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Sales meetings held regionally are great for training sales people and motivating them.  You can generally reach a group of 25 - 30 sales people and the effects are felt through increased sales for a period of time.

Sales conventions are far better and reach a much broader audience and the effects are greater and last much longer.

Panasonic Dealer Meetings (5)

My first opportunity to plan and organize a dealer convention came at ERC Parts, Inc.  Ad the Manager of Dealer Sales it fell to me to plan, organize and run our annual dealer meeting.

Attendance was always in excess of 100 people and lasted for 2 days.

Individual classes on topics important to dealer success with industry experts were held.  Each dealer participant was scheduled to attend each class.

In all, I planned, organized and ran a total of 5 dealer meetings for ERC Parts, Inc.

Aloha International Dealer Sales Conferences (2)

These were International Dealer Conferences held annually in Cancun Mexico.  Each conference had in excess of 250 attendees and covered a full 3 days.

The conferences included:

• Reception held in hotel atrium
• Opening exercises to announce goal of the conference
• 2 Full days of individual classes
• Golf tournament, site seeing tours and shopping excursions
• Vendor trade show
• Formal awards banquet

After each conference we experienced a doubling of sales for the next quarter.  The following quarter we would not return to a level of sales prior to the convention but continued to enjoy the benefits of increased sales until the next convention when we repeated the success of the previous year.

 Aloha Technical Training Convention

We surveyed our dealer owners to look for ways to increase sales.  One thing we noticed was that it was taking in excess of 4 weeks to install, train and support a new installation.  We asked the obvious.  If we could shorten the time it took to install, train and support the initial install could we sell additional systems.  We received an unanimous answer that we could expect a substantial increase if this was the case.

In conjunction with the Aloha Training Department we created the POS industry's first every Technical Traning Convention.  We patterened the convention after our already proven outline for our sales conventions.  This included everything except the golf tournament.  (We substituted a day at Six Flags Amusement Park)

The Aloha Training Department created a series of tests that would be administered on a bank of computers that would allow each participant to be tested, pass and become a "Certified Aloha Installer".  Different levels of certification were established, depending upon the number of classes taken, tests passed and even how many other certifications were obtained outside of Aloha.

The participation we received overwhelmed us.  We had to bring in extra computers because we had lines around the corner and down the hall to enter the room to take the tests.  We were up past midnight each night of the convention to give everyone a chance to take and pass the tests.

After the convention we did see an increase in sales as a result of the technical convention because of a shortened installation time frame.  Another benefit of this technical traning was a dramatically reduced call volume into our support center.  It seems that better trained technicians don't call for help as much.