Recent Press - American Marketing Association

According to Mike Kennedy, vice president of North American sales for Harley-Davidson, their 2012 first place ranking for Pied Piper PSI comes after a year of focus on improving the sales process factors measured by Pied Piper PSI.

Q: How do you ensure that all of your retail locations around the world have a coherent branded experience and stay at the top of the game?

A: We're currently focused on a journey to elevate the customer experience. … We're on a multiyear strategy, which is called ‘Retail 20/20' and it's all about delivering a personalized, compelling, premium and truly custom experience to every customer, every day, everywhere and our dealers, of course, are central to delivering that experience. Our philosophy, specifically for Retail 20/20, is to be customer-led, meaning to truly understand customer motivations and barriers—and, ultimately, planning and developing and designing products and experiences with not only customer wants and needs in mind, but their input as well. …

We have over 100 of what we call field representatives that represent the sales area, they represent the marketing area, they represent the financial insurance area, as well as the service area, and they routinely call on those dealerships and coach and council and share best practices. … And over the last year or so, the sales side of that team has been focused on what we call selling factors … things like, Did the salesperson give you a compelling reason to buy or did the sales person offer you a test ride? Did the salesperson use good visuals in the sales presentation? Did they ask you for your name? Those basic elements, and the team has been definitely focused on those elements in coaching and driving the plans with the dealers.