By Don Cooper, The Sales Heretic

Don Cooper, one of the most popular presenters at last year’s Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, has a message for dealers: Stop throwing your profits away! That message, under the banner of “The Myth of Price,” will be the foundation of the kickoff presentation for the Sales & Marketing track at the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, scheduled for Nov. 14-17 in Orlando, Fla.

Cooper’s 2009 presentation, “The Future of Selling,” was one of the most highly praised sessions at last year’s MDCE, as Cooper brought his unique flair and plenty of energy to educating a record crowd. This year, “The Myth of Price” will cover how you can make a lot more money by simply discounting less and charging more, a topic that has become extremely timely in light of the glut of inventory and subsequent price discounting the marine industry has been faced with over the last two years.

“Consumers have worked hard to train today’s dealers that they have to have a discounted price in order to buy a new boat,” Cooper explains. “That is simply not the case, and if you don’t believe me, just wait — immediately after this revealing presentation you’ll be raising your prices and reaping the rewards.”

The session will cover why you should increase your prices today, the keys to outselling your low-price competitors and why you should (almost) never discount. Attendees will walk away with practical tips that will include how to make your higher prices a selling point; what to do when your prospect pressures you for a discount; the Jedi mind-trick prospects use against you and how to combat it; and the one thing you must always do with your prospect.

In addition, Cooper will share the huge problem with “value-added” selling and what to do about it, what people really mean when they say price is important, the big secret your prospect doesn’t want you to know and how to make your price seem like a bargain.

To learn more about “The Myth of Price,” 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.

Cooper’s “The Myth of Price” presentation will kick off the Sales & Marketing track and will be followed by presentations with a focus on 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, 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.”