AVB’s Meekings Presents MTEQ to Members

COO Dave Meekings plugs members into the MTEQ digital toolbox.

COO says dealers must lead, not lag, online

By Alan Wolf, YSN

Picking up where CEO Jim Ristow’s State of the Union address left off, Dave Meekings, COO of AVB, outlined the group’s simple yet comprehensive solution to today’s competitive marketplace challenges during yesterday’s 2023 Summit General Session.

Dealers must remain nimble and efficient in a quickly changing retail scene that saw customers shift from desperate to price sensitive, and inventory move from scarce to excessive, in only a matter of months, he said. Equally important, dealers have to excel online to remain a top option for both customers and vendors.

To address those concerns, AVB has developed MTEQ, a unified package of online tools and services that centralizes and simplifies the complex operations retailers now need to succeed. A contraction of marketing and technology, MTEQ offers an expansive suite of expert solutions that will merchandise e-commerce sites effectively, guide the customers’ online shopping journey, and easily manage sales, service, parts and inventory all in one place.

All it takes, Meekings said, echoing the Summit’s theme, is to “plug in” to the platform.

Granted, MTEQ encompasses a deep basket of digital tools, but unlike this year’s big Oscar winner, members needn’t access everything, everywhere all at once. “Now is the time to start with what you can,” Meekings said, and challenged dealers to review their retail tech standing with the actionable “Plug-In Plan Checklist,” distributed at Summit.

“It’s the most important thing we can do to make sure we all keep winning,” he said. “And we need to do it now so the customers, and as importantly, the vendors understand that we are a leader, not a lagger, in this increasingly online world of retail.”

Elsewhere during the presentation, Meekings discussed two additional AVB initiatives: LUXE and Traffic Driver. LUXE addresses the high-margin luxury appliance category and represents another important solution to “plug in” to, he said. Led by AVB’s Director of Merchandising Paul Roth, the effort includes a full track of trainings, roundtables and support materials at this week’s show.

On the digital side, Traffic Driver is a set of constantly evolving code embedded in the core of AVB Marketing’s Alta website platform that maximizes members’ traffic performance. Essentially, this feature fine tunes dealer websites to be a top search option, and can help generate 25-50% more traffic than the competition, Meeking said, and compared it to putting one’s store “on a high-traffic corner in the middle of town vs. a back alley next to the city dump.”

He added that Traffic Driver reflects the impact of AVB’s investment in MTEQ, which results in hundreds of updates to Traffic Driver technology each year.

“It’s just one example of how plugging in to MTEQ can truly drive your business to the next level,” he said.

Follow all the latest 2023 Summit news this week on YSN.

YSN publisher AVB BrandSource is the nation’s largest merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, mattress, furniture and CE dealers.

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