WASHINGTON-New ideas for keeping tire dealers competitive will be the focus of five seminars at the National Tire Dealers & Retreaders Association convention, Sept. 4-7. Intended to complement the convention's companion series on financial management, the planned marketing and problem-solving seminars will include the findings of a special NTDRA marketing research project.
Specifically, these convention seminars will include:
``Changing Times and Changing Customers; How to succeed in the new world of retailing,'' presented Friday, Sept. 6, and Saturday Sept. 7, by Jeanne Smalling Archer, co-author of the book, Up Against the Wal-Marts.
The session will reward attendees with innovative, customer-pleasing tactics that work, according to Ms. Archer, who conducted the research on which the seminars are based;
``Partnering with your customers to see your business as customers do!,'' Friday, Sept. 6, and Saturday, Sept. 7, by Edwin Richard Rigsbee, author of The Art of Partnering, will explain how to create a customer-pleasing store environment and what other dealers are doing to obtain customer feedback;
``Think life a giraffe: Looking for ideas in all the right places,'' presented Friday, Sept. 6, by Stephen M. Gower of the Gower Group, will provide dealers with concrete ideas for staying focused, motivated and enthusiastic about managing a successful business;
``Utilizing today's technology to help make your business grow,'' offered Wednesday, Sept. 4, and conducted by Mr. Gower, will tell how computers can improve a dealership's bottom line by providing point-of-sale data, inventory controls and commercial entry to the Internet. The session will include a panel of dealers who have mastered this technology;
``The customer is not the only No. 1: Building a customer-pleasing employee team,'' offered Wednesday, Sept. 4, and Saturday, Sept. 7, by Mr. Gower, will cover creating an environment where employees thrive, equipped with the product knowledge and people skills to take care of customers.