09.02.2008 — Paradigm is expanding its suburban Toronto manufacturing facilities.

As part of this expansion, the speaker designer is including an in-house training room designed to educate dealers about the wealth of technologies the company uses to achieve performance.

The new training will also cover the latest installation techniques needed to ensure Paradigm systems perform at their highest levels.

Teaching Environment Will Help Sales

Paradigm has determined that, to helps its dealers grow their sales, they need to communicate the capabilities of its product line through a new teaching environment.

"We have a dealer-training program, called Paradigm's Higher Learning for Dealers [PHD program], which needed a high-end showroom to display the emotive quality of our products," says Mark Aling, marketing manager for Paradigm.

"[We] have a passion for building the best products … that passion comes through in the design and the manufacturing process, and we need an area to really demonstrate the performance of a high-end listening room."

The room will be used to train installers about Paradigm's freestanding and architectural products. According to Aling, the training sessions will be held on a quarterly basis. Yhe curriculum covers a variety of subjects, including product and sales presentations.

"Each dealer has their own comfort level and sales strategy," Aling says. "So, we try to respect that personal style while giving them the tools and resources to do it effectively. The theater room will be a useful venue for demonstrating how content can be used with customers to make a demo more compelling."

Performance, Value Are Priorities

With the room, Paradigm hopes to support the company's engineering processes for its speakers and its Anthem line of electronics.

Aling says that Paradigm spends a lot of its resources on engineering and product development, and the room will be used in a manner that ties those elements into its dealer training sessions. These factors will also be applied to future product development.

Paradigm has plans in place to expand into the entry-level and luxury categories as a means of arming its dealers with products that help them to grow their sales.

"Even though Paradigm now offers one of the widest selections of speaker products in the industry, we continue to expand our in-wall and in-ceiling speaker offerings for the custom and builder markets, and we are actually launching our first in-wall subwoofer around CEDIA," Aling says.

"Additionally, newly enhanced versions of our original speaker and subwoofer lines are being released over the next year as we introduce new models and remove some legacy ones."