Do YOU have a club?

A week ago Thursday, I was running late for a seminar on unique profit centers at the International Marina & Boatyard Conference. When I slipped into my seat about 20 minutes into the 90-minute session, the presenters were talking about boat clubs, and while the discussion moved on to other topics as it wore on, it kept coming back to boat clubs. Not only did about a quarter of the audience of marina operators seem to have a boat club, most of the other three quarters wanted to learn their ins and outs. Read more >>

A radical proposition about employee compensation

In a blog a few weeks back, I told you of my plans to read a new book — “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” by Daniel H. Pink.  Well, right now, I’m in the middle of it, and given that its premise is surprising and suggests we should radically change the way we compensate employees, I thought I’d share it. Read more >>

Boat Dealers Need to Learn to Do More With Less

By Chris Kourtakis, Owner, H20 Limos Marine Service — As the marine dealership community enters a new decade, it will be looking back on the worst year of business in at least the last 50. Looking forward, dealers and OEMs need to share more information so they can do more with less. Read more >>

Six steps to getting started in social marketing

Gary B. Druckenmiller, Jr., TheOpenSea.com — Forget the introduction. No more hand-holding. There are default steps you should be taking right now to either dive-in or prep for the onslaught of social marketing in the months and years to come. Many of you are trying to avoid it. You can’t. It’s time to join the party. Here’s a quick hit-list … from start to finish. Read more >>

Scouting out a bright path for our industry

While I was a Brownie for a year or two in elementary school, it wasn’t my path to a love of the outdoors. I didn’t realize what an incredible impact Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts can have on kids until later in life. In my 20s, when I was dating my husband, I had a chance to attend quite a few Boy Scout ceremonies to cheer on his younger brother, Chad, who would eventually go on to achieve Eagle Scout. Over the years, I learned a lot about what was involved, from wilderness trips and fundraisers to the earning of patches of all colors, shapes and sizes. Most of all, I was impressed with how the program exposed kids to all kinds of experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have had. Read more >>

Delta’s customer-service surprise

With the news this morning that Delta Air Lines is once again raising its fees for checked bags, here is at least a little evidence the company is not completely oblivious when it comes to public perception and customer service. Read the rest of Delta’s customer-service surprise »

Solving the small stuff before it gets big

My husband and I have been married for more than 10 years, and despite the happy life we’ve created for our growing family, we still have problems. Take, for instance, our mail problem. Like most people out there, we get a ton of mail, most of it junk. And yet since I – the bill payer in the family – have yet to get with the times and pay my bills online, we also get important mail, like our mortgage and car payment coupons, as well as mail we enjoy, like the handful of magazines we subscribe to and a certain percentage of the catalogs we receive. Read more >>

YOU set the tone for customer service

Last week, I stayed at the Rosen Plaza in Orlando. It’s a potential home for the 2010 Marine Dealer Conference & Expo, and we were scouting the site to determine its capability of housing this growing event. We were on a tour with two of the facility’s sales managers when I happened to notice a vacationing middle schooler wearing a t-shirt with the letters “BMOC” proudly touting his claim that he was, indeed, the Big Man On Campus. The happenstance that I noticed this only provided a backdrop for what I had just experienced. Read more >>

Basic Building Blocks – On Steroids

Jeff Scherer, Associate Partner, Callbutton LLC – My 11-year-old son has grown up in a much different environment than I did. Ever since he could talk, he’s had access to a computer screen and mouse of some sort. He’s a gadget freak (OK, so is his dad), and is constantly indulged in PS3, PSP, MP3, DVD, LCD, HD, and all other acronyms electronic. Something surprising has happened to him in the past couple months, however. He has become very interested and (re)attached to his Legos. Aside from Lincoln Logs and maybe those cardboard bricks that they used to have in kindergarten, Legos might be the simplest toys ever made. I wondered what the sales and marketing discussions were in the Lego camps when the video game and Internet assaults started focusing on our kids a few years ago. I decided to take a look. Read more >>

Talk is cheap? Not always

When you show up at an airport and see people lined up waiting to get into the terminal, you know you’re in for a long trip.

That was the sight that greeted me as I climbed out of a taxi Dec. 21 at New York’s LaGuardia airport. The large storm that had rolled up the East Coast the previous few days was gone, but the snow left behind – combined with normal pre-Christmas travel rush – meant that catching a plane would be more complicated than usual, even under the best of circumstances.

Unfortunately, circumstances were not the best that morning as the airport also experienced a brief power outage, adding another obstacle to the equation. However, all the negative variables could have been adequately managed had those in charge done one thing: communicate. Read the rest of Talk is cheap? Not always »