If you haven’t noticed, it’s award season in the medium- and heavy-duty dealer market.
International, Mack, Kenworth and Peterbilt have all announced their top dealers for 2017 in recents weeks, and later this month at ATD Show 2018 the American Truck Dealers will announce its 2018 Dealer of the Year from among seven great finalists.
Here at Successful Dealer, we also have a dealer award on the docket, but while these other award programs are now slowing down ours is picking up. Beginning next Monday, March 12, we will open the nomination period for our sixth annual Successful Dealer Award, sponsored by Automann, Interstate Billing and Premium 2000.
As many of you I’m sure remember, the Successful Dealer Award is unique in that our judging criteria looks at the totality of a dealership’s business, and the positive impact it has not only on its customers but also the dealer market and its community. Judging criteria is based on each company’s environmental/green efforts; community involvement and civic responsibility; customer education; staff education and training, and marketing.
We do this for a number of reasons. On one hand, we believe it is important that our award be available for all dealers in the medium- and heavy-duty space. Additionally, our goal with this award is to recognize dealerships and dealer groups who are succeeding on the truck lots, the service bays and parts counters, but also are leaders in their community; the dealers who put time, effort and dollars into their businesses and employees to make them more efficient; the dealers who realize a $300 donation to a local youth program is an investment, not an expense.
We believe there are hundreds of dealers throughout the North American market that are making these commitments and are worthy of recognition for their efforts, and that’s who we want to celebrate.
So we’d like to hear from you, the dealer market at large. Who do you believe is deserving of this honor?
It can be anyone. Our nomination process is open to the entirety of the medium- and heavy-duty industry, and each year we receive nominations from dealers, OEMs and fleets alike for this award. Our nomination process is both simple and anonymous, so if you think your business (or another dealer in your OEM’s network) has what it takes to earn our award, please let us know. Part of our judging criteria is centered on being a good place to work. If employees want to nominate their business on those grounds, we certainly welcome that. Our judging criteria is rigorous enough so that the highest merit will rise to the top regardless of who sends in the nomination.
As mentioned above, our nomination period for this award will begin Monday on our Successful Dealer Award website, and will be open to the industry through Friday, May 25. We hope you take some time this weekend to think about the dealers you know, and let us know next week or at some point in the near future why you think they are our industry’s best.
