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| Past and Current Articles |
 Keep your shop busy, service techs employed by offering preseason specials Unless you are located in the snowbelt and fortunate enough to have gotten that first heavy snowfall that guarantees good snow thrower sales, most of the money you generate from now until next season will have to come out of your service department and preseason work. |
 Postseason analysis key to preseason planning and prosperity Now is the time of year that every dealer should invest a few hours evaluating their numbers for the 2008 season. By starting now, this will give your accountant time to estimate what your tax liability might be for the year and allow you to make good year-end financial decisions. |
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During the past 15 years, my team of dealer advisors and I have visited hundreds of service departments, ranging from outdoor power to Ag, power sports and boating. Each has been very different in size, location, number of techs, customer mix and products serviced. A few of those dealers had shops that were somewhat profitable, covering the base overhead and tech expense and pocketing a little after taxes. But most of those dealers were at best breaking even or at worst bleeding thousands of dollars a year. |
 Marketing Made Simple to Capture Commercial Business As an OPE dealer, you are always looking for the best way to continue to grow your business. To do this, you can attract any one, or a combination, of three basic types of customers: consumer, commercial and municipal. All three are very different in what they are looking for in an OPE dealer, and each has to be wooed to your dealership in a very unique way. In this article, I will focus specifically on the one that has the potential to do the largest amount of business with you, year after year: the commercial customer. |
 7 Keys to Flexing Your Merchandising Muscle While recently at an airport en route to working with one of our dealers, I heard an announcement that my flight was delayed. Being an avid reader and with some newly found time to burn, I headed to the airport bookstore to see what I could find. As I entered the store, there was a display with about a dozen books staring me in the face, when I noticed one that seemed to jump out at me. Its cover caught my attention and made me want to pick it up. |
 Dare to Diversify: Expanding Product and Service Mix Can Drive Additional Income Utility vehicles, all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), quad runners, go-karts, motorcycles, barbeque grills, bird feeders, pecans, portable storage sheds, portable signs, trailers, golf carts, model airplanes, rental equipment and bicycles. This is a list of a few of the many products, in addition to outdoor power lines, that dealers across North America sell to generate extra income both in and out of season. |
 Selling Season is in High Gear: Seize Every Opportunity to Succeed “Your price is too high.” “That’s more than I can afford.” “I’ve never heard of that brand.” “How much will you give me for my old mower?” If you are hearing such things from the prospects that are either walking into your dealerships or calling you on the phone, you are knee-deep into the selling season. |
 5 Key Pieces to Solving the Service Profitability Puzzle If you surveyed 100 outdoor power equipment dealers and asked them, “What is your biggest headache?” 90 percent would respond by saying their service department. If you then asked them, “Why is it your biggest headache?” they would give you a wide variety of responses, but, in most cases, they would have to do with the following two reasons: lack of control and low level of profit. |
If you are like most outdoor power equipment dealers, marketing is like playing darts blindfolded. You close your eyes and let the dart fly, hoping you hit that all-important bull's eye that will bring customers flooding into your store. |
 Turn “Smart” irrigation into $mart moneyAs an irrigation contractor, you are right in the middle of a battle. If you are willing to take a little time out of your busy season to think about how you can leverage this great opportunity for the future of your business, then your margins will go up and your profits will soar! |
This year you will see, hear or read more than half a million advertising messages. All the tumult and excitement and yelling tries to capture your attention as each product screams out “Buy me!” This presents a problem for all of us who are selling, advertising and promoting. How do we get the customer to listen and hear us over the noise of the others? |
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a common phase heard in the business world. Yet anyone who has flown in an airplane is glad that engineers broke the Wright Brothers model for airplanes. |
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A profitable service department starts with a shop that is clean, organized with good flow. As a part of the service package, BCI partners with your dealership to make sure that all the right elements are in place to move your service department to a new level of profitability. |
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