Feature Story:
With 18 stores, Custom Sounds is one of the largest specialty car audio chains. It makes no secret of the fact that it keeps its bottom line green by actively selling car audio accessories that can make a system sound better.
The Austin-based chain is one of the biggest movers of sound dampening material in the industry, selling $140,000 worth in 2017, claims Custom Sounds President Mike Cofield. And he believes the chain can increase that by 30 to 50 percent by tweaking its current incentive plan for store managers and employees.
Here’s another statistic. In 2013, Custom Sounds sold $19,000 worth of step-up line output converters (LOCs). So rather than passive LOCs it stepped up customers to active LOCs, such as the AudioControl LC2i or the Audision bit One processor. In 2014, it grew that to $101,000, reaching $173,000 last year in active LOCs.
About 12 years ago, Custom Sounds implemented an incentive program that has resulted in over $300,000 in bonuses for store and regional managers over the years. The program was annual and didn’t include salesmen (who received spiffs, but not year-end bonuses). Starting last week, the store shifted its incentive program to quarterly rewards and salesmen now join in the bonuses. Cofield hopes to award $50,000 to $60,000 in bonuses this year. That’s how profitable selling accessories is to the bottom line.
Cofield likes to use the example that McDonald’s, while known for its burgers, makes its money selling fries and shakes. So 12 volt specialists that might be known for car radios can boost their profits through accessories such as speaker grilles and sound dampening.
In the past, under Custom Sounds’ incentive program, most managers didn’t really push accessories until the end of the year, as bonus time drew near. And without salesmen on board with the promise of bonuses of their own, there was little incentive for them to push for the goals.
Moving to a quarterly system should provide incentives year round and provide a means of clearing out seasonal items in the off-season such as window film in the winter.
“We want the store managers to be checking every ticket every day to look for missed opportunities. When we had the annual program, they would think, ‘It’s a year away or 9 months away.’ So the way I got them to look at the tickets every day—I pulled out that old quality management tool; I picked up the phone every day and yelled at them….” said Cofield. He added, the point is that managers now have a more immediate incentive to pull each sales ticket and tell a salesman, “’Hey you missed this opportunity to sell sound dampening or a woofer with a grille or a cap or battery.’”
A manager can make another $4K a year in bonuses just by examining tickets for lost opportunities, said Cofield.
He added, “Any time you are using a passive LOC, you are doing the customer an injustice because he probably just spent quite a bit of money on amps and subs that will never reach their potential. You also cause the customer to blow woofers at a far greater rate. And if you sell a customer a woofer in a trunk and don’t sell him a grille, you have to feel like you didn’t do the customer justice when he comes back with a hole in his woofer.”
Custom Sounds entered the lighting category recently and will be adding that category to the incentive program next quarter.
It just opened its 18th store and will soon launch a new store in Austin, while closing another in Austin that lost its lease. It is actively looking for new chains to acquire to help move into the new markets.
Custom sounds has 150 employees and has revenues of $18 million annually.
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