Yes, when it comes to selling AV services, dealers/integrators/VARs should embrace “conceptual selling.” Allow me to explain.
By nature, most of us are creatures of habit. In this case, many in the AV industry (fed by years of historical involvement) sell what might be considered the obvious.
They see AV sales as selling hardware. And that’s a habit to break out of.
AV and IT used to be mutually exclusive, but have converged over the last 20 years. Many in the AV industry are only now coming to grips with the ramifications and what that means relative to new opportunities.
With the advent of IoT, the cloud, and access to big data, the roles of commercial AV integrators (and independent sales reps) are changing. Some get it… and others do not (at least not yet).
Listen: What to Tell Your Sales Reps to Get More AV as a Service Contracts: Episode 38 of AV+
Two AV Sales Scenarios
The integrator’s customers, the end users, are pre-educated before the commercial AV integrator darkens their doors. Many times, they have done research and price comparisons before a project even begins.
Worst case is that the end user does not feel they even need a commercial AV integrator, and they buy a flat panel and mount online to have their facilities folks install it.
You should not own a car without insurance. In AV parlance, you should not have a system without a maintenance agreement.
In a best-case scenario, the prices that a commercial AV integrator can command for hardware is declining.
In 2005, a 40” commercial LCD flat panel was $3,000 and today it is $600. Enough said.
A similar attitude (also born over many years) is reflected in the vital independent sales rep community… and you can’t blame them for this.
Reps don’t make money unless they sell something, and each visit on a sales call needs to result in a sale. In simplistic terms, AV dealers buy what the rep is selling, and the rep has to sell more to make the same money they did a few years ago.
It is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are in a constant search for what dealers will buy and they seek to do so with the least amount of difficulty (read that time). Ultimately, all they have to sell is their time.
Think of selling car insurance versus selling a car.
One is tangible but the other is intangible… but the intangible sale is tangential to the tangible. The “secret” lies in binding the intangible to the tangible.
In our example, you should not own a car without insurance. In AV parlance, you should not have a system without a maintenance agreement. The point here is that we need to migrate beyond the obvious. This is where conceptual selling comes into play.
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Selling AV Conceptually
Commercial AV dealers (and independent reps) need to (partially) migrate to and embrace a conceptual sales model and find ways to make profits based on broader concepts with hardware and software as tools of the trade.
The hardware becomes the means to an end, but the end is the concept or the objective.
The latest thinking in sales methodologies is based on these principals:
- It is no longer about features and benefits, rather exploring and presenting “what if scenarios” and answering problems that might stand in the way of exploring options.
- The sale becomes meeting the objectives, but it is top down and not bottom up as so many are used to.
Conceptual selling is designed around asking intelligent questions. The questions fall into three stages: getting information, giving information, and getting a commitment.
Ask AV sales questions in these categories:
- Clarifying the prospect’s concept of the project and explore what they’d like to achieve. The more creative among us will meet with a client and introduce new concepts for consideration and present objectives that might help them (i.e. Return on Objectives-ROO)
- Questions that reaffirm information.
- Seek to understand a prospect on a personal level and discover their connection to the project.
- Commitment questions to inquire after a prospect’s investment in the project.
- Basic issue questions that might raise potential problems.
In this process of discovery, the sale must be a win-win—for both the salesperson and the buyer. If it isn’t, the salesperson should walk away. You will notice that we have not yet talked about products.
Top-Down Isn’t So Bad
To be successful in conceptual AV sales, you must couch things in a way and in the language that the end users will understand. You must give concrete examples of what types of products and services can do and in what types of applications to meet their objectives.
This is new thinking for some who might feel the top down conceptual approach is too nebulous. While some more progressive AV integrators get it, for others it will require a paradigm shift.
It will take a bit of time investment, but we need to take as many overarching concepts as possible and do our own variations of “what if scenarios”. [related]
We need to take each vertical market including corporate, education, government, HOW, entertainment, etc. and show not only the concepts like UCC and IoT but how specific products and services might work.
This tells the dealer what products and services they need to offer to complete the solution and for the independent rep it tells them what products and services they need to offer to their dealers.
Once those internal stories are created, it is time to introduce the concepts to end users or at the very least, expand their thinking.
The major roadblock to a conceptual AV sales model is that it takes more time. It is not a transactional or box sale. The best news is that it opens new revenue streams for the dealer, differentiates them from others, and flies in the face of commoditization.
One way or another, this is where the industry is heading, and it will boil down to a survival of the fittest.
Those that get on board with selling AV conceptually will thrive and those that do not will, at best, be mired down in their own stagnancy or continue to decline. All the commercial AV market research numbers support this approach.
