Success secrets of the Top 100

For 10 years, the Boating Industry Top 100 has recognized the best boat dealers in North America. From recession to recovery, the industry looks very different than it did a decade ago.

Over the years, the Top 100 has changed as well, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the drive dealers have to be the best. In fact, this year’s competition was the stiffest in years – not only when measured by the number of applications received, but also by the sheer quality of companies that applied.

2013 was another good year for the Top 100. On average, they increased revenue by 13 percent for the year – the third straight year of double-digit growth. The Top 100, along with the four Hall of Fame companies, represents more than $2.1 billion in total revenue, an increase of more than 16 percent from last year.

On the following pages, you’ll find not only our list of the Top 100, but also this year’s Dealer of the Year – Gordy’s Lakefront Marine – and the Best in Class winners, Hall of Fame companies and Editors’ Choice dealers. As in 2013, we’ve ranked the Top 20 from No. 1 to No. 20, with the remaining 80 companies listed in alphabetical order.

The Top 100 dealers have also shared some of their success secrets – best practices in marketing, service and more.

From the thousands of boat dealers in North America and hundreds of nominations, read on to see the best of the best in the boating industry.

Success secrets of the Top 100

The Boating Industry Top 100 is not just about recognizing the best dealers in North America. It’s also about sharing their best practices with other dealers to improve the entire industry.

These are just a handful of the strategies the Top 100 has used to reach more than $2.1 billion in revenue in 2013. (For more best practices, be sure to read the Best in Class profiles by clicking here.)

Delivery process

At Bosun’s Marine, Mashpee, Mass., the delivery process starts during the sales process, when potential buyers meet the delivery captains at boat shows or during sea trials. Once the boat is sold, the orientation begins in earnest.

“Every boat sold by Bosun’s Marine comes with an on-the-water orientation, and the process lasts as long as the customer requires,” said company president Tim Leedham. “For smaller boats, orientations can be completed in less than two hours, but larger vessels may require two or three days.  Our staff spends as much time as necessary to help customers practice docking and learn how to operate their new boats. If our own staff is too booked to continue this instruction, and the new buyer or Bosun’s personnel still feel uneasy, we will provide an outside captain, at the company’s expense, for a day of extra training.”

Budgeting

Planning and tracking the budget is a total team effort at Maine’s Port Harbor Marine, involving input from directors, managers, salespeople and technicians from its five locations.

“During our strategic planning sessions we as a team agree on a percentage of growth and begin working on a growth plan for each profit center,” said president Rob Soucy.

Port Harbor uses a budgeting program called Budget Maestro, which allows the company to budget, compare with prior year’s performance and also make hypothetical assumptions and what affect it would have on the bottom line. The reports are then accessible by all of the managers.

“You will not find a dealer more focused or in tune to informing their team as to what the score is,” Soucy said. “Each location manager and director is sent a report four times per month to let them know ‘Where are we?’  This report is sent half way through the month, with one week to go, with three days to go and then where we ended.”

The directors and managers use this to help drive their decisions and manage their areas of responsibility.

“This whole process has helped with accountability and is one of the reasons I believe in our continued success in a challenging environment.” Soucy said. “Knowing what the goal is and then knowing where you stand towards that goal with an opportunity to affect change helps keep you focused.”

Boosting CSI scores

Strong’s Marine, Mattituck, N.Y., spent a good portion of 2013 working on improving its CSI scores.

“While all of our employees and management lived by our motto of ‘Home of Super Service’ we felt that we needed to expand on exactly how passionate we all were about the company we worked for and the product we deliver every day,” said president Jeff Strong.

Strong’s redefined the motto to its new purpose, mission and core values to reflect that emphasis.

Purpose: We believe that time on the water enriches lives and brings people closer
Mission: We are dedicated to fulfilling dreams by creating life-enhancing recreational possibilities, one family at a time
Core Values: S-Super Service T-Teamwork R-Respect O-Ownership- N-Nurture G-Growth S-Seek Fun

“We are working to instill a company culture based on these values,” Strong said. “When we hire new employees we make sure they will fit into our culture so we are able to offer our clientele 100 percent satisfaction along with a focused team that works well together.”

In 2013 Strong’s revamped its CSI surveys, inspired by Fred Reichheld’s “Ultimate Question.” Scores and comments are closely monitored and tracked in a log. Immediate action is taken to resolve any issues. If there are specific concerns mentioned, the client’s sales or service contact will call to make sure they understand the full nature of the issue, acknowledge it and work to resolve it in a fair and open way.

A complete monthly CSI summary is emailed and/or handed out to all employees company-wide, summarizing manufacturer, internal CSI, and Team Core Values scores including policy work from current year and previous year. Service advisers, parts and yard managers and the shop foreman have incentive programs that tie in CSI numbers (manufacturer and internal) on a quarterly basis. In order to receive the incentive pay certain criteria for CSI must be met.

Boat show success

Finding the right balance of expense and benefit is always a challenge at boat shows. Advantage Yacht Sales, Newburyport, Mass., has been making the most of its boat show space by partnering with other companies to showcase the boating lifestyle.

“The challenge isn’t so much competing against the other dealers, but simply communicating the joy, enjoyment and value of boating,” said president Douglyss Giuliana.

The company has also invited a few recent owners to sit in the booth for a few hours and simply talk to prospects and tell stories of their time on the water. The owners receive show tickets and a small gift for their time. They provide credible information and advice to prospects and are better at telling their stories of fun, Giuliana said.

Advantage has also combined booth space with SailTime bases in Boston and Rhode Island and with two sailing schools.

“By combining all of our space, we had the largest sailing display by far,” Giuliana said. “This also allowed us to select an ideal location in the show, at the front of the sailing section.”

Given that Advantage doesn’t sell many large cruising boats right at the shows, maximizing the return on a show requires that the sales team gets contact information from the hot prospects and has great reason to follow-up with them. “For example, we always plan a test sail or open house a couple weeks after a boat show,” Giuliana  said. “So for true prospects, we can offer them an invite if we can get their email. When we have something to offer in return, prospects are more likely to give us their contact info.”

A repair done right the first time

Getting a service job done quickly is important, but not as important as having it done right, says Colorado Boat Center.

The Johnstown, Colo., dealer has a bonus plan that puts $50 a week into each technician’s account. If a boat comes back for rework, each technician is docked $40.

“The strategy behind docking all technicians is to re-enforce the importance of checking your own work, when in doubt, asking for help from another technician, and each technician taking team responsibility for all work done in that department,” said vice president Nancy Smith. “It has created a stronger team effort to work together for the good of the department.”

The service manager also receives a quarterly bonus for increased profits and maintaining a minimum CSI average. That position is also checking for accuracy after the job is completed and before the boat leaves the lot. Additional bonuses and spiffs can be given at any time to reward a tech at management’s discretion.

Social media giveaways

A major goal of Traverse Bay Marine in 2013 and 2014 was to boost its social media marketing.

The Traverse City, Mich., company contracted with its local NBC television station to give away a $9,500 Sea Doo PWC last year and repeated the process this year with the giveaway of a Lund fishing boat with a Mercury engine.

To qualify, entrants have to register online and “Like” Traverse Bay on Facebook.

“If they share this with someone else on Facebook, they get another entry and so on,” said CEO Jim Rautio. “We received over 2,000 likes in 15 days with the Sea Doo and over 1,000 likes for the same time frame with the Lund.” In addition, the TV station sent out four e-mail blasts of 54,000 each about Traverse Bay Marine and the Sea Doo and Lund contest. There are also 70 TV commercials as well as live mentions five times daily about Traverse Bay Marine and the contest by the NBC TV news anchor.

“Live the Legend”

There’s no better advocate than the employee who understands the product. With that in mind, Legend Boats, Whitefish, Ontario, implemented its “Live the Legend” boat loaner program this year, which allows employees to reserve and use a Legend Boat so they better appreciate the company’s mission to create memories, said general manager Jamie Dewar.

“The feedback we have received from our Live the Legend program is incredible,” Dewar said. “We believe that giving the opportunity to all Legend team members to use our products to create their own memories has increased employee engagement, loyalty and truly created strong brand advocates that realize that what they do every day truly does have the potential to positively affect the lives of others.”

In the past year, Legend had one of its team members’ son use his Legend Boat for his wedding proposal and the operations manager use a pontoon for a wedding.

“We are excited to be able to offer these opportunities to all of our Legend Team members,” Dewar said. “It feels amazing to see our team creating these experiences. We are so proud to see our team living our mission, creating their own Legend memories.”

Brand building

When BMC Boats created its new vision statement in 2013 – “BMC Boats Creating The Best Boating Experience Possible” – the Longwood, Fla., dealer wanted to make sure it built all of its marketing and branding around that idea.

“By branding, our goal in marketing is to distinguish BMC boats from the other boat dealerships in town by creating a boating experience totally different than anyone has ever experienced anywhere else,” said vice president Paula Fulton. “No doubt, the business model we are creating will overwhelm the visitor with the WOW factor. We believe we have more avenues to offer than any other dealership in town, cruise club, ladies training classes, guaranteed trade-in protection, fishing seminars, electronics classes, top notch certified technicians, a beautiful facility and the largest inventory selection of new and used boats all priced to meet the needs of our customers.”

BMC wants customers to easily identify its name with extreme recognition for high quality, high value and top notch service and become “Raving Fans.”

“By creating tremendous value from our product sales and offerings, we strive to provide our customers with hassle free enjoyment in their experience with us,” Fulton said.

Internal sale contest

One of the most effective sales strategies for Hagadone Marine Group in 2013 was a year-end sales contest. This new incentive proved to be a powerful tool that boosted 4th quarter revenue to a record level for the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, dealer.

“In September, we could see the business was going to fall short of budget by a large number,” said Paul Nielsen, director of sales. “Because of this, we developed a sales contest. We increased sales goals for each person with incentive programs and contests. It gave us a huge close to the year.”

The contest was designed to eliminate older inventory and reward the salesperson for getting boats paid in full before the end of the year. The contest ran from October 1 through the end of December 2013. Each brand of boat was assigned a point value, with non-current inventory being awarded double points, versus current 2013 models or 2014 pre-order boats. The contest included pre-owned inventory as well. There were also additional points awarded for having the sold boats paid for before the end of December. When a deposit was taken, the boat was awarded its point value.

The object was simple: earn the most points. The way to go about that was to sell non-current boats and have them paid in full before years end. There would only be three winners out of the six sales people, so there was incentive to stay on top of the game to qualify in the top three. The cash prize was staggered for each place, with $5,000 for 1st, $3,500 for 2nd and $2,000 for 3rd.

“This contest was a great way to motivate the sales department in a normally slow time of the year,” Nielsen said. “It was also a huge benefit to the dealership, as it helped eliminate older inventory. It created the momentum needed to achieve our year-end goal and it kept morale very high during a traditionally slow time of year.”

Pumping up turn rate

Hampton Watercraft and Marine takes a detailed, aggressive approach to managing its turn rate.

“We establish our cost lines and then utilize liquidation trend charts to determine when to lower our cost lines so that we are aggressively selling before inventory gets to the aging point where the odds of liquidation are low,” said Anthony Villareale, president of the Hampton Bays, N.Y., dealer. “We meet with our floor plan manager to get feedback on our account as compared to our history (number of units and dollars aged compared to previous year) and compared to their average dealer.”

In addition to manage inventory turns, the sales team discusses the oldest inventory at weekly sales meetings and brainstorms strategies on how to sell the old inventory.

“We do so by providing special pricing, moving the boat around the property or to our other location, or increase our advertising efforts on that specific boat,” Villareale said.

Tactics such as featuring boats in the monthly e-newsletter, placing an additional ad in the newspaper, making a custom banner ad for the company’s website and other sites and increasing the commission on older boats have all proven to be effective strategies.