Held at the Hyatt Regency Dallas in the city’s downtown area, March 18-19, Cornwell Quality Tools hosted its annual Cornwell Tools National Rally, featuring more than 100 booth spaces occupied with vendors on-hand for attending mobile dealers.
This year’s National Rally outperformed 2015’s expectations, according to Bob Studenic, president and CEO of Cornwell Tools.
“From an attendance standpoint, just intuitively going from a destination resort like Disney to Dallas, you would have seen a little drop off – and we anticipated a drop off in attendance, actually,” said Studenic. “Quite the contrary. We’ve set a record from an attendance standpoint.”
Exceptional training opportunities
Regarding attendance for this year’s training seminars, Studenic explained the reception was well-received, with many classes filled to capacity.
“We’re going to need to anticipate an increase in educational space for the seminars to accommodate, because it was basically standing room only,” said Studenic.
Training opportunities included both a business operations focus and product education focus.
One particularly popular training event returned for the second year in a row: the “Six-Minute Sales Challenge.” This seminar featured a brief training segment for a number of product manufacturers on how to sell to customers, by presenting a mock dealer-customer interaction completed in the allotted time.
“We challenged them to mimic how the dealer should sell their product to the end user. They weren’t supposed to try and sell our dealer. We wanted them to play the part of the dealer,” explained Don Russell, digital marketing manager for Cornwell explained, of the presenting vendors.
“They had six minutes, because we figured that’s how long a dealer has to talk about something new on the truck.”
Vendors that participated included Autel, Astro Pneumatic, Bosch, Hein Werner, Milwaukee, NOCO, PTP and Roberlo, spanning a number of product categories.
Dealer promotions and recognition
Attendees had access to promotions with giveaways that included a grill with a toolbox appearance, and a remote-controlled Cornwell-branded cooler on wheels, with the purchase of certain product.
New products at the show included numerous bluePOWER ratchet and socket combination kits, and locker accessories for existing toolboxes. Updated color options with trending high-visibility neon green for screwdrivers, hooks and picks, jacks and tool storage options were also a highlight for dealers at this year’s show.
In addition to training and product releases, Cornwell held a service awards ceremony over lunch the second day, along with sales recognition awards ceremony during dinner after the show wrapped. This ceremony focused on dealers who sell the most overall, but also featured a segment recognizing dealers that sell the most of Cornwell’s manufactured hardline.”
“All of this that we do is not for us to sell tools, it’s to help the dealer make money, starting Monday morning,” said Russell, of the reasoning behind the annual National Rally. “He’s got the knowledge, he’s got the specials, he’s got the negotiating room. He should be able to hit the ground running.”
“We want to sell tools, but our other primary mission focus is to help them and support them,” added Studenic. “Whatever we can do to educate them on features and benefits is going to make them more valuable to their customers.”
