For the record, I am not part of the Dealer Synergy team. This is not my conference and I will likely get blacklisted by other conferences for coming out and saying this. However, it's important to me that the industry knows about the one conference that is truly a "must attend" for dealer principals, general managers, and anyone who has a vested interest in the success of their dealership.
I've attended every Internet Sales 20 Group since its inception. In the beginning, it was much like other conferences in that it was geared towards the digital personnel at dealerships. Internet managers, BDC managers, eCommerce directors and the like could come to the event and learn best practices that could help them do their jobs better.
Things have changed. It was most noticeable at the last event in Atlantic City earlier this year when around 200 attendees learned more than just "how to pick good keywords" or "why you need to be on Pinterest". Things really started coming together as the conference followed a theme. It wasn't a bunch of talking heads promoting their products. It was a truly engaging learning experience where dozens of attendees became part of the event, sharing their own best practices and molding the direction of the discussions.
It was at the last event that I realized that this event, while still powerful for the internet people, truly matured into the exact type of conference that dealer principals and general managers could use to guide the direction of their dealership. From the marketing composites that gave individual attention to everyone's unique situations to the flow of the event that kept an orderly but aggressive training schedule, the Internet Sales 20 Group demonstrated that it was different from anything in our industry.
We are proud to sponsor the upcoming event in Boston, not just because of the exposure that it will bring to us, but more importantly because we will be helping the leaders at dealerships come out of the event with a better understanding of how they will succeed through the rest of 2014 and into 2015. This is a competitive industry, but we're in a growth market right now. Some dealers are content with doing better than they did last year. For those who feel that success is never truly attained to its fullest and that there's always room for improvement, this is the right event to attend in September.
