strategy & tactics
How to Sell DSP
WORDS BY ROSA SOPHIA
At KnowledgeFest Long Beach, Ken Ward of Educar Training presented a workshop on selling DSP. Learn who can benefit from DSP, how retailers should sell it and the right way to make it a profitable part of your business. often have nice home systems and they would like something like this in their car,” he added. One of the first steps for a shop that is new to DSP is to figure out “how you’re going to sell your systems. Some In order to sell stereo, Ward said, technicians must solve the of you have been three problems of car stereo—all of which are caused by where selling sound the listeners are seated in the vehicle. systems that don’t do stereo. When it comes to selling stereo, it’s a And you’ve been making money. A lot much different client than someone who’s of people just say, ‘We sell audio.’ That’s looking for a basic audio system—and a great! Because we have made millions of digital sound processor is a complex tool dollars as an industry just selling audio.” that can be intimidating to those who There’s nothing wrong with this, Ward aren’t used to working with it, according explained. “Plenty of your customers just to Ken Ward of Educar Training. want to rock out and don’t care where it A lot of times, Ward said, the client comes from. So, don’t impose them with is older and has a higher income. “They stuff they don’t need, and God knows,
44 Mobile Electronics March 2019
don’t spend your time tuning a system they didn’t pay to have tuned.” So, how can shops successfully sell DSP? “Some people say, ‘Hey, we never really thought about the difference,’” Ward noted. “Well, that’s what we are talking about [today].”
Which Customers Want DSP? Ward likened the DSP to a Swiss Army knife, which offers many different functions. “I need something that does more than one thing,” he said. “I can’t just have one [tool] for time alignment, one for crossover and one for EQ. I need something where they’re all together. That’s what we sell 98 percent of the time.” One of the sources of conflict in a shop, Ward said, involves which aspects of the DSP are actually necessary. “The salesperson sells a DSP and includes it in the kit and ships it, and doesn’t completely communicate to the bay what the expectations are,” he said. “The technician doesn’t have a crystal ball to see what was intended. Most of the time, this is what
