Symphony Piano Sale

[Wimblees@AOL.COM]

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Terry, et all:

Although the "symphony" or "university" sale might sound like a "rip off," I 
think we, as pianos technicians, are complaining about something for which we 
should actually be grateful. 

I have experience under two different scenarios for these special sales. 
First was my store closing. When I made the decision to close my store a 
little over a year ago, the local Steinway/Baldwin dealer agreed to run a 
"going out of business" sale for me. In exchange for using my store, and 
running the sale, I got a portion of the profits. A very well publicized sale 
resulted in the dealer selling 80 pianos in a just two weekends. (20 of mine, 
and 70 of his). Both of us made money. I was happy to get out of my store, 
and the dealer was happy because he sold so many pianos. And in addition to 
that, I got 10 new tuning customers. 

The university for which I now work has the use of 12 new pianos, which get 
rotated out every 6 months. The school gets to use these pianos for free. In 
exchange, the dealer runs a university sale. The dealer needs to make money, 
and having a university sale is how he can afford to give us the use of the 
pianos.

Symphony orchestras have the same kind of arrangements, usually in 
conjunction with Steinway in NY. As cash strapped some of the symphonies are, 
this is a win win situation for both the dealer and the symphony.

The bottom line on these kinds of sales is this. As much as we might not like 
the sales tactics, what the sales do is put pianos in customer's homes. The 
sales tactics used at these sales isn't any worse, or better, than the 
tactics used by some salesman at some pianos stores, every day. In many 
instances, people who might not otherwise have bought a piano, bought one 
because they thought they got a "good deal." So what if the "good deal" was 
paying as much, or just a little less, than what they could have bought the 
piano at the store. The main thing is, they bought a piano, instead of an 
entertainment center, or a new car.  

But once the pianos have been sold, they need to be tuned.  And that is where 
we benefit. The dealer gives the new customer a card with several piano 
tuner's names on it, with a coupon for a $50 tuning. Hey, it's a new 
customer, and we didn't have to advertise for it.  Isn't that what we want, 
more new customers?

So "quityourbitchin." If you don't want to tune these pianos, give the 
customer to someone else. Other wise, just shut up and do what your paid to 
do.

End of my soap.

Wim 

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