What’s Happening
My View: Leave the Bosses at Home Sony Car Audio brings its distributor sales professionals together for the fourth annual Sales Boot Camp, with a little MECP on the side. WORDS BY SOLOMON DANIELS
It wasn’t the sales meeting I was expecting. There were no suits, no polite conversations, no corporate feel. Then again, maybe I should not have anticipated a snooty affair. We’re talking about Sony Car Audio after all. It was this kind of banter that set the tone for an informative, educational and occasionally raucous fourth annual Sony Boot Camp. Held at the Chicago Marriott Suites O’Hare, the event welcomed 52 attendees from the brand’s specialty distribution partners. (If you didn’t know, Sony uses distribution for 100 percent of its specialty sales.) Distribution sales manager Anthony Tozzi and head of sales Rick Kojan hosted for the event, backed by six members of the Sony car audio team. The two-day meeting opened like old friends getting together. Though many were competitors, in this room they were all colleagues. Kojan counted 11 first-year attendees, who were welcomed by 17 twoyear, 14 three-year and eight four-year veterans. The emphasis of the event was
12 Mobile Electronics June 2019
on learning while having fun, he said. And that’s what happened. Jokes and laughter often interrupted speakers, with playful insults flying back and forth. Then Tozzi got up and attendees “bet” on how long he would go over the two-day event before saying a certain four-letter word during his presentations. (Was there money involved? I don’t recall.)
Boots on the Ground There were two aspects of this event that caught my attention. First was the audience. It wasn’t a gathering of distributor presidents, general managers and owners. This wasn’t meant to be a schmooze-fest. These were people on the front lines—the sales staff who work the phones and beat the street to interface directly with retailers on behalf of the Sony brand. While that is unique, it’s also a good thing whenever distributors are involved. They are often the forgotten entity of our industry, much less their sales professionals. God Bless Mike Van Horn for being one of the few to tell their stories, even posting an annual distributor show
calendar that has become a staple in our small industry. But the blame for this can be evenly dispersed, as most distributors prefer to quietly rep their brands, sell their products and service their local dealers. It’s been only in the past few years that distributors have begun to join the herd. Davis Distribution made the first official appearance for a distributor at a KnowledgeFest event at the Indianapolis KnowledgeFest in 2016, and did so in a big way, inviting clients and show attendees alike to its after-hours event. That trend is continuing with two distributors attending this year’s Dallas show. (A point of order: distributors don’t actually show product at KnowledgeFest events per the rules, but instead act as concierges for their dealers, taking them around the show floor to visit their client vendors.) And the Mobile Electronics Association (MEA), which owns KnowledgeFest, is working to make it easier for distributors to become a significant part of the show series. The second thing that caught my attention was the announcement that, for
