Six Hats That Can Make Home Theater Companies More
Professional!
You feel you are good at what you do. You love going into a home, sizing it up, talking with the homeowner, making a dull, quiet space come alive with awesome video and vivid audio. Your business card says you are a Home Theater A/V Specialist, an A/V Systems Consultant, a Custom A/V Integrator, etc. Most home theater owners are all these things, but you are a Professional. Webster defines Professional as: a person having great skills or experiences in a given field or activity. But most Home Theater Pros find they have to wear the hats of other Professionals if they expect to be successful at what they love to do. Six hats to be exact.
First Hat: You are a Professional Researcher. You find things.
Home Theater continually forces you to find new business. Find new or unique ways to complete jobs faster, better; and set reachable personal and business goals. And still continually improve your Home Theater technical skills so you are better than your competition.
Professional Researcher hat So, how do you become a Professional Researcher? Put on your Researcher's Hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wore. That Hound's tooth thing with the ear flaps up. Got the image? Now visualize looking through a large magnifying glass. Like Sherlock Holmes, you are looking for stuff. Maybe more or different opportunities to find new business. Look at what you are doing now. Is it old hat stuff? Well, here are a few things you can throw into your Researcher's Hat.
- The 80/20 Rule; 80% of your new business could come from 20% of your past customers.
- When is the last time you personally called or stopped by all past customers and asked how their system is doing? What are they looking at down the road? Brought them up-to-date on new gear. Whom do they feel would like a system like theirs?
- Referrals are precious! Where do you find your referrals?
Completed jobs? Satisfied customers? How would you like to increase your referral activity by a factor of ten? Put your
Sherlock Researcher's Hat on. Grab that magnifying glass.
You now have a plan with a goal; Increase referrals by a factor
of ten. Need a little assist. Check next month's Sencore News.
You will learn more about becoming a Professional Researcher and how to increase your referral activity by a factor of 10. Meanwhile, you have a few more hats to try on.
Second Hat: You are a Professional Ambassador. You build rapport.
Professional Ambassador hatWherever you go, as a Professional Home Theater Owner 100% of time you build rapport. Building rapport builds your business; a piece at a time. How can you build rapport faster? Slip into your wide brim vanilla Professional Ambassador Panama Hat.
Now, you may be more conscious of how you look. How you talk. What you wear when go on a home evaluation. What you wear and say at the dentist's office. (They are Home Theater Prospects too!) How you handle people that work with or for you.
You are a Professional Home Theater Ambassador 100% of the time because of three key elements; Honesty, Trust and Credibility (HTC).
- Honesty and Trust are difficult to demonstrate initially. You are perceived as honest and trustworthy on subsequent phone calls, promises made and kept, work completed on time, being nice but being firm.
- Credibility can be established many ways, but the easiest most effective manner is to truly listen to the customer. Golden Rule: Always carry a pen and a note pad. You will never know when an order opportunity will rise up and almost bite you.
- It's great to have a prepared work evaluation form. However, customers just love it when you hand write copious notes about the stuff they are most interested in. Just truly listening and writing will build your Honesty and Trust with the customer.
After all, isn't that what you would expect from a Professional Ambassador? Try the hat on. You will look good in it!
Third Hat: You are a Professional Doctor. You probe for answers.
You may be good at probing for answers already. After all, most successful Home Theater Professionals have to ask a lot of questions to learn what the customer really likes. But these questions may just cover the customer's hardware likes. What questions do you ask that will probe to the customer's highest wants; not just likes, but where the emotional pain really is?
But, they are too proud, too vain and maybe too embarrassed to talk with you about their real wants — at this point. The super silence of an ultra quiet room just to hear one special passage from an old high school memory. What will they invest to bring back that one memory? What is it worth to you and your company to change the estimate to bring the room from 35db SPL to a Super Quiet 25db SPL or lower? What questions do you ask to find that true want?
Otherwise, the completed customer job feedback is: "They did a good job, but it just doesn't sound as good as we thought it would." Better to know the real wants up front as much as possible. Wouldn't you agree?
Professional Doctor hatYou will have to put on your Professional Doctor hat to ask the real probing questions. The hat is unique, not worn outside, but memorable. The clean blue or green head cap is for the office; the Operating Studio. Got the picture?
Now, you know the Professional Doctors mince few words getting to the source of your real pain. Some questions can be downright personal. But, you answer the Professional Doctor's questions if you want to feel better.
A Professional Home Theater Doctor can use a standard open-ended probing questioning process that appears non-intrusive but is very effective and builds great rapport! All in the effort to find out what will make your customer feel better.
It is the 5-Ws and 1-H. Here is a starter question sample.
- WHO. . . other than yourself, would you want involved in the decision process?
- WHAT. . . do you feel is the most important essence your sound system should be able to give you?
- WHERE. . . do you want your favorite dream spot in this room?
- WHEN. . . do you like to hang it all out and just relax?
- WHY. . . did you decide to go ahead with this system?
- HOW. . . would you describe the impact this all new A/V System will have on the whole family?
Looking for more probing questions other Professional Home Theater Doctors have found the most effective building rapport with customers? Get to know the customer better, faster to provide the ultimate A/V system they really want? Check out next month's Sencore News. Sencore Home Theater Professionals tell the best probing questions that work for them.
Fourth Hat: You are a Professional Designer. You design solutions.
You design solutions from the ton of answers your customer has given you, the Professional Home Theater Doctor.
Professional Designer hatThe best way to help shape the solution to is to use reflective questions or statements. But first ease into your new professional Designers Hat; that rich red French beret style. Now, ask one of the following statements of what you feel your customer's viewpoint is regarding their soon-to-be new home investment:
- "If I understand you . . ."
- "So what you are saying . . ."
- "I'm curious . . ."
The three dots represent a three second pause; 1001.1002.1003. The impact of the three second pause is incredible. Your customer senses you are really into their ideas and thoughts. Your Professional Home Theater Designer credibility instantly grows.
Now paraphrase what the customer just said to you. Repeat back to them what you feel is the customer's highest need. Keep it simple and to the point.
"So what you are saying . . . you and your wife's three main concerns are:
One: Know you have the latest A/V system components.
Two: Make it simple for everyone in the family to use.
Three: Make sure the system is updateable as possible when new stuff comes along.
Is that correct?"
Your Professional Designer instincts need to confirm what you feel and understand is the same as the customer feelings and wants.
Listen. Write it down. Repeat it. Confirm it. Practice makes it powerful. Add another hat to your Home Theater arsenal as a Professional Designer.
Fifth Hat: You are a Professional Consultant. You paint benefit pictures.
As a Home Theater Professional, being a Professional Consultant is probably your strongest suit, as well as your most worn Hat. The business hat. The older grayish Presidential style hat with a blended wide band that is just a shade off to be distinguishing. It means you may now differentiate yourself and your business from your competition.
Professional Consultant hatSo settle into your Professional Consultant's Hat. See how you can best paint benefit solution pictures so your customers can make faster, easy decisions. Wearing a Professional Consultant Hat means you offer knowledge and expertise. The Professional paints vivid benefit pictures so the customer's decision is a natural transition.
Such as, "We recommend easing a large silver semi-circle pedestal style HDTV plasma into the room's natural slight offset."
- What this does for you is "give you a natural conformity to the room versus the add-a-box look."
- Which means "you have the look of a custom-designed system typically worth thousands of dollars adding value to your home."
Just remember a feature Is and a benefit Does. Golden Rule: Give a feature. Give a benefit. What it does for them.
Get an acceptance after stating the benefit. . . "How does that sound?" or "How do you feel about that?" Good, bad or indifferent; you get instant input. Input a Professional Home Theater Consultant thrives on.
Sixth Hat: You are a Professional Coach. You ask for commitments.
When you snap on the Coaches Professional baseball cap you are ready to play ball. After being successfully fitted for five Professional hats, your customer should say "yes" to your magnificent Home Theater proposal. It doesn't always happen that way. Does it? Lots of:
"We'll think it over, look it over, work it over. It's more than we figured." and a bunch of "maybes".
Professional Coach hatHow do you handle the objections? First grab your Professional Coach's Hat. Yank it on. Get in the Coach mode to inspire, motivate and flush out any and all objections. Someplace along the first five steps you missed something.
You got a no. But no is not forever. Just for now. Add two letters to the no and you probably got your answer; something they did not K-no-W. Now you have new information on which to make a new "yes" decision. But if you are still not sure, use the Professional Coach approach.
1. Agree... I understand where you are coming from Mr. & Mrs. Customer.
2. Single out... Other than the pricing issue, is there any other reason you could not go ahead with a decision today?
3. Tie down... What if you had several easy pay options to make the pricing more attractive?
4. Close... How do you want to handle it?
Other Techniques
There are may other closing techniques that are also effectively used by Professional Home Theater Coaches.
- The Alternate Close
- The Franklin T. Close
- The Puppy Dog Close
- The "Is It" Close
- The "Where did I miss it" Close
- The Stair Step Close
- The Direct Close
Want to know more about these closes? Check your monthly Sencore News website:
www.sencore.com. Meanwhile, try on a few Pro-hats. Let us know your Professional experiences. They just could make the Sencore News.
