North Andover,
Mass. – The Mobile Electronics Retailers Association (MERA) has organized more
than 24 business-oriented seminars during
, planned for Aug.
28-30 at the Gaylord Texan Hotel and Conference Center near Dallas.
More than 50
vendors are scheduled to exhibit, including 18 new ones, MERA said. Attendance
is also tracking higher than last year, with the greatest percentage of
attendees in the owner/manager category, said executive director Chris Cook.
Like last year,
MERA divided the seminars into tracks targeted to owners and managers, sales professionals
and marketers, and installation managers and specialists.
Each series of
tracks will be followed by manufacturer training sessions, which will expose
retailers and installers to the features and characteristics of specific
products but will also provide installation tips and tricks for new products.
The owners and
managers track features seminars on “Creating Your Business Vision,” presented
by Avidworx’s Marcel Newell to help owners determine a business identity and
maintain it. Keynote speaker Jim Ackerman, the marketing coach and author, will
present a seminar on “How to Get More Customers Who Will Pay You More Money,
More Often.” In another seminar, MERA executive director Chris Cook and
staffers Paul Pirro and Kris Bulla will join Alpine executive Steve Brown to
present “Mission Impossible: Making the Sale Fit the Car.” That seminar focuses
on the issue of communicating new technology to consumers in a way that will
improve consumer satisfaction and, as a result, profitability.
New marketing will
be the focus of other seminars. One seminar, for example, will focus on creating
and managing an online campaign, growing a database of customers, and turning
online efforts into in-store sales, MERA said. That seminar, called “Cloud
Marketing on a Sunny Day: How to Evolve
into a Modern Day Marketer,” will be presented by Kara Holder and Mike
Cacciabondo of Revenew Systems. Separately, John Haynes of retail chain Al
& Ed’s will focuses on retail websites in a “Navigating the Internet”
seminar.
Another seminar
topic will highlight practices to successfully market to car dealers and make
the expediter relationship a manageable moneymaker, MERA said.
Topics centered on
making install bays profitable will also be offered. Two seminars will focus on
how to deal with increasingly complex electrical systems. A “Profitable
Fabrication” seminar will point out ways to get a great return on investment while
providing a well-executed install.
