11.03.2009 — Keynote speaker Mike Moore of Making Customers Inc. kicked off the second annual CE Pro 100 Integrators Summit on Nov. 2, 2009 with a blasphemous statement: “Customers are not always right.”

“Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that the statement that ‘the customer is always right’ is wrong,” he says, equating appeasement of some customers to giving in to a two-year-old child whining for candy.

He also added that the instruction to your salespeople to “close early and often” is also misguided for today’s economy.

Instead, integrators need to be thinking about closing fewer accounts for higher dollars, but never over-selling the customer. Moore believes there is an adversarial relationship between consumers and salespeople that is bred by distrust. He challenged integrators to break down that distrust and “make customers.”

“It’s not complicated, but it’s not easy,” he says. “It will require a complete cultural and business model change for some of you.”

He says the constant pressure toward your sales staff to produce sales numbers is what leads to poor relationships with clients who are sold things they don’t need or even undersold. He cited an example of a design center that changed its sales approach and increased its average revenue per salesperson from about $4 million to over $6 million (with fewer total numbers of transactions).

The key way this was achieved by letting the customer use a Web-based automated options selection system to make the majority of their "lifestyle needs decisions" without pressure from a salesperson.

Moore’s speech was sponsored by Monster Cable. Head Monster Noel Lee echoed Moore’s philosophy by saying that deteriorating price points and margins, combined with the bad economy, have put the CE business “in a state of crisis."

“Home theater is not a value add any more," says Lee. "If price is the only difference between your company and another company, you cannot win.”

Lee invited dealers to build on their individual company brands in conjunction with Monster as part of the company’s new “Monster Certified Home Program” that will encourage dealers to piggyback on Monster’s brand recognition with their clients.