In June of 2008, RVAA President Mike McKay from StagParkway, Inc., appointed a Task Force led by the Association's Vice President Piar Adams from Carefree of Colorado to finalize a set of standard best practices to be presented at the 2008 Executive Conference in St. Louis.

The Task Force met on a weekly basis from the end of June through the end of July and presented its findings to the RVAA Board during their August 4th, 2008 meeting. The Board approved that these Best Practice Standards be presented to the RVAA membership and their use encouraged to help improve the overall efficiency of the aftermarket channel.

The Best Practices were broken down into three categories: Parts Best Practices, Education Best Practices, and Sales Best Practices. The Standards for each category can be reviewed by clicking on the links to the right of this page. Additionally, Educational Programming for the Standards is available by clicking on the RVAA Education Standards link. The RVAA Standards Task Force has now been appointed as a full-time standing Task Force within the RVAA Executive Committee. The continuing work of the group will focus on:

  • Further develop and define existing best practices
  • Develop new best practices
  • Develop a recognition program for members complying with the established best practices
  • Define how to promote and educate you on the best practices and how you can incorporate them into your business for best results

Sales Best Practices

RVAA Sales Standard Best Practices call for members to:

  • Use RVAA's Universal Price List
    This easy-to-use spreadsheet gives suppliers a convenient way to send product info, prices, price changes and even info on new to products to all distributors in the same format.  For distributors it means product information from all suppliers will be in the same format.  Now we can spend less time pushing data around and more time growing our market. Let’s use it! Click here to get a copy.
  • Utilize RVAA's graphics standards
  • Online ordering capability for customers
  • Provide stocking recommendations for best results
  • Provide toll-free customer service hotline to WDs

Parts Best Practices

The RVAA Parts Standards Best Practices call for its members to have:

  • Established part numbers for all finished goods products and parts or sub assemblies
  • Established UPC codes for 100% of all finished goods, and a plan to implement UPC for parts
  • Published lead times for all products and parts
  • Published parts manual
  • Published warranty policies and procedures

Education Best Practices

The RVAA Education Standard Best Practice calls for members to provide factory technical and sales training to the aftermarket (WDs and Dealers) Recognized methods of training:

  • In-person seminars
  • Web-based seminars
  • Published training manuals
  • Published bulletins
  • Published troubleshooting guides