Marine Dealer Conference & Expo

MDCE 2015 • 19 tuesday, Nov. 17th 8:00 a.m. – 9:15 A.M. ADVANCED Get Retail Relevant! If you're going to make big money on marine accessories, or anything else you sell in your store, you need to create retail relevance. That's trendy talk for knowing your core market, picking products that they will find valuable, marketing to them the way they want, and giving them a shopping experience that matches their collective personality. Retail guru Jennifer Robinson will spell out what marine retailers of all types and sizes need to do to get relevant and amp up their sales and profits during this powerhouse session. By Jennifer Robison WALK AWAY WITH: A self-assessment you and your team can complete to determine how relevant you are today and a tip sheet for how to improve your relevancy, sales and profitability moving forward. 10:15 a.m. - 11:30 A.M. ALL SKILL LEVELS Dealer-to-Dealer: Increase Your Service Profits Learn the best practices used by leading service departments, big and small, to grow revenues and boost profitability, and be prepared to share your own. This dealer-to-dealer conversation will address topics like tech- nician compensation, upselling, process mapping, scheduling and billing strategies. Facilitated by Tony Jeary WALK AWAY WITH: A transcript of the best practices shared during this open dealer-to-dealer conversation. 3:45 p.m. - 5:30 P.M. INTERMEDIATE Attract and Keep Techs There is a serious shortage of skilled marine technicians, and the ones currently working are growing older. Is your dealership the kind of place that attracts new techs and keeps your existing techs from looking elsewhere? Surprisingly, it's not all about paying top dollar. This session will lay out what you can do to be the kind of shop that techs want to pull wrenches for. By Valerie Ziebron WALK AWAY WITH: Top ten reasons excellent techs quit, best practices for attracting and growing new talent, tech pay plans, best practices for motivating techs and an action plan for properly moving to incentive-based pay. Wednesday, Nov. 18th 10:30 a.m. - 11:45 A.M. INTERMEDIATE Cut Through The Chaos If your service department is going to grow, your front-line employ- ees need to become masters of tuning out distraction and focusing on customer communication. Effectively listening to your customers and properly responding to their needs and desires is the key to both retaining them as loyal customers and upselling them on more of your products and services. Learn how to strengthen customer relationships and increase sales per customer by improving your team's in-person and telephone communication skills. By Jeff Scherer and Dan Molloy WALK AWAY WITH: Talk tracks you can use to improve the sales and customer service skills of your service department's front-line employees. 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 P.M. ADVANCED Case Study: The Lean Profit Machine In the fall of 2014, Clark Marine teamed up with an expert in Lean Enter- prise methods to see how they could improve his operations. The result? Big leaps forward in workplace organization, worker proficiency, and process flow that led to significantly higher margins in service and storage. During this session, you'll hear a first-hand account of the strategies Clark Marine implemented to make dramatic improvements to an already efficient service department, then receive expert guidance on how to put these same practices to work in your business. By Tim Lawrence and Rob Brown WALK AWAY WITH: Lean concepts you can bring back to your service operation to improve efficiency and profitability. service plus 17 th 17 th 17 th 18 th 18 th SPONSORED BY

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