Recap of USAV’s Strategic Planning Meeting
Virtual Sessions June 29-30, 2020
We’re Better Together… Even When We’re Not in Boston
The value USAV brings to its members and vendor partners revolves around unique ways in which the group collaborates. Every summer the USAV and PSA leadership, PMP Council and the Dealer Advisory Council (DAC) meet to discuss tactics and strategy, industry trends and inform USAV on the strategic initiatives road map. Typically, this is hosted in either Denver or a city chosen by the DAC. This year we were scheduled to be in Boston at the beginning of August to meet, network and plan. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we had to pivot and move the meeting to a virtual setting. Taking what is usually a three-and-a-half-day event and moving it virtually was no small task. USAV enlisted Brent Lowe to help plan and facilitate the event. Knowing a virtual event format would pose some challenges, we honed in on some key topics and set the event for two 8-hour days. Through multiple planning sessions with the DAC, the PMP council and Brent Lowe, we broke the two days up into four-hour blocks. Even though we were not together in Boston, we knew we had an aggressive, but well-planned, schedule.
This year’s theme was, “we are stronger together, even though we’re not in Boston”. We started on Monday morning at 9:00 am ET with the DAC. In this four-hour session, we recapped 2019, went through the purchase data from the VIR statements and the data that is reported by the integrators on a quarterly basis. There were two key takeaways:
The overall group spend is declining
There are several members purchasing outside of the group programs
While we have some insights as to why, these are two trends that we can collectively correct to help the overall success of members and USAV.
The afternoon session was jammed packed with the DAC, the PMP council, and members of PSA leadership. In this session, we went through an exercise called WIDNFY (What I Desperately Need From You). We worked together to ask what we needed from each other in order to grow and succeed. Through breakouts and various conversations, we were able to develop a list that stated our needs as depicted in the graphic. This graphic will serve as the anchor of our follow up conversations to help hold ourselves and each other accountable to commitments made.
Tuesday, we reconvened with the PMP council only. In this session, we took a deeper dive into the member purchasing trends and pre-meeting survey results. A few key takeaways from this session were that data is king and the more we have of it the better we can plan and make strategic decisions to ensure we have the correct partner programs. Data collection will be a key focus for USAV in 2020 and the more data our members can provide on a timely basis the better we will all be.
Although we missed being in Boston and missed in-person networking, it was a very productive two days for all parties involved. The next step is to put some action behind all the data points that were uncovered. Be sure to look for some meeting invitations from USAV over the next few weeks as we will begin annual check-ins with all our members. In the end, we are all stronger together.