When I’m coaching sales training I talk a lot about the importance of follow up. That’s because it makes a difference. As a salesperson if you actually follow up with prospective clients, you’ll be well ahead of your competitors. That’s because most salespeople either don’t follow up at all, or they only follow up half-heartedly. […]
I just spent a week road tripping in the wilds of northern Alberta. That, in itself, is not unusual for me. I do it all the time. What made it different this time was that I had cajoled the Canadian sales manager for the biggest brand we distribute to ride with me. My main objective […]
It is absolutely possible to have too much of a good thing. In the various AV and CE channels, you’ll find that at least a trickle of nerdiness runs through most of the people who work there. In some, it’s not so much a trickle, as it is a raging river. And there’s nothing wrong […]
Mark Twain said, “a man who picks up a cat by the tail learns something that he can learn in no other way.” As valuable as direct experience is, and as important as it is to learn from your mistakes, it’s even better to learn from others’ mistakes. Picking up a new client who’s dumped […]
In the prior installment, I had begun detailing the Request For Quote process, and my observations on them. And by “observations on them,” what I really mean is my cynical outlook on them. Don’t get me wrong, jumping through the RFQ hoops set out by organizational procurement managers can be a tedious and unrewarding exercise. […]
Anybody who sells into commercial, industrial or institutional channels has to deal with Requests For Quotes. A request for quotation (abbreviated as RFQ) is how large organizations invite vendors to bid on systems, services or individual products. For AV pros, quotations on systems and services are the most common. Additionally, what’s asked for the in […]
There are some things that you just don’t see very often any more. Wooly mammoths or dodo birds are good examples. There’s something else you don’t see very often in the wild: An apology. I mean a real apology. Not a half-hearted apology, or a sorry-not-sorry non-apology, or worst of all, the one where someone […]
It’s not uncommon after years working for other people to decide that now is the time to strike out on your own. In fact, it’s extremely common, part of the circle of life. And not everyone who goes out and sets up shop for themselves is a born entrepreneur, either. I can think of people […]
Last week I stumbled upon a fun essay at Audiophile Review in which the author used the notorious White Van Speakers as a jumping off point to rail at his particular hobby horses in the HiFi biz. As entertaining as his screed was, I’m going to take a more literal approach. Instead of using White […]
One of the marketing efforts that AV firms engage in to reach more clients is exhibiting at promotional shows: Buying a booth at the show to promote their services. When we talk about the promotional shows that dealers participate in, we’re most commonly talking about consumer shows. That includes home shows. Renovation shows. Home shows. […]
Apophenia is the tendency to see patterns of meaning in things. When unchecked it can be a disorder, but in and of itself, it’s a handy mental tool for making sense of the world around us. If you’re around long enough in any field of endeavor you recognize patterns emerge. Like negotiating. Haggling over a […]
I have a tendency to get hung up on best practices. My excuse for being so centered on them is that best practices are, by definition, the best way to do something. My old boss and mentor frequently reminded us that there were three ways to perform a task: a right way, a wrong way […]
The relationships between the various trades on a jobsite form a complex web of inter-dependencies. The two that are arguably the closest are the electrician and the AV pro. That makes sense, since on even small AV jobs the AV pro needs to specify locations and load capacities for the electrical outlets required for the […]
The best laid plans, they say, often go awry. That was actually Scottish poet Robert Burns who wrote that, but that’s neither here nor there. Years ago, I had promoted up a brand new Assistant Manager. Mitch was a great salesperson, well organized, and a good leader, so he was an excellent choice. None of […]
Just the other day I was involved in a discussion with long-time AV industry people. One of the complaints leveled at the channel as a whole was that overall, the barriers to entry are low: At the most basic level, all anyone needs is a set of tools, a vehicle, and small lines of credit […]
At a typical AV company, the sales designers and sometimes the project managers are the front office people that the clients know and work with. They’re the ones that the clients ask for when they call, the ones they look to answer their questions, solve their problems and reassure them that everything is going according to […]
Sometimes it feels like I’ve spent my whole professional life being ruled by metrics. Top line. Bottom line. Gross. Net. And of course all the derivative metrics. Turns. Shrink. Sales per square foot. Warranty percentage. Defective percentage. Closing ratio. Ah, closing ratio. My favorite. Not really. If you don’t know, closing ratio calculates how many […]
There’s that aphorism that if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. But that’s not really true in this business. In our business, if you always do what you always did, with each passing year you’ll get less than you did before. Looking at the overall landscape of my dealer […]
Last week I was away on business. Starting on Monday my iPhone 6 started to present battery issues: rapid power drain, and, for unknown reasons, the battery indicator would read “100%” all day even as it approached zero charge. It was intermittent, too. That only made it even more mysterious. I had no clear way […]
Late last year, I got to have a front row seat for a major product recall from one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers. Well, maybe it’s not accurate to say I had a front row seat –more like, as a distributors’ rep, I was on the sharp end of the stick, having to manage […]
A new coffee shop opened up on the corner near my house. It’s one-off, and locally owned. I got a double espresso, to go. It was three bucks, and, I found out after I left, undrinkable. Not because I’m some sort of effete coffee snob, but because it was literally undrinkable. It tasted like the […]
I know I’ve talked in the past about the various characters who wandered in and out of the stores I worked in. There were the tire kickers, the be-backs, the rude, unhappy people, and a rogues’ gallery of others. Some of them were even, occasionally, actual paying customers. And then there were the dawdlers, customers […]
In recent editorials, I’ve been going over Porter’s Five Forces and putting them into context for businesses of the AV business. To review, here are the Five Forces: Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Bargaining power of customers Bargaining power of suppliers Industry rivalry For this installment, I want to discuss the threat of […]
When I browse the video department of modern retails I’m struck by how lucky kids today have it. When I was their age, demonstrating video quality was much more difficult. I’m going to take you way back in time, before DVD, before HDTV, to the 1990s. Back then we had neither digital signal nor fancy […]
Ask anybody who’s been in business a long time and they’ll tell you how crucial repeat and referral business has been to their success. It’s not hard to get someone to do business with you once, but the trick is to be good enough for them to not only do business with you twice, but […]
Professional AV companies have a selection of certifications they can qualify for, from industry trade associations like InfoComm and CEDIA, to product category-specific certifications from major vendors like Crestron or AMX or the Imaging Sciences Foundation and so on. How important is it for you and your people to be certified? Granted, many municipalities require […]
The first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs is drawing to a close, which makes these reminiscences timely. Let me just say that I’m not a gambler. Like, at all. If there is a “gambling gene” it’s complete absent from my makeup. It’s not that I don’t approve of gambling; I’ve got no moral objections […]
Making generalities are useful when establishing guidelines. In general, if you work with enough business owners and managers, and review the performance of their teams, you’ll see commonalities and trends. And, speaking generally, comparable businesses in the same channel have more in common than they are different. One of the most common of those commonalities is […]
The business news this past week has been abuzz with stories about retailer bankruptcies, increasingly vacant shopping malls, and the looming threat of an economic recession. Those trends are ominous, but it a blackly humorous way reminded me of some of my own misadventures in retail. I was managing an electronics store, and it happened […]
AV install professionals like to see themselves as completely different from the mass-market consumer electronics retailers. Exterior details may vary from upscale retail storefront, or by-appointment-only showrooms and they take pains to present an impeccable image of expertise and professionalism that sets them apart from the look and feel of a big box store. The […]
People who haven’t worked in retail seldom have a grasp of how pernicious fraud is. Proactively countering it, and retroactively uncovering it is a Sisyphean task that has be done almost daily. When you work for a company that sells big ticket electronics, credit card fraud is constant issue. I’m barely exaggerating when I say […]
Previously I’d been reminiscing about the various people who walked through the doors of the stereo shops I worked at, from Tire Kickers to the Whales. Of course, there are many others. There’s also the Perpetually Upset. Everyone who’s worked with the public knows that there are some people who just want to be unhappy, […]
