December is my favorite month. Holiday season aside, December brings with it Dealer Week, where our team gets to spend meaningful time with our members in the ultimate fulfillment of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas mission. December also brings a sense of renewal, a time for resetting our one-year plan, and the picture for how we will execute that plan. And December offers a time to pause, reflect and reinvigorate ourselves and our businesses for whatever January and beyond may hold.
As we finally put the prevailing uncertainty of 2024 behind us, and as we begin to implement new plans, strategies and tactics, I’d like to challenge our industry’s dealers and manufacturers to consider how personal and business goals are intertwined with improving business relationships.
The dealer-manufacturer relationship is critical to the boat buyer and to boat owners’ customer experiences. When we get the dealer-manufacturer relationship right, our businesses and our customers flourish. When we get it wrong, our businesses suffer as satisfaction drops along with loyalty. Ultimately, customers are driven out of boating, reducing referrals and the repeat business our industry depends upon.
Manufacturers want strong dealers who represent the brand well, who drive high levels of customer satisfaction, and who grow their market share. Dealers want boat-brand partners who deliver high-quality products, who help to market and sell boats, and who stand behind dealers in delivering high levels of customer satisfaction. These expectations have not changed much, if at all, over the decades.
However, as with most relationships, we become complacent. We believe that our partners somehow know what we expect of them. When we fail to meet expectations, typically it’s because those expectations weren’t communicated well or weren’t measured. The only consequential discussion around those expectations, then, tends to take place in a clash of disagreement, compromising the relationship.
What’s needed in the dealer-manufacturer relationship is clear communication around annual expectations, a method for measuring results on those expectations, and a regular cadence of planned, productive conversations about how the dealer and manufacturer can improve performance.
To grow a business in 2025 and beyond, the biggest opportunity is in relationships with partners. Convert any complacency into a momentum-building competitive advantage. While it’s easy to say that customer service, sales and marketing effectiveness, and market share have always been the goal, the path to achieving success in those areas is an ever-evolving formula.
To help define the formula, and to measure and manage the performance of partners, the MRAA created the Dealer-Manufacturer Scorecard Program. This platform provides a tool to foster meaningful conversations, to spark performance improvements, and to help drive a better customer experience through a stronger partnership.
The scorecard approach focuses on customer satisfaction, marketing and sales effectiveness, and market share, but it also provides manufacturers with a platform to measure dealers in such areas as professional appearance, inventory management, training and education. Similarly, it gives dealers a platform to measure manufacturers on product quality, warranty support, market territory and more. The MRAA sought to capture the critical performance categories that will drive improvements and bring to light key challenges that exist, with feedback and conversations that lead to improvement so that everyone wins.
As the calendar turns to 2025, take the time to identify expectations for your key partners, make plans to communicate those expectations clearly, and do the important work to provide feedback throughout the year ahead.
Matt Gruhn is president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas.
