manipulating customers or understanding them and how to apply this information to close more sales.

“When a customer who seemed interested never comes back, a lot of salespeople just shrug and move on,” Roller explains. “There’s an explanation behind why that happened, and that’s one of the subjects we will be exploring during the seminar.”

The mysteries Roller will uncover include: the mystery of customers who walk out to “think about it” and never return to purchase; the mystery of a customer not returning a phone call when they were so interested on their last visit; the mystery of customers wanting to “shop around,” when clearly the boat you carry best meets their needs and they seem to like the price; the mystery of closing more sales that doesn’t involve manipulation or persuasion tactics to move the customer into the decision; and the mystery of selling: is “selling” a customer different than trying to “sell” an idea to my wife, husband, children or sales staff?

To learn more about “The 5 Hidden Secrets to Closing More Sales,” make plans to attend the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, to be held in Orlando, Fla., Nov. 14-17. With three concurrent educational tracks and more than 20 individual educational sessions, this event has been designed to help dealers return to the growth phase they knew prior to the economic downturn.

Roller’s “The 5 Hidden Secrets to Closing More Sales” will be the … ahem … closing session of the MDCE’s Sales & Marketing track, which also includes presentations on how to make more money by discounting less and charging more, a session on high-impact, low-cost marketing tactics, a panel discussion on the keys to succeeding as a 24/7 marine dealer, a session on converting online efforts to sales profits, and a session on getting results using search engine marketing. The Service Department track will be held concurrently, with a focus on how to be a successful service advisor, solving your most troubling service problems, Web strategies for service profits, operational excellence and financial management for service managers and more.

While the Sales & Marketing track is perfect for sales managers and marketing managers and the service track will help strengthen any service manager or advisor, the newest, most exciting news for the 2010 MDCE is the addition of a third track, geared specifically toward dealer principals, titled Powering Profits. In this track, the educational topics will cover such pressing issues as pay plans, (re)building your culture, how to adopt best practices in your dealership, fact-driven dealer management and of course, myriad best practices to go with them. The event will also feature a general session and two keynote sessions, as well.

“We’ve covered all the bases with the education this year, making quality content, specific to service managers, sales managers, marketing managers and dealership principals alike, available in an unprecedented format,” explains Matt Gruhn, publisher of Boating Industry magazine, which partners with the Marine Retailers Association of America to produce the MDCE. “This will, without question, be the best line-up of education this event has ever produced.”