May 25, 2009 – Filling a noticeable void for dealership training

Ever met SARA? She’s downright nasty. Can’t stand her. Don’t know many that really do.
For those who haven’t been properly introduced, SARA is the acronym that describes how we as a society cope with change. Or better said, how we mightily struggle to deal with change.
SARA stands for Shock, Anger, Rationalization and Acceptance.
Those are the four psychological buckets we step into every time we encounter change on a significant level.
I’m guessing SARA has made her way to your dealership or business in many forms this year. Staffing, obviously. Sales volume, likely. Store traffic, possibly. How about OEM interaction?
As it stands, I believe at least seven powersports OEMs that have had national dealer network shows in the past two years will either cancel them this year or postpone them to later this year or even into 2010. Kawasaki Motors Corp., U.S.A. was the first OEM to step forward publicly and announce its intention to cancel its national dealer show and put those dollars into further retail consumer programs.
Enter SARA, the swine. She really knows how to kick you when you’re down.
Personally, SARA made her appearance at my desk early this year after a series of discussions with a number of OEMs. At that time, the final decision to cancel dealer shows had not been made, but you could see what was coming.
Shock immediately set in — coupled with ample doses of disappointment — as rationalization patiently waited its turn.
As we know, there are very good reasons for the cancellation of such shows — yes, I’ve progressed to SARA’s final stage — but there also are just causes for them. National dealer shows, no matter which you attended, had some distinct similarities, namely the smoke and fireworks surrounding the thrilling introductions of new product. Mel Harris, Suzuki’s former motorcycle executive, once jokingly told me he lost more arm hair than he could remember from such stunts.
But equally important, the dealer shows provided valuable training opportunities. And we at Powersports Business did not want to see those opportunities go away, especially in a time like this. As a result, this summer we will present a dealer conference and expo called Profit Xcelerator. Its main purpose will be to drive increased profitability in all dealership profit centers.
That last part is especially critical, and should be the defining reason why you attend this event. From a 2007 national survey, we know dealers rely on new unit sales to account for roughly half of their annual revenue. And this is industry-wide — there is no difference between Harley and metric dealers in this respect.
We also know there is very little chance that new unit sales will remain at 2008 levels. As an industry, we were down more than 30 percent in terms of new unit sales volume in the first quarter, according to Motorcycle Industry Council data. And there have been signs the start of the incredibly crucial second quarter was a disaster in terms of retail sales.
Enter SARA again, right?
Since this is late May, let’s hope you’ve got past the shock and anger stages, licked rationalization and decided acceptance wasn’t in the cards. You’ve decided SARA wasn’t good enough and that the whole concept needs a bit of reworking.
We agree.
SARA, meet SARAH. That’s Shock, Anger, Rationalization, Acceptance and Help.
We’re betting we can introduce you to the latter, kinder acronym at Profit Xcelerator, a two-day event that will follow the Indianapolis MotoGP on Aug. 31.
We’ve spent several months preparing a lineup of speakers and panels that will dive into how to improve profitability in all dealership profit centers. And although we believe the other 50 percent of the revenue — parts and accessories and preowned to name just two departments — are crucial to 2009 success and beyond, we’re not forgetting the main revenue engine in terms of the sales department.
To address profitability issues at the conference, we’re partnering with several dealer consultants and 20 group providers, including Assurant Solutions, whose national vice president, John Tabar, introduced me to SARA earlier this year.
My hope, with assistance from John’s crew at Assurant, is to ditch SARA as quickly as possible for the new and improved SARAH.
Help is on the way to alleviate the shock and anger of 2009. Be sure to look for the upcoming Profit Xcelerator Web site for more information on the event as well as future Powersports Business editions as we introduce our list of speakers and dealer registration information.

A survey change

You’ll notice in this edition’s Focus section that we have made a change in regard to our national dealership surveys. Powersports Business has started working with some of the industry’s biggest players to sponsor some of these surveys. We believe this makes sense for several reasons, one of which is we’re striving to increase the amount of surveying we do and hence provide more real-life answers to both dealers and the industry as a whole. Secondly, working closely with sponsors allows us to get more educated on specific issues and can help us target more appropriate questions. 50 Below officials helped us do just that with the e-commerce study you’ll read about in this issue and in our following edition.
One thing that hasn’t changed is your privacy. Please be assured that your responses to our survey’s questions are not being given directly to the sponsoring company. Yes, we are providing composite results to our sponsors so they may see how their dealer networks differ from the industry as a whole, but we are not handing over each individual dealer’s response. That will remain as safeguarded as it always has been here at Powersports Business. psb
Neil Pascale is editor-in-chief of Powersports Business. He can be reached at npascale@affinitygroup.com.