Story by Lindsey Adler – AVNetwork
Yes, huddle rooms are worth your time. Your clients are your partners, and so are your manufacturers. The sales process in AV has been inverted.
These are some of the major issues facing the industry and were the top themes at AVI-SPL’s annual sales summit, this year dubbed the “Sales Acceleration Summit,” or AVSAS for hashtag purposes.
There were two really significant changes the industry’s largest integrator made to the sales event this year: exhibiting vendors were cut nearly in half and the inclusion of the company’s design engineers. The first was part of a broader effort started a few years back to consolidate AVI-SPL’s procurement and vendor management program, and awarding “preferred” status to them. Basically, these manufacturing partners get priority in projects where appropriate. “They’ve stepped up, and we’ve stepped up with them,” stated Dale Bottcher, SVP of sales. There were 41 of them exhibiting at the AVSAS. Other vendors are still used of course when specific applications call for them, perhaps by client request or product specialization, for example.
