February 2012 - Vol 2, Issue 2

By John W. Tinghitella, RV Designer

 

You've heard it a million times: "simple solutions trump complex every time". Nowhere is this more valid than on the retail floor. It is assumed that RV dealerships are busy places with erratic, seasonal demand.  While store personnel really try to help customers, they simply can't be with every customer every time. Therefore the product must "self merchandise". All of us in the supply chain (supplier, distributor and dealer) share a basic but powerful objective: sell product and satisfy customers. Sounds easy, but it's tough to do. Why?

The Membership Benefits Committee met for the first time on February 13th. Because this is a brand new committee we had a lot to go over. Our priority was to review current benefits. From there we had a very busy conference call with everything we have assigned to us. Below are some of the hightlights.

Best Practices
In an effort to keep everyone thinking of our Best Practices we have agreed to submit a short article every month highlighting a practice and why it's important to our members.

Supplier Rating Forms
To make it easier for our distributor members we have taken on the challenge of creating a new supplier-rating program.  Our hopes are to simplify the form with clear & measurable questions.  Also to make the forms shorter so it isn't such a laborious task. 

While members have had several informal discussions, the Committee has not met formally as a group. We are planning to do so in the next two weeks or so.
 
One central theme from our discussions is that RVAA should organize a "Dealer Council" advisory group. Several committee members feel we need to get more information, directly from the dealers, about what they want or need in order to make our efforts fit their desires for more information and/or training. This will be a main topic of discussion for our first formal meeting.