Dealer members of the Route 66 RV Network will gather Oct. 12-14 at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs, Colo., for their annual event updating the state of the group as well as unveiling new support measures for the coming year.
As with any annual event, there will be a certain amount of unavoidable repetition, but organizers hope to change things up and energize the proceedings with a new roundtable open format rather than just a recitation of talking points from a podium.
“Throughout the meeting, we’re going to press pause on what we’re talking about and then ask questions of the dealers and give them time to discuss amongst themselves,” Cooper Merrill, partner with the Route 66 RV Network, told RVBusiness. “We’ll also have the ability for them to submit questions or feedback or any comments that they want to be visible to the rest of the group as well. We hope to have a little bit more of a conversational format. We’ll still be presenting from the stage, but we’ve heard feedback in the past that it would be awesome to have opportunities to share and get some conversation going at the table as well.”
The roundtable discussions will be part of the Tuesday morning session that has traditionally included updates given from Co-Founders Rob Merrill and Steve Francis as well as those involved in various Route 66 proprietary companies.
Also during the presentation, Route 66 will be unveiling some new technologies offered to dealers to help give the independent RV dealers an edge in the marketplace.
“It’s going to be great, not only to release some of the things we’ve been piloting in beta with select groups that our advisory board helps us construct, but also getting real time feedback as technology and data,” said Connor Francis, Route 66 partner. “Communication between partners and commerce is moving so quickly, it’s really great to get on-the-fly feedback of what dealers are actually doing in their stores and allow them to hear from their peers and give them a larger range of perspectives.”
Francis said that in light of F&I being such a hot-button issue as gross margins compress, many of the new offerings are designed to help dealers protect front-end margins and maximize profitability on deals.
An important part of that is taking care of the customer after the sale and continuing to market to the customer in order to bring them back for repairs, service and potential future purchases.
One of the new pieces allows dealers to access national price comparison numbers.
“That is going to give our dealers access to really powerful information,” Merrill said. “We’re excited to continue to integrate that into other areas of our business on the digital marketing side your websites and some of our F&I technology that we have as well. We think that it’s a piece that’s really going to strengthen our product offering in the future.”
Route 66 also will unveil a new web platform designed by Ride Digital.
Francis said that in answer to member requests, engineers also have been working on ways to minimize the number of tabs a user has to have open to make accessing the information more efficient.
As with many business meetings, AI will be a topic of conversation as well.
Experts will examine areas where they have seen AI be a success and an asset in helping to streamline operations.
Francis said the group is pleased with the early registration for the event especially given the state of the economy.
“We were thinking that maybe dealers wouldn’t be able to make the journey, but they are,” he said.
The event kicks off Monday, Oct. 12, with check-in, an afternoon golf tournament and an evening reception.
Tuesday features morning meetings and the roundtable format, an afternoon expo with featured vendors and an evening dinner and trivia night.
Wednesday concludes with a half-day session of awards, network updates and motivation for dealers.
“Let’s have fun. Let’s build relationships together. But also we’re here to work on our business,” Francis said. “We’re here to sharpen each other. We want to definitely have something for dealers to go back and execute on to help grow their independent dealership as well as the brand in their market.”
