Recent industry data shows one powersports department is lagging behind all others in providing a significant contribution to a dealership’s bottom line. That department? Parts and accessories.

It’s not uncommon for P&A to contribute less than 15 percent of a powersports dealership’s total sales, according to dealership data provided by Garage Composites, a leading industry trainer and provider of 20 groups.

To correct the lagging sales found in P&A departments, Garage Composites has established a pair of powersports-specific training programs for dealerships.

“Sales of new and preowned units continue to show modest gains, but we’re not seeing across-the-board similar improvements in P&A sales,” said Sam Dantzler, president of Garage Composites.

To address that issue, the industry’s leading provider of dealership training has recently begun offering two training options for dealers: 1) an in-depth training academy featuring P&A strategies, sales process and management, and 2) an in-store visit by a Garage Composite consultant.

The exact training will depend on a dealership’s greatest needs, but to fuel P&A sales, the training will likely include these pivotal areas:

• Determining correct product mix based on unit sales and demographics;
• Outlining an effective sales process to increase sales per ticket;
• Setting up effective product display areas;
• Identifying slow-moving products and creating a plan to replace them.

“We’re not willing to sit back and let P&A continue to be an underachiever,” Dantzler said. “We’ve seen the strategies we teach elevate P&A sales to north of 25 percent of a dealership’s total sales. That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional P&A revenue.”

Leading Garage Composites’ management and in-store P&A training will be Stennis Prochnow, a former dealer principal of a Michigan-based, multi-brand powersports dealership. That dealership became a top metric seller in its district and had P&A per unit sales that were 150 percent above national standards.

For more information on the different P&A training programs, contact Garage Composites at [email protected].