With Noel Osborne, David Parker, and others

Now that the dust has begun to settle following one of the worst downturns the marine industry has ever seen, it’s finally possible to step back and analyze exactly what happened. In this kickoff session of the Powering Profits track of the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo (scheduled for Nov. 14-17 in Orlando, Fla.), well-known marine industry consultants will discuss what went wrong for many dealers when the economy tanked and how it could have been avoided.

David Parker of Parker Business Planning, Noel Osborne of Osborne & Associates and others will provide in-depth analysis of how careful budgeting and proper business planning can help dealers mitigate or avoid disaster when it strikes. Each consultant will individually present case studies, financial reviews and in-depth examples of dealers that made the wrong choices and those who made the right choices. The session will culminate with a group question and answer session where the audience is free to engage these consultants in further conversation on the strategies they advise.

To learn more about “Lessons from the Recession” 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.

The “Lessons from the Recession” panel will kick off the Powering Profits track and will be followed by presentations with a focus on how to adopt best practices, (re)building your dealership’s culture, the best new ideas from marine dealers, fact-driven dealer management and pay plans that work. Powering Profits is the newest track at MDCE, geared specifically toward dealer principals.

Other MDCE offerings include the Sales & Marketing track, which is perfect for sales managers and marketing managers and includes topics such as how to make more money by discounting less and charging more, high-impact, low-cost marketing tactics, the keys to succeeding as a 24/7 marine dealer, converting online leads into sales profits, immediate results using search engine marketing, and closing sales in a difficult economy. 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, how to strengthen your service manager and more.

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.”