"If you want to know why your
"If you want to know why your father's business is not competitive you should look in a mirror. Your profound lack of understanding as to why you can't sell outboards speaks volumes.
Let's start with pricing:
Open up your dealer program and read it. If you are willing to buy xx engines per year you would see that you would get an extra x% over your 4%. That puts you into double digits on your profit margin.
Freight:
We pay freight on every engine we ship. If you ever ordered any engines you would know that if you stocked them and bought them in groups of four, you wouldn't be paying any freight to service your local customers. That means you have a real advantage over us.
Sales tax:
We do not collect sales tax on engines we ship outside of Florida. We have a real advantage over you.
Freight = Sales tax
They cancel each other out. Stop crying about the big, bad, Internet and sell your dealership on it's strength...If it has any. Keep the following two old posts from years ago in mind.
"I am going to hate myself tomorrow for equating this, but.....When you buy a lawnmower at Home Depot, take it home, add oil and cut the grass, is it really anymore complicated that adding a quart of oil to an outboard? The answer is no. Some people can't take a cutting blade off of a lawnmower to sharpen it, those are the same people that bring in a 4 hp outboard to a service station to have the spark plug changed. That's the exception, not the rule. For every 50 outboards we sell and ship to a consumer in Smalltown, USA we might receive a single phone call asking a question about how to operate the engine or if something special needs to be done to use it. Out of the last 675 we sold and delivered via boxed delivery there have been 8 warranty claims filed....5 of those were for concealed freight damage that Tohatsu took responsibility for. There is just no reason to pay a local dealer to add a quart of oil and tell you not to run the engine out of the water. As to the rare occasion when there really is a problem....some dealers really show their character flaws, some go out of their way to help that LOCAL CUSTOMER THAT THEY LOST TO BEGIN WITH. When we have a local customer who has made a purchase from someone else come in for service we look at it as a second chance to earn their business. We do not punish them for bringing business to us. If they want a PDI done on that 5 hp that they bought from someone else....great. That's $25.00 to $50.00 in our pocket for 30 minutes of our time. Do we treat them the same as someone who just bought an engine from us? We better, if we want to gain their future business. Most of the time these people send their friends in to us. Why? Because we didn't treat them like redheaded stepchildren. All dealers need to take a close look as to why they have lost a sale. Was it because the consumer didn't even know they sold that brand? Was it because they didn't have that model available? Was it because they were unwilling to order it? Was it because they had it priced too high? Was it because they have a reputation for being cranky? Was it because of the final cost being to high because of sales tax? Was it because you slept with the guy's wife back in high school and he found out just as he was ready to order it from you? If you buy a new Ford across town from a dealer and three months later you take it to the dealer that is only a 1/4 mile from you because some silly xss sensor has failed, do you think she is going tell her service department to put you dead last? Of course not. It's not personal. Marine dealers should not make it and take it personal either. Having said all that...it does hurt a little when Bubba shows up with a new one in a box and you didn't sell it. But you really do have to rise above it, smile and EARN his business and goodwill for the future."
"Tohatsu, unlike every other manufacturer, only has a x% price difference between what a dealer who buys 3 engines pays and what a dealer who buys the max engines pays. Any Tohatsu dealer can compete on price with what Boaters World or what we sell them for. The problem is that some dealers just don't get it that their local customer choose NOT to buy from them for a reason. THEY lost the customer. Whoever else gets that customer does so because they did something better or at least didn't screw up somehow. PDI's are another issue. If the engine manufacturer builds such a piece of crap that there is a good chance that it will have a problem out of the box...guess what...It will always have problems because the design and manufacturing quality are poor. PDI's are a recent invention and were not required until manufacturers became concerned about dealers selling them wholesale to non franchised dealers and selling them to consumers outside of their local market. Do PDI's need to be done by a dealer on a 5 hp? Of course not. Does a PDI need to be done on a 150 hp? Maybe, but I still think that anyone who wants to by a 150 hp in the box and take responsibility for correctly installing himself should be allowed to. Under the present manufacturer rules a tech with 20 years on Yamaha's is deemed to be too stupid by Honda to rig a 25 hp Honda remote engine or do a PDI on a 2 hp. In comparison to larger engines the 25 hp's and below are not big money makers for a service shop. But, what's the alternative? Refuse to work on engines unless you take home a minimum amount of money? An independent tech can...and probably should blow off small engine repair. But a dealer does not have that option and should not have that option. There are a lot of exceptions to that, like older junk engines, money pit engines and salty’s that are mostly corrosion. But remember what this topic started off about. The closest dealer was 68 miles away, lied about it being required to have a PDI and wanted $160.00 to add a quart of oil and drop the engine in the tank and test run it for 5 minutes. That's a crime even if it is not punishable under the law.""