On site at the Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Fla., March 13-14, Cornwell Quality Tools hosted its annual Cornwell Tool Rally, featuring scores of vendors on-hand to provide in-person product training and information to Cornwell dealers.
Bill Stemple, vice president of marketing at Cornwell, explained the benefit to having dealers attend this Rally each year is two-fold: to help with recognition of top dealers, and to educate dealers on product information.
Stemple said that this annual event generally involves the family as part of the show, because family is such an integral part of many dealers’ businesses.
An annual luncheon honored the top 100 dealers nationally in the Cornwell franchise, with the announcements of the “Century Club” recipients. An awards dinner was also held the night after the show wrapped to recognize the top dealers in 2014.
Dealers received information on products by attending training seminars before the show and by having the opportunity to visit with vendors on the show floor to learn more about new and existing products.
Training for dealers
For the first part of the show, dealers had the opportunity to sit in on a number of training sessions, including general business practices, toolbox product information, selling strategies and promotional product packages for dealers to sell.
The selling strategies training focused on a “six-minute selling” format, where vendors had the opportunity to reverse the role of dealers from seller to buyer, so dealers could understand how to approach customers on providing important product features and benefits in a short amount of time. “We know the time the dealer has with his customer is very short,” says Stemple.
For the promotional product packages session, dealers sat in on a product education segment that focused on grouping promotional products together, along with features and benefits of each tool set.
Top product categories
A number of different product categories stood out this year for Cornwell dealers, including cordless power tools and portable power sources.
A number of new products also were introduced at the show, including an updated take on integrated power into the toolbox (coming in June 2015), a Cornwell 1/2” Pneumatic Impact Gun, a portable jump starter to charge both personal electronics as well as vehicles and updates to the 3-1/2 ton floor jack, allowing for technicians to customize their equipment by color and more.
Stemple says the goal for Cornwell has and will remain the same in the future: focusing on the automotive market.
“We are providing tools and a service into the automotive aftermarket channel. So you can expect us to continue to search and identify and create innovative tools that are needed in the marketplace,” he says.
“All of our products … are going into the automotive channel through a network of franchise dealers, and that is our only business, and will continue to be our only business.”
Stemple says the main reason for the expo portion is to allow dealers the opportunity to “meet with the vendors, learn about their products, get to know them, get to know them on a personal basis and learn about their products, how they work,” he says. “So (dealers) can go back to their routes after the Rally is over and carry that knowledge every day, every week.”
While the Rally offers a number of specials and promotions for dealers, Stemple explains the main objective is to allow dealers to really understand the products.
“I’ve always said, it’s better for (dealers) to take that knowledge back and sell that tool every week, rather than just get a deal."
