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Amway co-founder, Rich DeVos, is number 88 on the 2016 Forbes 400 list of richest people in America. After several failed business attempts his Amway days started with selling all day, and bottling liquid soap by night in his garage. Now at over 90 years old, he’s worth $5.1 billion.  DeVos was once quoted as saying, “All our secrets are visible,” implying that the success he and his company have achieved are transparent and easily copied.  He went on to say something to the effect of: there is just no one willing to go to the extent required to copy it exactly, to experience the pain, the struggles, the failures, and do the work. Everyone wants the results, but few are willing to do what it takes. Most think they can do it faster and easier so they cut corners, and then fail. 

Years ago I was at a 20 group meeting (as a dealer) and, industry veteran, the late John Wyckoff was there as a guest speaker. He asked the group what the most successful marketing they had done in the last year had been, and then went one by one around the room and had each dealer answer. Going around, dealer after dealer cited some type of Event or Open House as their most effective dollars spent. As he got closer to me, my mind was racing trying to think of what type of advertising we’d done that had actually been effective at all. This was in the internet infancy days, so websites weren’t really in play yet.  

I first thought of the Yellow Pages. While it did work, I wasn’t a fan because most of my direct competitors had huge full color ads, and we only had a wimpy quarter page black and white due to the monthly expense. Then there was the Cycle Trader magazine which was sold in every convenience store in the nation back then. It was outrageously expensive because we paid for display ads weekly rather than monthly, plus classified ads. Like the Yellow Pages, all of our competitors were prominently displayed, especially the big discounters. I had a secret disgust for the Trader because it seemed to only harvest hard core price shoppers and create a discounting war amongst us dealers. We’d tried TV, radio, billboards, supercross sponsorships, etc. but nothing stood out. I mostly got a sinking feeling about how many hundreds of thousands of dollars we’d wasted over the years. But then I thought of our annual open house event that we’d promoted with direct mail, flyers, phone calls, and word of mouth. While it was quite the success, it had conveniently eluded my mind because it was such a heavy lift each year that I nearly dreaded it.  So when it was my turn, I too, said it was our Open House that had been the best return on investment. 

Then Wyckoff said, raise your hand if you’ve done another event since your original one, or if you do events on a regular basis. No hands went up. “Well if it’s what works best, why in the hell aren’t you doing it regularly?” he asked the group. After a brief uncomfortable silence, one dealer finally stated, “Because they’re a big pain in the ass!” Turns out I wasn’t alone, and the group laughed out loud together, but Wyckoff wasn’t amused. He called us out, and for me, a young dealer at the time the point was well taken. 

When I returned to the dealership we committed to an event every 3rd Saturday of the month. Starting out it was a heavy lift because I was disorganized and didn’t have systems in place or any regular repetition. I was trying to do everything myself from picking up coffee and donuts to putting out balloons and grilling burgers.  Eventually, with the help of a simple pre-event manager’s meeting and a checklist which assigned responsibilities by department and employee, we began to systematically execute successful events that weren’t a heavy burden on any one individual.  The repetition led to improved systems, which led to efficiency, which led to less expense and less pain to promote.  In other words, the reason events are so much work for many dealers is they never practice, staff expectations haven’t been clarified and they don’t know how to be efficient. 

Holding events provides a great excuse to market to your existing customers which increases retention and referrals, and is also great for marketing to conquest customers to grow new market share. 

Fast forward nearly 20 years to 2017 and while a lot has changed since then, a lot has stayed the same. The internet is on the scene but this is still a passion-based industry, and events remain one of most effective marketing tools in the box. The secrets of the most successful dealers truly are visible just as DeVos described, but far too many are looking for the shortcuts or have executed half ass in the past and declared events as unsuccessful.  

Don’t take the easy way out and waste money on mass media that doesn’t work. 

If you want a proven turnkey system used by over 800 of the top dealers nationwide that is guaranteed to generate a quantifiable list of leads for every department in your dealership, then call us today at 

877-242-4472.  Spring will be here before we know it, it’s time to start planning now.