Yesterday I had an email-conversation with my Swiss distributor and I asked him about the French loudspeaker range he is representing. Mainly because the management of the brand I represent is so aggressively speaking about this French brand. He told me that he did no longer represent this French brand and his words were:

“The company is now driven by lawyers and finance people. Sales-driven by harassing & menacing the distributors … They don’t realize themselves yet, but most distributors (at least in Europe) are fed up by their arrogant behavior and look now for something else”.

This email-conversation made me think of a manufacturer representative visiting one of our dealer shops. He came to visit to introduce himself and to promote his brand. If the shop had not been my shop, the store-manager would have kicked out the brand of his shop right away. And with good reason. If you can’t believe such things are happening … ask me where it happened … and you can go and check yourself.

Two years ago I had about the same experience with his -now- boss visiting The Netherlands. More or less the same experience. So at least the training seems to be good … I will write about that experience too, as I think it is important to know how things -unfortunately- happen nowadays.

The GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY is that WE are not like that at all. Take advantage of that as a customer as long that such behavior still exists.

“Good afternoon, my name is ***** and I represent *****.”

“Good afternoon, I am ***** store-manager of *****. Welcome to my shop. Can I serve you a coffee, tea or something else?”

“Coffee, please. Thank you.”

“Do you want me to show you the shop, the different rooms?”

“Yes, please.”

“This is the room where we demo our lowest priced products and as you can see we have all models from your brand in that price-category available.”

“If we go up one level I can show you the other rooms. In these rooms we go up in price as well for electronics as for loudspeakers. You see that in every room your room is very well- represented. Sometimes people even comment with: Do you only have ***** loudspeakers? But of course we have more. However your brand is our main brand, that’s correct. In the big room over there we have the crème-de-la-crème for electronics and loudspeakers. As you see we have all models of your brand, except your very top model which due to weight and size cannot even brought into our building”.

“Well, thank you for showing me around, thank you for the coffee. Hope to see you again in the future. By the way, what is this?”

“That’s a Martin Logan Hybrid Electrostatic loudspeaker?”

“Why you have that here in the shop?”

“Why I have that here in the shop? It’s a nice product, represents another way of reproducing sound and I want to offer my clients a complete reflection of what’s available on the market. Dynamic speakers, electrostatic speakers, magnetostatic speakers etc. Different clients, have different taste and different circumstances. I want to be able to offer a full spectrum”.

“But is the Martin Logan not in same price-class as one of my brand loudspeakers?”

“Yes, you have so many models, that will always be the case with whatever you compare. But is that a problem for you? That will happen all the time and everywhere.”

“Yes, that is a problem for me. Every time you sell a Martin Logan, you do NOT sell a speaker from my brand. Unacceptable, totally unacceptable!”

“Oh …”