Salesmanship

THE WORLD'S LARGEST DEALER

Who set the standard of measurement?

As I read various RV trade publications, consumer magazines, campground directories and billboards while driving down the highway, I am always amazed when I see a dealer who advertises his dealership as "The World's Largest."

The World's Largest dealer has a lot of company it seems.

By what measure are we suppose to determine who is actually "The World's Largest Dealer?"

There are several prominent dealerships who spend a lot of money advertising this claim and never stating the measurement standard or statistics to back it up.

Does this help or hurt the RV industry?

Consumers are not stupid. They see the same things that you and I see and probably ask the same question.

Is the dealer the world's largest because of their annual sales volume? Is the dealer the world's largest because of the amount of real estate they occupy? Perhaps it's the number of units sold in a given period of time. Heck, maybe it's just the number of people they employ in their company. Then again, maybe it's the number of units they sold since they first opened their dealership twenty years ago.

Are they counting only the units sold over their nationwide "800" numbers or the units that are only sold on Saturdays each year.

Who sets the standard? Who is measuring all the self-proclaimed heirs to the fictitious throne of nobility in the RV industry?

I've always enjoyed a good sales and marketing challenge and would welcome the opportunity to establish a set of guidelines that all dealers would voluntarily report on so that we could really see who is the largest and by what standards we are going to measure them to.

I don't think this helps the industry as much as many of the dealers who plaster it all over their ads seem to think it does. Then again, I'm the outsider and very willing to listen to the arguments to back up the claims.

The message it sends is that bigger is better.

The bigger you are; the better you are.

The bigger you are; the better the deal.

The bigger you are; the better the service.

The bigger you are; the better the product knowledge of the sales representative.

Nonsense! It just doesn't work that way.

Coupled with many of these same ads you will see the innocuous phrase: We Sell for Less!

Is that something to be proud of?

Isn't that wonderful -- you are the World's Largest Dealer and you Sell for Less.

Larger than who and less than what?

Today's new consumer is looking for much more than unverifiable claims and whimsical slogans. They simply let them know that they can beat the hell out of you on price and everything else and put your company in a position of not being able to provide after-sales support and service. It's not a very good formula for long-term success and customer loyalty.

You are telling the consumer that it simply doesn't matter where they buy their next RV as long as they can get it cheap.

Let's start focusing on building long-term relationships with people who really want to enjoy the RV lifestyle and are willing to pay for quality products and quality service. Let's not drive them into the business and out of the business after their first RV experience.

Why do we think that superstores are the wave of the future? Have you noticed what's happened to Toys R' Us lately? Bigger is not working to their advantage anymore. They established a model of big stores and low prices and set the stage for others to follow -- and like little rats behind the Pied Piper, they followed them from black ink and profit to red ink and failure.

Then there were the manufacturer's who jumped on that "big" bandwagon and forgot all their smaller toy stores and fell over themselves to get their stock on the shelves of every huge Toys R' Us store in the country. Now the manufacturers are feeling the pain when they can no longer ship to the big stores and they forced all the quality oriented smaller stores out of business.

Is this where we want to take the RV industry?

Companies that strive to be the "biggest" often find out that in order to sustain skyrocketing growth they must continually invest in advertising to a broader market, expanding the physical plant and hiring more people.

We call these "expenses."

Big sales = big expenses.

The business is then a slave to volume and they try to justify the lower profits dictated that result from this logic.

The RV Centers concept failed for many reasons. One of the reasons was right there in black and white in the IPO prospectus -- low or no profit from many of the dealers who wanted to get involved with this "roll-up" of RV dealers and believed that "bigger" would be better. It doesn't always work that way.

Companies survive and grow when they develop a loyal customer base that continues to do business with the company. I don't care if it's toys, cars, housewares or RVs. If you don't have a strong relationship with repeat customers then sooner or later the "bigger is better" theory is going to cause problems.

Where does that leave the rest of the companies in the RV industry?

There is nothing wrong with being smaller and charging more.

People will pay for services rendered; you read that many times in my columns. I believe it, and deep down, I think most of you believe too.

So who is driving the market?

Manufacturers must take some of the blame here. It's easy to sit in the executive suite and feel good about the sales numbers in good times. It might be a little frightening though if most of that business is coming only from the World's Largest dealers.

They will not always be that big. In fact, they may not always be there. Now that's a scary thought.

The industry must take a real serious look at the way products are distributed, marketed to the consumer, and sold only because they were the company offering the lowest price.

The economic boom may not last forever. Let's build a solid base of business that is focused on quality products sold by quality dealers. Let's build repeatable business based on after-sale support and dump this theory of let's just sell to whoever we can, at the lowest possible price, and not worry about after-sale support.

Let's get rid of the get-rich-quick on lots of small deals and start building relationships with the consumers who will become repeat customers at smaller service oriented dealerships and pass on the RV lifestyles for many generations to come after us.

If manufacturers think encourage the "bigger is better" theory then they are taking the risky road with increased liabilities over the horizon.

Let's invest in more companies that can sell more products to more people and establish long-term relationships that will be healthy for everybody in the RV industry.

By the way, if you are a dealer, supplier, distributor or manufacturer - and you haven't been paying attention to what people have been writing, saying, or even whispering about The Affinity Group and the impact it may have on the RV industry - then you just wasted a lot of time reading this article, because I don't see the industry waking up to the challenges looming on the horizon.

The highways are adorned with massive displays of "big" in many industries.

Do we really want to be like them?

This is such an exciting time to be in the RV industry, and yet such a challenging time.

History has shown that there is a very fine line between success and failure. The RV industry must look within itself for the answers that will drive us into the future, or we will fall victim to the very same conditions that killed many businesses that came before us.

Good luck and good selling.

RVN