Stop Selling 90’s Audio

By Andy Wehmeyer

What if I told you that delivering high end audio performance could be the most predictable and profitable part of your business? Would you believe me? What would that look like? What if I told you it was possible, but not easy? Would you still be interested? Are you willing to make a change to access better customers with more money who are desperately looking for someone with expertise?

Yeah? OK. Keep reading.

In my travels over the past five years talking to retailers and consumers, I hear a recurring theme. Too often I hear, “We don’t do high end. Those systems are a money pit.” This is an exercise in minimizing expectations so we can maintain control. That leaves lots of money on the table. I also hear that this is a technical issue. “Technicians need to upgrade their skills.”  That’s true, but we need to dig a little deeper.

Clearly, modern factory systems are much better and much more complicated than they were thirty years ago when I started as a retail installer. Technicians now need additional skills, that’s for sure. The bigger problem, however, is that we’re often blaming technicians for not having the skills necessary to do something that can’t be done.

What? Whaddaya mean?

In many cases, we’re selling customers a lie. We’re not doing it because we’re dishonest. We’re doing it because we have a habit of selling systems without qualifying customers and their cars. We’re telling them, “This system will sound great” and we’re selling them a 5-channel amp, a pair of components for the front, coaxials for the back and a sub to go in a Toyota Tundra with the JBL system. We hand the gear to a technician and tell him to make it work. We’re selling 90s car audio in 2019 and we’re asking the installer to do the impossible.

It doesn’t work. It won’t be better. It’ll be louder. It’ll have more bass. Despite those differences, our customer may be unhappy because it “doesn’t sound right”, because “it was louder before” or because “something is missing.” This is one example. The same thing will happen in a Chevy pickup, in a Camry and in a Subaru. We’ll deliver the car and hope for the best. After the customer is gone, we’ll post on Facebook asking for suggestions.

OK, so what happened? We sold a system rather than an upgrade. We didn’t consider integration and we didn’t sell any tools to make fine tuning possible. We didn’t recognize our starting point. We expected the installer to “hook the stuff up” and that wasn’t enough. This happened on the sales floor, not in the installation bay.

If we’re going to do better audio, we have to be better at audio.

As an industry, we are beginning to recognize that DSP is a powerful solution to this problem. DSP gives us an opportunity to fine tune the system once it’s installed and it also gives us an opportunity to undo what the supplier of the factory system has done. A DSP isn’t a fix by itself, though. It’s a toolbox and we need to know how to use the tools. Installing one doesn’t improve the system. Using one can.

Learning to use one means learning how to do better audio. Learning how to do better audio means learning about electronics and acoustics. We have to be able to tune the system, but we also have to be able to recognize what’s already been done. In many cases, much of the work in making the car sound great has already been done by the designers of the factory system. Sometimes we can use what’s already there, but we have to be able to recognize the specific opportunity each and every time. Does the system already include crossovers and EQ? Does the system include delays, phase EQ or an upmixer? We have to know the answers to all of these questions before we sell the system.

Trying to go back to the 90s is a crapshoot. There’s a good chance that the factory system is better than our 5-channel amp, front speakers, rear speakers and a sub. We have to learn how to augment rather than replace. The good news is, for those who choose to do the work of upgrading their audio expertise on the sales floor and in the installation bay, they’ll be the only game in town for predictable and profitable upgrades. That’s a competitive advantage that’s ripe for the taking.

Andy Wehmeyer is President of Audiofrog