BRP Inc’s Sea-Doo dealerships were ranked highest, according to the 2024 Pied Piper PSI Telephone Lead Effectiveness Study, which measured responsiveness to sales customers who phoned boat dealerships interested in purchasing a pontoon boat. Following Sea-Doo were dealerships selling Polaris Inc’s Bennington, Avalon & Tahoe Manufacturing’s Avalon, and Brunswick Corporation’s Harris.

Telephone Lead Effectiveness (TLE) measures what happens when a sales customer interested in purchasing a product phones a dealership. How effectively does the dealership answer the call, provide the help the customer desires, and encourage the customer on their path to visiting the dealership and becoming a buyer? To complete the study, Pied Piper anonymously phoned 802 dealerships between March 2024 and September 2024, at locations representing the seventeen largest pontoon boat brands.

“One out of four buyers today first contacts a dealership by telephone,” said Fran O’Hagan, Pied Piper CEO. “That phone interaction is critical to whether a customer visits a dealership and purchases a boat, but too often telephone processes and behaviors are invisible to dealership management.”

For more than fifteen years Pied Piper has provided measurement and reporting of best practice sales and service behaviors using the fact-based Prospect Satisfaction Index process. Brands from industries such as automotive, powersports and agriculture have been measured and ranked, but 2024 marks the first PSI industry study for the marine industry, focusing on brands and dealerships selling the industry’s most popular product: pontoon boats.