The ATD Convention & Expo offers dealers a rare chance to meet face-to-face with executives of major truck manufacturers and features hundreds of exhibitors showcasing the latest equipment, services and technologies and dozens of workshops with the industry’s best trainers.
The 2017 ATD Convention & Expo will take place Thursday, Jan. 26 through Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017, in the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and will be held in conjunction with the NADA Convention & Expo.
The following is a list of workshops that will be held on the opening day, Thursday, Jan. 26. The list does not include those that are more “auto-centric” as part of NADA activities.
Workshops to be held on Thursday, January 26.
- Achieve 100 Percent Fixed Coverage Before the Next Meltdown, 1-2 p.m. Learn to increase parts and shop throughout, compete effectively against independent shops and maximize effective labor rates and flat rate hours per RO while maximizing customer retention. Explore the top service department mistakes — or opportunities — that negatively impact customer retention and profitability, and discover solutions to implement immediately.
- Unleash the Power of Connected Marketing, 1-2 p.m.
The number of places customers can find your dealership’s message is staggering, some you may not even be aware of. Learn step-by-step strategies to determine how to connect your message with customers wherever they find you, from buying offline media to what digital advertising works and why reviews matter.
- Negotiating for Success, 1-2 p.m.
Explore the pitfalls of the old style of negotiating a car deal and focus on a new non-combative, more customer friendly process that will increase sales and gross profits. Negotiating is an art form. Learn a better way to negotiate that will produce stronger results.
- Accessories: Mine Your Hidden Gem, 1-2 p.m.
Customers spend substantial amounts of money on accessories, yet they do not spend it with dealers. This session will start with research-based statistics clearly defining the missed opportunity; and explore the dealership areas that can be easily mined to increase accessory sales; and cover in depth steps to maintain and grow these new profits.
- Regulators Attack Dealer Aftermarket Product Selling: How to Protect Your Dealership, 1-2 p.m.
The workshop will review federal and state regulatory enforcement actions against dealers for aftermarket product selling, which are expected to increase in the future. Risky practices are predictable; learn to protect your business against UDAP, discrimination and other charges. The session will address traps in aftermarket product selling and provide ways to be compliant without sacrificing revenue.
- Stop the Digital Merry-Go-Round and Go Sell, 1-2 p.m.
The information age has become the indecision age, creating a phenomenon called the merry-go-round effect. Consumers spend 17 hours on the digital merry-go-round, leading to confusion about which car to buy and where to buy it. This workshop pushes the “stop button” on the digital merry-go-round, breaking through the clutter and showing how to drive car buyers to their websites and lots, and into their cars.
- Collision Department Myths vs. Collision Department Facts, 1-2 p.m.
This session will explain why all of the myths relating to owning a collision shop are false. Myths include: you can’t make money in a collision shop; you can’t make a profit with a $50 collision repair labor rate; and insurance companies won’t pay for original equipment parts. Learn about the profit potential in owning a collision shop.
- Driving Sales at Full Throttle in the Digital Age, 1-2 p.m.
Make online sales programs more profitable than traditional initiatives, including the showroom floor, using scalable methods that are practical for any dealer, regardless of size.
- Turn Your Dealership into a Customer Experience Machine, 1-2 p.m.
Customer experience is mission critical, and every interaction your staff has with a customer can make or break it. From an Internet inquiry to a service call to your sales team, everyone in your dealership must be trained to offer world-class customer care.
- 7 Actions to Onboard Millennials in Your Dealership, 1-2 p.m.
Discover how to attract younger workers and maximize their productivity through engagement and use this to leverage relationships and keep your business thriving. Areas covered include successful sales position ad placement, current interviewing techniques, pay plan variations, new-hire preparation, first day on the job process, sales expert career path and a training game plan for managers and sales teams.
- Five Strategies to Dominate Your Market, 1-2 p.m.
How has the retail marketplace changed for you over the past 10 years, five years– or even the last year? Discover five key areas to excel in to grow market share and increase profitability. Redefine “why buy,” leverage consumer insights to grow sales, build a better team and apply and innovation strategy used by Fortune 500 companies to gain competitive advantage.
- The Asking Formula: Ask For What You Want and Get It, 1-2 p.m.
Asking is a skill in short supply. The Asking Formula teaches you to effectively ask for you want, regardless of the topic or situation. In this interactive session, you will create a unique, personal Asking Formula targeted at a specific need and apply your knowledge directly to your most pressing issues and challenges.
- Learning to Love Complaints: Turning Feedback Into Success, 1-2 p.m.
As more consumers use social platforms to interact, share information and get product updates, it’s essential that dealerships focus on shopper feedback. Good or bad, feedback influences consumers who are researching online, and it’s important to learn to use all feedback to positively impact your business.
- Teleservices Compliance 2017, 1-2 p.m.
Multi-million dollar class action TCPA lawsuits have exploded in recent years thanks to the $1,500 penalty per call or text and regulatory actions that can arise from violations. Your dealership could be at significant risk through consumer outreach including marketing calls and texts, customer service messages like recall notices and appointment confirmations and other notifications. You’ll gain knowledge on key requirements, recent developments and compliance strategies.
- How Long Will the Good Times Last? Selling in an Increasingly Digital Marketplace, 1-2 p.m.
Sales margins will continue to shrink as used vehicles flood the marketplace. There is an opportunity for leaner, digital retail companies to enter the market and steal long-standing dealerships’ customers and profits. Using proprietary consumer behavior research learn how to adapt merchandising and sales processes to win today’s digital consumer.
- Top 5 Keys to Successfully Managing Any Dealership, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Learn to use a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to better understand your current positon and where you can be for peak performance. Participants will leave with strategies to attract the right team members and educate and motivate them by clearly communicating expectations and effectively holding accountable.
- Human Habits and Powerful Brand Marketing, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Learn to create and market a brand that is a choice people make out of habit. We’ll explore the importance of marketing your culture through broadcast, online, in-store and recruiting efforts.
- The 20-minute F&I Transaction, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Today’s customers want a faster F&I transaction, and dealers struggle to reduce the time while remaining effective. The 20-minute F&I Transaction allows customers to self-educate, implementing a more efficient process. Learn effective techniques for F&I website content, how to use technology and a sequence for a shorter transaction, leading to faster transactions, increased F&I productivity, higher profits and satisfied customers.
- Explore Hot Tax Topics with Industry Experts, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
This “year in review” workshop summarizes – and provides compliance guidance on – the most significant federal income tax developments affecting franchised auto and truck dealers over the past year.
- Guarantee Complete Dealership Growth via a Blended BDC, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Participants will learn to double their customer data base without spending any money on buying more leads. Perfected verbiage to secure the strongest BDC caller candidates will be provided, along with a compensation package that unites the sales floor with the BDC. Participants will be given the step-by-step game plan for a self-generating appointment process increase growth in sales and service.
- Google Analytics: The Modern “Up Log” for Your Virtual Showroom, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Explore how Google Analytics metrics, charts and reports provide insights into your online marketing effectiveness. Learn to analyze consumer engagement on your website and identify areas for improvement; increase conversion of website traffic into sales; and the 10 most important website activity metrics for dealerships.
- Negotiating for Success, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Explore the pitfalls of the old style of negotiating a car deal and focus on a new non-combative, more customer friendly process that will increase sales and gross profits. Negotiating is an art form. Learn a better way to negotiate that will produce stronger results.
- Marketing Opens the Door: Closing Seals the Deal, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Acquiring customers through digital marketing is only half the battle; sales must still be closed. This highly interactive workshop will share keys to identifying and eliminating objections from today’s tech-savvy buyer. The result will enhance the salesperson’s confidence and increase closing ratios while preserving gross profit.
- Regulators Attack Dealer Aftermarket Product Selling: How to Protect Your Dealership, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
The workshop will review federal and state regulatory enforcement actions against dealers for aftermarket product selling, which are expected to increase in the future. Risky practices are predictable; learn to protect your business against UDAP, discrimination and other charges. The session will address traps in aftermarket product selling and provide ways to be compliant without sacrificing revenue.
- Turn Millennial Price Shoppers into Loyal Customers, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
There are 80 million-plus millennials in the U.S. They’re not a trend, they’re your consumers of today and tomorrow. This workshop presents a selling process adapted to today’s buyers’ habits and requirements that will generate the units and ROI dealers need to compete and addresses the skills salespeople must master to sell more vehicles, and maintain exceptional customer satisfaction.
- Unlock the Power of Tier 4 Marketing to Increase Profits, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Master the seven steps to creating a Tier 4 marketing culture: define goals, communicate goals, set expectations, provide training, empower your team, hold them accountable and execute effectively. A panel of dealers will show how they implemented these strategies to increase organic leads and dealership traffic and profits while reducing sales staff turnover.
- The Art of Leveraging the Emotions of a Deal, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Emotions can be our best friend and our biggest enemy. Tap into the positive side of human emotion to lead your team to top performance levels by driving your customers to take action and buy. By focusing less on the logical side of the mind and more on the emotional, gain market share, maximize opportunities and create exceptional customer experiences.
- Finally Get a Positive ROI on Your Digital Marketing: Insider Secrets Revealed, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Cut through the lingo and get straight to the strategies that successful dealers use today for the best return on their digital marketing spend. Learn an integrated strategy using organic search, paid search, GeoFencing, social media, mobile marketing and more, resulting in measurable units sold.
- Dominate with Data; How to Use Google’s Free Tools to Sell More Cars, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Google has been changing faster than ever over the last year, tweaking their local search, creating new ad platforms such as Customer Match and creating and improving their free marketing tools. Learn to use these new tools, data and product updates to increase vehicle sales, improve service retention and dramatically boost website and digital marketing ROI.
- Vital Metrics for Tomorrow’s Dealer, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Dealer principals are flooded with data from financial statements, websites, the OEM, CRM, DMS, BDC, vendors and more. Which metrics are most vital and how are they connected? The potent resources of NADA and Cox Automotive will reveal the most valuable data points dealers should be monitoring and share proven best practices to move the needle of success for your dealership.
- Mobile Websites that Sell Cars and Fill Service Lanes, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Google reports that 60 percent of local searches originate from a mobile device. See how creating a “mobile first” strategy can dramatically increase the number of mobile shoppers you bring to your showroom and increase service, maintenance and parts website traffic, service appointments and ROs.
- Break the Chains that Bind Your Supply Chain, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Speed, simplicity and quality are critical factors in maximizing dealership profit potential. Dealers increasingly want efficient, cost-effective ways to stock their lots, allowing them to focus on serving customers and selling vehicles. Master the issues that contribute to costly supply chain challenges, and learn a comprehensive strategy to address acquisition, transportation, retail inspection, retail reconditioning and detail, merchandising and storage.
- Secrets to Getting More & Better Lender Approvals, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Learn how to use today’s cutting edge technology along with tried-and-true sales techniques to get more deals approved and delivered at higher grosses and increase the quality and quantity of your subprime deals. It begins with a detailed analysis of your dealership’s performance among customers in different credit tiers. Leverage technology and maximize your inventory to target the right consumers and the right vehicles.
- ATD Industry Roundtable, 3-5 p.m.
Moderated by Doug Greenhaus, NADA/ATD Chief Regulatory Council
Panel discussion with participating Class 8 OEMs on the impact of the Phase 2 greenhouse gas/fuel efficiency rule on dealers and their customers.
Panelists include:
• Brian Mormino, Executive Director, Environmental Strategy and Compliance, Cummins
• David Kayes, Executive Engineer, Daimler
• Darren Gosbee, Vice President Engineering, Navistar
• Dan Kieffer, Director of Emissions Compliance, PACCAR; Rick Anderson, Product Planning Manager,Volvo Group Trucks.
- Maximize Showroom Profits Through Advanced Sales Process and Engaging the Millennial Workforce, 3:15-5 p.m.
NADA reports that salesperson turnover is an astonishing 72 percent a year, costing dealers $40,000 per lost employee. See how personnel strategies of companies outside the industry, like Enterprise and Costco, have yielded explosive bottom line growth and how select dealers have found new paths to managing their showrooms, increasing retention, and dropping turnover costs way below industry average.
- Tap Into the LGBT Community and Their $830 Billion Each Year, 4-5 p.m.
The LGBT community is an increasingly strong minority group with tremendous buying power. This session will help you tap into that market by using statistics and market research, looking at proven effective ads and recognizing the importance of inclusivity and avoiding stereotypes.The 20-minute F&I Transaction
- Accessories: Mine Your Hidden Gem, 4-5 p.m.
Customers spend substantial amounts of money on accessories, yet they do not spend it with dealers. This session will start with research-based statistics clearly defining the missed opportunity; and explore the dealership areas that can be easily mined to increase accessory sales; and cover in depth steps to maintain and grow these new profits.
- Collision Department Myths vs. Collision Department Facts, 4-5 p.m.
This session will explain why all of the myths relating to owning a collision shop are false. Myths include: you can’t make money in a collision shop; you can’t make a profit with a $50 collision repair labor rate; and insurance companies won’t pay for original equipment parts. Learn about the profit potential in owning a collision shop.
- Cyber Attacks: Silent But Deadly, 4-5 p.m.
Dealers and executives will gain a greater awareness of their dealership infrastructures’ susceptibility to cyber attacks; identify cyber-related weaknesses in internal controls; assess their dealership’s overall risk of cyber attacks; employ immediate takeaways/action items to implement various cybersecurity measures and mitigate cyber threats.
- Create the Team Your Customers Deserve, 4-5 p.m.
According to research firm Walker, by 2020 customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Learn to recognize and improve three core areas of your team -building efforts: better hiring decisions leading to reduced turnover; implementing a successful employee development strategy; and aligning dealership staff and the customer experience.
- Conduct Powerful 10-Minute Training Sessions, 4-5 p.m.
Learn easy steps to create and conduct team training to boost your team’s selling skills. After the workshop you will know how to develop time-efficient training sessions that target specific goals; this simple training format will take your training program to the next level. You’ll walk away with a structure and examples to modernize sales meetings so you can increase sales.
- Rethink Service: How to Capture Every Opportunity, 4-5 p.m.
Dealerships rely on CRM solutions in sales, but what about the back end? Dealerships are not tracking important metrics like declined services and profits from upsells. This presentation will offer specific ways you can embrace the CRM concept and implement modern tools in service to improve these processes, become more efficient, enhance the customer experience and accelerate profits.
- Recruiting: To Find a Needle in a Haystack, Light it on Fire!, 4-5 p.m.
The average dealership has a “road to the sale,” but not a “road to the hire.” This presentation will cover five main areas: Learn and implement a philosophy of effective dealership staffing; Discover how to identify, attract and hire the most desirable candidates; Design a “road to the hire” process; Create unique, successful recruiting ad copy; and Structure and simplify your interview process.
- Fixed Ops Marketing in a Mobile First World, 4-5 p.m.
Effective digital and mobile marketing strategies can profitably increase service appointments, repair orders and dollars per RO. Learn to use Google and Facebook advertising to directly target your existing customer database online, and get a playbook for increasing fixed-ops website traffic, increase the conversion rate for that traffic and transacting parts sales online.
- Vital Metrics for Tomorrow’s Dealer, 4-5 p.m.
Dealer principals are flooded with data from financial statements, websites, the OEM, CRM, DMS, BDC, vendors and more. Which metrics are most vital and how are they connected? The potent resources of NADA and Cox Automotive will reveal the most valuable data points dealers should be monitoring and share proven best practices to move the needle of success for your dealership.
- Cause-Based Marketing & Audience-Based Advertising, 4-5 p.m.
In today’s marketplace, dealers can easily adopt the forward-thinking advertising trends of the world’s top-performing companies. Gone are the days of guaranteed ad reach during local TV news broadcasts and drive-time traffic radio. Today’s consumer operates online in a fast-paced, multitasking world of constant connection and intentional engagement.
- Break the Chains that Bind Your Supply Chain, 4-5 p.m.
Speed, simplicity and quality are critical factors in maximizing dealership profit potential. Dealers increasingly want efficient, cost-effective ways to stock their lots, allowing them to focus on serving customers and selling vehicles. Master the issues that contribute to costly supply chain challenges, and learn a comprehensive strategy to address acquisition, transportation, retail inspection, retail reconditioning and detail, merchandising and storage.
Be sure to check back with www.successfuldealer.com for more activities planned for the rest of the ATD Convention later in the week.
