Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/173871
BOLD MOVES "You can tell a lot when you listen how you talk to people." Baert Marine invested in a new website and social media strategy working with Boat Trader. One of the key tenets of the new process was not pre-judging prospects based on where they were calling from, or to give online leads less attention. The results were stunning, even better than Kelly had hoped for. Baert went from being $500,000 behind in sales in March to being completely sold out of boats by July 1, an unheard of occurrence for the company. In June, the company celebrated its first million-dollar month in nine years – its biggest month in a decade. All of that success was without making changes to the sales team – something Kelly wanted to avoid. "What I'm proud of is that my sales staff did it, they followed the lead and they proved to themselves what they can do," he said. ELIMINATING WASTE GREGORY LENTINE President, NorCross Marine Products Orlando, Fla. Combine declining sales with an increase in costs and you can quickly find a recipe for disaster. That was the situation in which NorCross President Gregory Lentine found his company as the recession hit the marine industry. With NorCross's cost of goods sold rising due to global supply issues, the best way to tamp down costs was to find ways to reduce general and administrative (G&A) costs. NorCross embarked on a strategy of eliminating all excess waste across the company. Utilizing new software helped reduce order processing and shipping time. A shift from inhouse servers to cloud storage reduced costs and maintenance. NorCross reduced quality issues by creating standardized processes that streamlined production and offered incentives for quality assurance. A new online customer support system re28 | Boating Industry | October 2013 P22x28-BI13OCT-BoldMoves.indd 28 28% » Decline in NorCross's G&A costs duced consumer response time from 8.2 hours to 83 minutes. "The second an email, web form, or phone call comes in, it is automatically tracked from start to finish using a ticket system," Lentine said. "By implementing a bonus structure for support team members that revolves around average response time and consumer support ratings, we have been able to achieve an average consumer response time of under two hours and a ticket satisfaction rating of 98 percent." There are two experiences that inspired the strategies, Lentine said. The first was the book "The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success," which inspired many of NorCross's proprietary strategies, revolving around the company's mission. Second was Lentine's experience as a private pilot. As a pilot, he utilizes checklists to make sure critical flight steps are not missed and catastrophe is avoided. The same idea can be applied to a company. "We use checklists from the minute a product is conceived, through development and into deliverables," he said. "My fear when developing these checklists was I'd create a bureaucracy within the company that did as much harm as it did good. So I designed each checklist to be simple yet concise, and geared them toward delivering products that exceed our mission." The changes reduced G&A costs by 28 percent. Even as the market improves, that allows NorCross to position its products at attractive price points and still maintain margins and quality, Lentine said. IMPROVING BROKERAGE BRAD PARKER President, YachtCloser Orlando, Fla. The inspiration for YachtCloser came to Brad Parker a few years ago after a phone call interrupted a trip to the movies with his family. The then-yacht broker was waiting in line to buy tickets when a potential buyer called with a good offer on a listing. The buyer was ready to hop on a plane the next day to come conduct a sea trial and survey of the vessel. "I knew the offer was realistic and knew my seller would probably accept it," Parker said. "Then you start to become held hostage because of the lack tools in the industry to get that deal done. I was 50 miles away from my office, I wasn't at my house, I wasn't at a fax machine." While he eventually completed the transaction (with some frustration to his family), that's when Parker realized there had to be a better way to get a deal done. He knew the tools existed to create and send documents, but nobody had created a solution for the yacht brokerage industry. $2 billion » active contracts on YachtCloser YachtCloser delivers that solution, allowing brokers to create, send and sign contracts from anywhere they have Internet access. The Web-based software provides a total contract management solution including documents, electronic signatures and even state registration paperwork and Coast Guard documentation. "It frees these guys from their offices," Parker said. "They can finish the deal using an iPhone." Since launching in January 2012, YachtCloser has gone from $275,000 in boat transactions that month to more than $26 million in May of this year. In total, there has been about $2 billion in active contracts (pending and signed) using the system. As of August, 77 brokerage houses, representing almost 800 users, had adopted the system. "The biggest challenge has been educating the brokers on the simplicity of it," Parker said. "Once somebody looks at it and actually tries it, they're hooked. 'I should have done this sooner' is the thing I hear the most." www.BoatingIndustry.com 9/5/13 11:43 AM