CADA Laureate award-winners from all three categories are offering ideas, insights and advice on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the dealership world, through inspirational videos that have been published on the CADA Laureate website.
The initiative comes from the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association (CADA), which reached out to Laureate award-winners from the Ambassadorship, Retail Operations, and Business Innovation categories to provide comments on the COVID-19 pandemic, on topics that touch their respective category. The English videos can be viewed here, while the French versions can be found here.
“These CADA Laureates are truly the leaders of our industry,” said Tim Reuss, CADA President and CEO, in a CADA Newsline article. “We invited them to share ideas and best practices, and they didn’t hesitate. We are very thankful, and proud to share their insights with our dealer members.”
The CADA Laureate Innovators focused their messages on innovating during and post-pandemic, while the Ambassadorship video focused on supporting people and communities in a time of great need. The Retailer video focused on sharing strategies on adapting and operating during a crisis.
“Crisis always provides opportunity to innovate, and this is the time to do it,” said Aziz Ahamed of Destination Auto Group in Burnaby, B.C. He is one of the CADA Laureate Innovator award winners to offer their input in the video.
CADA Laureate Retailer Charles Saillant of Ste-Foy Toyota, Quebec, Que., is also among the dealers to offer a few comments about what they are doing during the COVID-19 crisis — before and even after they reopened their showroom doors for business. In Quebec, dealerships opened for service mid-April and sales in May. But before they opened, they were completely closed, save for a few that were allowed to cater to emergency needs.
“My brother and I, since we work together, we sent videos to all our ‘staff’, every three days, to tell them: ‘Hang in there, we are all with you. You’re going to come back, you’re going to come back, you’re going to come back,’” said Saillant, referring to the employees he had to temporarily lay off due to the impact of the pandemic.
CADA is also making a special interactive video experience available for dealer members on the CADA’s COVID-19 resource page. The video includes an inspirational “pep talk” from each of the 19 participating CADA Laureates that can be accessed by clicking on the individual dealer’s name.
iA Dealer Services is the exclusive CADA Laureate program sponsor.
