An interview with Cliff Brady, Moderator of the Suck-Cess forums.

Question: Every year Suck-Cess features a new topic. What is the 2012 topic?

Cliff: It's titled "How much do you know about your industry?" It will feature a quiz and discussion on various industry statistics. We will put forward a question about our industry and then ask the audience what they think the answer is. Then we will give our answer based of our extensive research and discuss this with our panel and the audience.

Question: This sounds interesting. I want to get into this deeper but first who is on the panel?

Cliff: Of Course we have Alex Giftos. He is to Suck-Cess what Paul Lynde was to Hollywood Squares. We brought back Josh Kline who was a panelist last year and certainly a crowd favorite. And I finally convinced my good friend Ret Sobelman to serve on the panel. I have always felt the Ret has some of the most practical positions within our industry and I am excited to offer that point of view on our panel.

Question: Explain more about the quiz.

Cliff: The quiz is just the approach we will use to get the discussion going. We are going to take data from our research, form it into a question and let the audience answer the question. Then we will analyze what it might mean to each of us and talk about its relevance to our operations.

Question: Where did this data come from?

Cliff: That was the real tough part of this. Our industry is not one that either shares a lot of information or is truly analyzed in depth. Rob Heater, the VDTA Director of Sales & Marketing, was very helpful. We also had to grab whatever we could from other sources and compare and contrast this information to see how it corresponds with further equivalent industry studies. This was very difficult and I am proud of what we have come up with. What we have done in a sense is establish the first independent dealer based industry study.

Question: Can you give us an example of some of the data or questions you will be discussing?

Cliff: I don't want to share a specific example yet. You will just have to attend to find out. I will tell you that many of the answers we found are truly fascinating and fly in the face of what most of us believe to be true today. I expect we will have a very lively discussion. I will also say the information we went after is not in any way who sells the most but more what sells the most, what is trending up and what is trending down.

Question: I am told there will be a surprise at the end, do you care to elaborate?

Cliff: Yes. The Suck-Cess seminar is at 4:00 to 6:00 PM on Sunday previous to the Opening Ceremonies which begin at 7:00 PM. Keeping within the theme we will host a silly game show style quiz as a warm up to the ceremonies. This is going to be a lot of fun!