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A San Diego Spotlight

The 2005 PFW Dealership Management Conference

PFW Password - Summer 2005 PFW’s biennial Dealership Management Conference wrapped up on Saturday, February 26 at the Catamaran Resort Hotel in San Diego, California. With over 145 attending, including PFW customers, guests, and representatives from Case IH, John Deere Credit, Komatsu America, and QUALCOMM, this year’s conference was the largest—and busiest—we’ve ever held. The Conference also marked the return of PFW to San Diego (and indeed, the Catamaran itself), exactly ten years after “Charting a New Course” with our customers there in 1995. Ten years later, we were inspired to reflect on the changes that have occurred in the dealer/distributor landscape—and how PFW’s software products have supported this change.

PFW would like to extend a warm “Thank You” to all who attended and participated in the 2005 PFW Dealership Management Conference this year. We hope you had fun, and returned home with all the tools and inspiration needed to keep your dealership continuing on its “Charted Course”—towards success!

The Conference
The first day of the Conference started early with breakfast at 7:00 AM, and the welcoming “Opening Remarks” from John Andersen at 8:00. A brief (and in some places, rather funny) slide show comparing 1995 to 2005 reminded us just how far we’ve come in ten years: from R5V01 to 2005’s IntelliDealer. After the opening address, Bruce Merrifield, from the Merrifield Consulting Group, gave the keynote address about Customer Profitability and strategies for taking business to “the next level”. Bruce was then followed by a panel discussion where panelists Ray Koenig from Koenig Equipment, Steve Day from Tractor and Equipment Co., Fred Sixt from QUALCOMM, and PFW’s John Andersen shared their thoughts on the future of the equipment distribution industry and how their companies were rising to meet the challenges ahead.

Class sessions began after lunch, with dealership presentations running concurrently with presentations put on by PFW staff. Sessions were quite equally attended, as many dealerships had brought multiple representatives, and discussions often spilled out of the presentation rooms to continue during break times. With this in mind, PFW would like to thank all dealership presenters who took the time to share their personal dealership experiences: Mark Caldwell, Cook Equipment; Harold Maxwell, Booth Machinery; John Rudderham and Anthony Wilkinson, Huron Tractor, and Bert Gregoire and Victor Engbrecht from Enns Brothers. Your presentations proved valuable to all attendees looking for “real-life” implementation strategies they could take home and start using right away in their own dealerships.

Take-Home Tools: Don’t forget about your Conference CD!
Providing actual “take home” benefits is a key component of the PFW Conference, so attendees were sent home with a “Conference CD” containing the most up-to-date information on PFW’s products and services, as well as detailed handouts and information from each session presenter. The CD also contained web demonstrations of various PFW products, including: IntelliDealer Financial Management, Product Support IntelliTech and Traffic, as well as Management Central and demonstrations for most modules in the eServices software. Individual product specification sheets are available on the CD, as well as interface information and back issues of this popular PFW Password publication. Most significantly, all of the presentation files from each of the sessions offered—from the keynote address of Bruce Merrifield, to Hidden IntelliDealer: The AH-HA! Session; from Introduction to Product Support Parts, to Creating the “Three-Way-Win” with PFW IntelliTech and Service Agreement Management: Making Money Selling Service—all are available on the CD. Because of the concurrent sessions offered at the Conference, this section of the CD is especially important for providing maximum exposure to all the topics offered.

NOTE: If you attended the Conference and have misplaced your CD, you can order a replacement by e-mailing Jenna Morton at jmorton@pfw.com.

Fun and Networking too!
Right from our evening opening reception on the William D. Evans sternwheeler, Conference attendees and PFW representatives were able to mingle with old acquaintances and make new contacts. Networking time between classes, during meals, and at our open house, “Operations Central” in the Catamaran’s Executive Suite, also provided available time to “talk business”, or to just enjoy the company and conversation of other like-minded individuals. For those of us at PFW, we enjoyed this time also—putting faces to names and voices heard regularly over the telephone reminds us just how much we value our personal relationships with our customers.

The Conference also allowed ample time to enjoy the sights and sounds of San Diego’s Mission Bay, Mission Beach, and Pacific Beach areas. Taking advantage of the mild weather, PFW Conference attendees were often spotted enjoying some fresh air and exercise while walking along the 7.5 miles of paved boardwalk running along Mission Bay, or relaxing at dinner at one of the local seafood establishments. Traveling companions of the Conference attendees also traveled to the community of La Jolla to have lunch and do a little (or, in some cases, a LOT) of shopping, and downtown, SeaWorld, the historic Gaslamp District and the San Diego Zoo were also frequent side trips.

To conclude the Conference, PFW Conference attendees headed to dinner at the Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar, where we were treated to a walk-through of one of the hangars, and an up-close cockpit view of an F-18 Hornet. We say special thanks to those pilots (and the mechanics in the hangar) who took the time to explain the “finer details” of life on the base and what it takes to be a Marine in the US Marine Corps.

PFW Conference Survey Results
Additionally, we extend our thanks to those attendees who returned their Conference surveys. Your input is very important to us and will help ensure that the PFW Dealership Management Conference in 2007 is even better! To view the results of these returned surveys, please see "2005 PFW Dealership Management Conference Survey Results" for customer response information on the Conference presentations and speakers, locale and lodging, and scheduling and format.

Once again, we say thank you to everyone who attended the 2005 PFW Dealership Management Conference. We hope you learned a lot and had fun—we did!—and we hope to see you again in 2007.

P.S. If you couldn’t make it to our conference in San Diego this year, we’d still like to share some of the details of one of the sessions given by our VP of System Architecture and Design, Ross Atkinson. Log into the News section on IntelliDealer.com to view the helpful (and often underutilized!) features of your IntelliDealer software.