Tuesday, 7:45 AM – Product Demo. We always start our Tuesday Sales meeting off with a fifteen minute product demonstration by a member of our sales staff. Here’s how it works: The person giving the presentation takes home a product (or products, depending on how technically deep the product is) a week or two before their scheduled demo and becomes an “expert” on this product. They might consult with the manufacturers or factory reps or they might utilize our in-house expertise and talk with our resident product experts or studio staff to gain additional insights on the product. The gear assigned for these demos are generally new releases just coming into our warehouse (often, we’ll review a product before a manufacturer even has a chance to do a formal training session here or anywhere else).

The salesperson also creates handouts featuring key information for the sales staff including: Essential specifications, applications, competitive comparisons, warranty information and key user notes. This information is later entered in our inventory records so that the entire company has access to it when they pull up a product record for a customer.

Finally, they give a live demo of the product (with audio) to the sales staff, followed by a Q & A session. This demonstration serves several purposes. It provides our staff presenter the opportunity to get some hands- on experience with a new product and then present it to a very knowledgeable audience. They are evaluated on their performance and the results are discussed with them immediately following the meeting. This immediate feedback helps give them the tools they may need to improve their future presentations. Also, it provides our entire staff the opportunity to see and listen to new hot gear as soon as it hits the warehouse without having to wait for a scheduled factory training session.

Tuesday, 8:00 AM – Following the Product Demo, we move on to the "meat" of the meeting (no pun intended). Beyond the basic business announcements and discussions regarding policies and procedures, we spend the remainder of the meeting on either sales training or product training.

Sales training in a Tuesday morning meeting is somewhat similar to the training done in the Sales Lab. If anything, we take the concepts covered in the Lab to the next level in this forum by role playing more difficult situations. For example, we might have a situation where a customer calls in to buy a compressor to improve the quality of his vocals but really needs a new microphone, too. Another example might be a customer that wants to buy a tape- based recording system but isn’t thinking about the fact that he might wind up wanting to do a lot of editing and would be better matched with a hard disk- based system. We expect every Sales Engineer to recognize these hidden needs to ensure that our customers receive the desired end result (sometimes, selling what the customer asks for would be exactly the wrong thing to do). This is why we ask you so darn many questions when you call us instead of just quoting you a price like most of our competitors.

Product training is taken very seriously here at Sweetwater. The reputation of our company is built upon the solid foundation of an exceptionally knowledgeable sales staff. This being the case we are very demanding of our manufacturers to provide high level training for our staff.

The available meeting times are very carefully scheduled (frequently months in advance in anticipation of new product releases) and the time is jealously guarded to ensure quality and that we have all the time necessary for our training sessions.

We actually evaluate each presenter and share the results with them following the meeting (no, we’re not trying to set them up, we actually send them the evaluation form in advance so they can be sure to make any necessary adjustments in their presentations). I found this to be necessary because our needs are very different from the average retailers. We’re not just looking for bullet point feature / benefit items; we want the whole story. We need to know the company’s history, accomplishments, product classifications, competition, target and secondary markets, positioning, advantages, benefits, and more.

A “typical” manufacturer presentation (for most other retailers) is a relatively low-key affair (I can speak from experience from my days at AKG). The factory guy grabs two or three salespeople when they aren’t dealing with customers and then tries to tell them about the latest products (until the salespeople are pulled away for a phone call or another customer walks in who they need to take care of). End of training session . . .

Here, at 8 AM on Tuesdays and 7 AM on Thursdays (long before most of our competitors are even awake), the factory rep walks into a room of 50+ Sales Engineers (currently, our staff is growing almost weekly) who are dressed in business attire. The sales staff is poised with pen and paper in hand, alert (well, most of the time) and anxious to dig in and learn about the latest technology and products.

The reward for the factory folks and reps (at least I considered it a reward when I used to do training sessions here with AKG, Soundcraft, JBL, dbx, etc.) is that they get to take their presentations up a notch and talk tech with folks who are nothing short of passionate about technology.

We’ve worked with our manufacturers to develop specific training programs to suit our needs, complete with the most thorough (read that toughest) testing in the industry on their specific product lines. These tests, incidentally, are not part of the Sweetwater University certification program (but I’ll have more on this in the next issue).

I should note that beyond the formal meetings, our sales staff works hard continuing their education via many hours of reading all the trade magazines, literature and product manuals, as well as net surfing and working with the equipment outside of normal working hours, just so we can be current on the technologies and applications.

The ultimate goal of all of this intense product training and accumulation of the latest industry knowledge is, of course, to ensure that when you speak with our sales staff you can be assured that you won’t find anybody anywhere better able to assist you with your purchase and design.

Wow! It had been my intention to cover the meeting and Sweetwater University in this issue but I’ve run out of space so we’ll have to tackle Sweetwater U. next time around. Rock and Roll!