No visits anywhere for me this week, it's been head down, getting the next issue of Service Dealer magazine completed - and I can confirm it's a cracking issue to kick the new year off with!

Articles to look forward to when it drops onto your mat include a full report on the recent Service Dealer Conference, with summaries of all the sessions. Also we give coverage to all the winners of the Dealer of the Year awards.

Elsewhere we feature another Q&A with a leading dealer, look forward to January's LAMMA and BTME exhibitions, and reflect both on the recent SALTEX and Italy's EIMA show.

As well as all the regular features you've come to expect, we have a couple of new hellos for 2019 in the mag. Firstly, we will be hearing from our new Dairy Of Season contributors, Briants Of Risborough. I'd like to thank Chris and Bex from Briants for agreeing to chronicle the course of the coming year for their dealership in Service Dealer. It's a feature which I know dealers enjoying reading and I'm sure Briants will provide a fascinating and insightful look into the running of an independent specialist.

Also I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Emyr Jenkins of Jenkins Garden Machinery for contributing so candidly to the Diary feature throughout 2018. It has been a pleasure working with him and I'm sure all our readers appreciated following how his business fared during the course of what proved to be a most eventful season.

Another new face to the magazine will actually be familiar to anyone who attended the conference in November. Sara Hey from the specialist dealer training company in the States, Bob Clements Inc, will be contributing a column each issue. Sara will be offering advice to dealers from a transatlantic perspective, giving tips on methods you might like to try to run your business more profitably.

It was fascinating hearing Sara speak at the Oxford Belfry last month, recognising just how many parallels there are between managing a specialist outdoor powered machinery dealership both here and in the U.S. Obviously there are differences in the specifics sometimes, but generally speaking the principals remain the same which ever side of the Atlantic your premises are located upon.

Last week for example when I was talking in this Update about the value of self promotion for dealers, I know these are questions which Sara's company has been asked by American dealers recently - just what percentage of your sales should be spent on marketing?

Sara answered this query from a U.S dealer in her blog saying, "There is a simple rule of thumb in dealerships when it comes to how much you should spend on marketing. If your dealership is less than 5 years old, or if you have brought on a new major line in the last five years, in most cases or depending on your margins, you should spend 5% of your gross revenue on marketing."

Sara continued, "Let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, ABC dealership has generated a total of one million dollars over the last year. In this example, this pretend dealership has been in business for four years, so we will assume that 5% of the gross profits are going towards the marketing budget. That is $50,000. That is a lot of money. In most dealerships, you could get an entire additional employee for your marketing budget. In order to justify this, we have to be sure that our marketing money is generating us as much as an employee would."

I'd like to extend my gratitude to Sara for agreeing to share her insight with us in Service Dealer throughout 2019 - it's a column which I'm sure all our readers will look forward to perusing each issue.

Finally, as ever throughout next year, we'd love to hear from you, our readers, as much as possible. So please always feel free to contribute to surveys, leave comments on this Weekly Update or drop me a line. It’s your magazine.