Policy #5

Product and Other Committees

Most of the work of the Dealer Council is done by committees that report back to the council. The most important committees deal with the products that our members sell. The success of any product depends on whether it meets the needs in the marketplace. The dealers make a profit by selling the product if (and only if) the product meets the needs of the end users. You are charged with collecting input from other members and funneling it to the NEC product managers in an orderly manner. Likewise, if you develop a good working relationship with NEC staff, you can make a difference in the success of a product and how well the dealers sell the product. The following list of suggestions has come from years of observing what works best and gets results.

1. Develop a good relationship with the appropriate contact at NEC. Find out who this is right away. Make sure to email him/her on a regular basis. Phone calls once a month or more as needed. Ongoing communication with NEC is a must. Once they feel comfortable with you, they will call and bounce ideas off of you.

2. In talking to NEC, think carefully before you speak. Avoid giving quick responses. You can email other council members and get quick feedback from several dealers on an idea or question.

3. Make sure you aren't just giving them your personal opinion. A feature that is important for one of your customers may not be needed by the majority of dealers.

4. Gather input from dealers on a regular basis. Prepare a statistical report showing percentage of dealers, rank order priority of features needed etc. Engineers look for numbers. Sales managers want bottom line suggestions on what will help them sell more systems.

5. Send out a questionnaire at least once a year. You can have RCR mail it if you want. Have other council members look over your questionnaire to make sure it makes sense, gets the input you need. A good questionnaire is hard to write. It has to be quick to fill out or people will throw it away. Let them fax or email it back. If you only get a couple of responses, the results are worthless.

6. A committee of one is not a committee. You are responsible for making sure things get done, but find 2 other knowledgeable people to help set priorities etc. There should be budget dollars available if you need to have a meeting with the committee and NEC. There are dealers in the Dallas area or Houston that can probably furnish one person to keep air fares down. You may want a technical person and a marketing person, depending on your personal strengths.

7. Be prepared to give a full committee report at every Board Meeting

8. Be prepared to provide articles for up to four newsletters per year. It is vital to let our membership know that we are doing something for them. If you don't let them know, they have to assume we are doing nothing.

9. Check the NECSI Web Member discussion area bi-monthly for conversation and information exchange about your product. Encourage your NEC contact to do the same. Facilitate answers to these and all issues from members with your NEC contact in a timely manner. Don't be afraid to raise some questions to get the discussion going. Most visitors to the web just look. Our site needs to gather information from our members.

10. Maintain in strict confidence all matters presented as confidential.