NADA New Orleans

Quality rather than quantity. That's the best way to describe the NADA show in New Orleans this week. Attendance was down as much as 40% from last year's show in San Francisco, and traffic in the booth was light at times. The silver lining, though, was that the people who did attend and stopped by our booth seemed to be much more serious about doing business. The conversations were lengthier, the questions more pointed and the interest level was pretty high. You can never tell the quality of trade show leads until you follow up on them, but my bet is that we should generate some new business out of the NADA show.

The other thing about the show is that it's just a great time to connect with other people in the industry. We spent some time with the folks at SMS Supercars, who were showing off their hot new 570 Challenger (see the photobook below), which is secured by a Guidepoint System. Also had several lengthy conversations with the various companies that consult on F&I and menu selling. Suffice to say, tight credit is making it a challenge to get cars financed, much less accessory products. So we're focusing on creating awareness about Guidepoint because there will be consolidation in our industry coming in the next few months, and we plan to be the top GPS company that's "still around" when the economy recovers. To that end, we hired a new sales person from one of our competitors to call on national dealer groups. And we're going to pump up the volume in the industry in terms of getting our name out there more frequently. Here are some pix of the 570 Challenger - a sweet car that thieves will no doubt be interested in stealing. Fortunately, there's a Guidepoint in it!