The Secrets of Selling Themed Environments
Dec 1, 2001 12:00 PM,
By Nathaniel Hecht
IT’S NOT A TERM THAT MOST PEOPLE USE: THEMED entertainment venue. It doesn’t pop up in conversations between friends: “Say, Jim, did you check out the themed entertainment venue last weekend?” “Sure did, Ed, and what a great themed entertainment venue it is!” So we should start with a clear definition of what we mean by the term. But first, you might ask, “Why should I care?” You should care because themed entertainment is a lucrative market for sound and video contractors.
The common definition of themed entertainment venue is a restaurant, retail store, bar, club or park that provides a unique theme to which the entire venue is geared. The theme focuses the attention of patrons on some area of interest or type of experience. Disney’s California Adventure amusement park takes the state of California as its theme and delivers rides, restaurants, shows and shopping, all integrated by the West-Coast flavor. The Forum Shops in Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas incorporate retail stores with tourist attractions in a Roman empire theme. The House of Blues chain is a restaurant/music venue designed around a Bayou blues theme. As you can see, themed entertainment is a large and growing segment of commercial business for audio and video installation.
It’s also clear that there is a wide variety of venues that fall into this category. The needs of a big theme park are entirely different from those of a restaurant. But there are some important similarities in the way in which systems are sold into these kinds of projects, and it is the subject of themed retail — where a product or service is provided for sale by your customer to their customers — that we wish to address here.
PROSPECTING: EXPOSURE IS KEY
Many contractors and integrators depend upon referral business from satisfied customers, and there is no doubt that those are the best kinds of customers to get. Some of the best prospecting for jobs happens while just driving around, though, keeping your eyes open to activities in your own community. Approaching a potential customer on the job site is often a great way to dig up new business. There might be a new building going up with a contractor’s sign on it and a phone number. Call them immediately, from the site. If the contractor has not hired a low-voltage contractor yet, then you have a good shot at the job. The key is being out there trying for every chance you get. Don’t just limit your bidding to jobs you think you can handle. Bid on everything. Go for everything.
Russ Dubrow, an independent contractor, figures it this way: “I’ve bid on jobs that I knew I was fully incapable of doing. I did it because I wanted to get my name out there. I knew that the five people I was presenting to were part of a big company and wouldn’t necessarily be staying there forever. It’s likely that I’ll run into them somewhere else. If they remember me, it could get me in the door more easily.”
Meet the Project Team
On a new project, you are always going to find the contractor on-site. If you are really lucky, you might get there during a general meeting with the owner, the president and other key members of the project team. Sound unlikely? It isn’t. This has happened to numerous people I know, on more than one occasion. Now, if you do find yourself in the middle of a meeting, make sure you respect the proper boundaries: Introduce yourself, pass around your business cards, and go. You will be amazed at how many times you get a call back for the job.
Don’t limit your prospecting to one-off projects, and don’t balk at approaching chain stores that pop up in your area. Often, the general contractors for these chains are out of state, and the local management needs to find local talent. If you do well on a smaller install, you will get called back again and again in the future.
Design with the Designers
Interior designers are also very important to meet and can become indispensable allies. Dubrow explains: “Interior designers are used consistently on different projects. Do as much as you can with the interior designers because they will not be working only on that project but may get you into many other jobs.
“One architect I worked with tried me out for a few smaller jobs and then, after seeing my work, kicked a $500,000 club job my way,” shares Dubrow. “We worked well together, didn’t have any problems, talked about everything in detail; and although there were a lot of hours I ate financially, it was well worth it in the long run.”
Some good ways to ingratiate yourself to an architect is to provide them with a few perks such as not billing them for walk-through time or time spent answering questions. Staying available will show them that you are committed and interested in a long-term working relationship. They know the value of their time very well, so they will appreciate your willingness to be flexible. It will pay for itself with the very next job since they will always recommend you.
Should Your Fingers Do the Walking?
Should you pick up the yellow pages for prospecting? Only as a last resort. If you show up at a job site in person and are able to sell yourself as the one who will be doing the labor, you will be more convincing than just a voice on the phone. If they can meet you in person, you have a much greater chance of landing the job.
THE INITIAL MEETING
The groundwork for a good installation is conversation. In the early stages, project teams on retail venues have some tough conversations. They’re asking:
- What are our goals?
- Where do we want to be a year from now? Five years?
- Do we want to remain what we are today (a regular restaurant, for example), or do we want to expand or evolve (e.g., add live music or entertainment)?
These conversations are critical because they give a venue some direction into the future. When you have the answers, you can plan to sell them on the idea of panel installations for expanding lighting, adding mic connections, etc.
Be the Friendly Expert
Be friendly with everybody, but also know your power in the meeting. Often you will be the only person in the room with all the answers when it comes to low-voltage systems integration. At times it might seem disarming, especially when the folks with the money are all set up around the table in their business suits and want to hear yes’s, and never “I can’t.” Without saying, “Yes, I can do everything,” you have to inspire confidence by letting your client know you are prepared, have the skills and experience to help them reach their goals, and are part of the team that’s working to make the venue succeed.
PRE-WIRE FOR FUTURE EXPANSION
Get the whole story on the client’s design needs. You can save the client a small fortune in wiring costs later by pre-wiring the install for future expansion. It’s a good idea to find out if your customer is experienced with this kind of project or if the client is a first-timer. An experienced client is likely to have already had to foot the bill for an expensive addition to an existing system. If that’s the case, it is easy to explain the need to design and install with future expansion in mind.
If the customer is inexperienced, you should spell out the reality of expanding in the future without preparing for it in the present. No need to hard-sell a client, but do let him or her know that it will often cost twice as much to retrofit something in that wasn’t planned for. The expense of retrofitting a bar into a restaurant, adding a live music area, or even simply wiring audio into a bathroom or onto a patio, soars when new wires need to be run. Add to this a much more severe disruption in business, and it should be obvious even to the uninitiated that early planning will save money in the long run.
DON’T FORGET THE VIDEO
In most themed environments you will be asked to provide video; and the way video is used is as varied as the venues themselves. Some will use video as “flash cards,” showing scenes from Italy in an Italian restaurant, for example. A themed retail venue like Nike Town might choose to show its national television advertising campaign or another video program it has developed to produce a certain feel or message about its products.
Videowalls are also still very popular in themed retail. The program material on these video walls may not be related to the product or theme, but might be there to decorate or enhance the shopping environment. Trendy clothing stores for young women often use a combination of cued video programming and subwoofer-enhanced music systems to create a fashion-runway feel that builds the excitement of the buying experience. The key is to identify what the media content goals are so that you can help your customer make the best decisions.
Electronic signage is also very popular in themed environments to create excitement. For example, Mercedes uses video programs to enhance its sales efforts. According to Dubrow, “Mercedes provides JPEG or hard drive material with pictures of its racing team, fleet of executive cars, German car footage, and even just scenes of people riding in and using Mercedes cars in their everyday lives. Companies sometimes just project ad slicks onto screens but, more often than not, motion is more exciting to watch.” In retail environments where high-end or prestige products are sold, videos are often used as ongoing commercials that capture customers’ attention without confronting them in an untoward way.
MAKE IT INVISIBLE
It is very important for products to be installed seamlessly and out of sight when it comes to most themed retail environments. Very few clients want the equipment to be visible. Central control is usually completely buried in higher-end installs like upscale restaurants, since it is rare that the zones ever need to be changed. Often the central control room is in a coat closet near the front of the venue. On the other hand, sports-themed restaurants and bars generally love to see the gear up front with lots of blinking lights and glass doors on the equipment racks. Again, everything depends on the goals of the client.
AFTERMARKET SUPPORT AND FOLLOW-UP
Provide extensive training on the use of the systems you install. This is a critical step that can mean the difference between coming back frequently on a service call or not. Says Dubrow, “It is very rare than anyone besides the integrators have any idea how half of our stuff works. There is a fair degree of training involved. I’d say that I am back every six months or so in many businesses, particularly restaurants, to train new staff due to turnovers. The learning curve is steep, but the use of touchpanels, such as those from AMX and Crestron, can reduce the problem with keys that perform many functions, which would be too complex to explain individually.”
Courtesy Is Key
Don’t ever leave a finished job unattended. Follow up once a month for at least the first three months after installing a system and get the e-mail and fax numbers of the head managers. Check in periodically to see if they have any questions. Let them know when you will be in the area so you can be available for a visit, and sometimes just drop in to say hello and check the location. You will find that the customer will really appreciate the attention and will not forget it.
Don’t forget to send holiday cards to vendors and customers alike. Yearly holiday events provide a great opportunity to let your customers know that you have not forgotten them, and it keeps you on their minds.
Turn Follow-Up into Referrals
Don’t forget to send a thank you card to the person you were dealing with. Express your interest in working with them again, and enclose a few business cards. Invite referrals. These things can make all the difference in referral business and in your customer feeling good about you. It is never bad form to ask your customer for business referrals or to talk about future service.
Service Contracts
It is also appropriate to sell service contracts to your clients. It is important to transition at some point from the warranty period of the installation to the point where you have to start charging for your time. This can be set up in advance or can be a gradual process.
Keep a Portfolio
Developing a photo album of your installs is also a good idea, but be sure to show the whole process. Anyone can claim that they did an install, but when you have photos from the shell through to the finished product, there won’t be any ambiguity as to who actually did the work.
A WORD ABOUT VENDORS
Despite the expense, it is important to show up at trade shows and conventions now and again, and be friendly while talking to the manufacturers and vendors of the equipment you install. It is quite common to get referrals directly from manufacturers once they know you have the ability to put in their products. Customers will call the company in question, the reps will get the leads, and they will farm them out to the people they know who can do the job. If you have the support of the manufacturer behind you, you’ll have no shortage of work. You can also make a fair amount of money on equipment you install by buying demo products from certain manufacturers who sell them off. You can experiment with everyone’s products until you find what works the best.
Often your client will tell you what works the best after some experience in multiple locations. Show off your work to these reps while the jobs are underway, especially if it is the first time you are using their products. They’ll see your professionalism in how you handle yourself on the job site. Dubrow says, “A speaker flush on a wall is a speaker flush on a wall. Anybody can do that. But show them the audio room, show them the pre-wire, give them a hardhat and let them walk the job site with you, let them look at the control room; and they’ll be impressed by what you have accomplished.”
Meet the Distributors
Certain manufacturers can not sell to small contractors at cost, or even at all, due to restrictions on order size. While many manufacturers have made concessions to contractors — especially after finding out how lucrative these sales are — not all of them will. That’s why it is important to maintain a good relationship with local distributors. The good ones can be good resources and provide extra support for the products they distribute.
SUMMING UP
You may be thinking, “This is all good advice, but what’s so different about this type of venue?” The main difference is that themed venues can have more fluidity and adaptability. Themes change and retrofits are common. If a venue is doing well, it will expand, requiring more of everything — particularly your services. It’s imperative, therefore, to get the full story early on. Find out where the client sees the venue going. Will it be a chain? Ask what the long-term goals are and what might happen down the road. And make sure you are clear on what the customer wants right now. Then, apply your best practices as you would on any account: Be intelligent, accurate, efficient and courteous. Plan for the future as best as you can. And make sure you keep communication lines open and emphasize your follow-through. Best of luck!
Nathaniel Hecht, editor of Sound & Video Contractor, wishes to thank Russ Dubrow of Electronic Technology for his input.
